Essentials quotes
1.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, 'Is this necessary?'"
"Half an hour's meditation each day is essential, except when you are busy. Then a full hour is needed."
"We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. The third is freedom from want. The fourth is freedom from fear."
"The first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy."
"Purity, patience and perseverance are the three essentials to success and above all love."
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"For in order for capitalism to work -- in order for it to produce a good and a stable society -- the traditional Christian virtues are essential."
"When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers."
"One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time necessary for completing the calculation."
"Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy."
"In the word question, there is a beautiful word - quest. I love that word. We are all partners in a quest. The essential questions have no answers. You are my question, and I am yours - and then there is dialogue. The moment we have answers, there is no dialogue. Questions unite people."
"The detail is as important as the essential is. When it is inadequate, it destroys the whole outfit."
"Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society."
"The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things."
"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
"It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize."
"The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die."
"Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."
"It is essential to resist the depiction of history as the work of heroic individuals"
"Good moral character is the first essential in a man."
"Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority."
"Believe it or not, I'm a big fan of patchouli oil. I know it's not a universally liked fragrance. I usually combine it with other essential oils - I have many mixtures I like."
"The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet."
"A public option is essential to creating the cost-savings necessary to offset the cost of providing all Americans access to affordable health care."
"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers."
"I know that everything essential and great originated from the fact that the human being had a homeland and was rooted in tradition."
