“Do the things that interest you and do them with all your heart. Don't be concerned about whether people are watching you or criticizing you. The chances are that they aren't paying any attention to you. It's your attention to yourself that is so stultifying. But you have to disregard yourself as completely as possible. If you fail the first time then you'll just have to try harder the second time. After all, there's no real reason why you should fail. Just stop thinking about yourself.”
Quote collection
Thinking Quotes — page 517 of 4756
“Franklin's illness...gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons - infinite patience and never ending persistence.”
“I don't know the real answer, my answer to anything which is essentially human relations is education. Whatever the answer is, education must be its measured component and if you try to educate with generosity not with triumphalism I think sometimes it works, especially young people, that's why I teach, I've been teaching all my life.”
“Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.”
“For the purpose of my life, I don't ask the question. First of all, I believe. I think the Five Books of Moses are inspired. Call it divine. I don't know. But I would certainly call it inspired.”
“I don't think it's necessary to put your feelings about photography in words. I've read things that photographers have written for exhibitions and so forth about their subjective feelings about photography and mostly I think it's disturbing. I think they're fooling themselves very often. They're just talking, they're not saying anything.”
“I was the baby of the family, but I was never babied, and that allowed me to take whatever artistic temperament I had and apply learned discipline. I was taught how to work. I think that's everything. Creativity and imagination alone are not going to get you there.”
“As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.”
“I think there's more real in the unreal than there is in the real.”
“A man that can cook you a proper meal that is like a weekday meal - which I think cannot be better than in the form of a roast chicken - that's the greatest.”
“People can be a fine substitute for other dogs. But I think that if they had to choose, dogs by and large would choose the company of other dogs.”
“Are you reading?" I say. It's not that I don't think Finn can read or anything, but it's just - well, not what I expected to see. I figured Finn spent his time doing whatever it is guys who aren't Josh do when they aren't in school. Burping, or something. "Try not to look so surprised," Finn says. "I read. I can count to ten. Sometimes I can even spell my own name.”
“I worked really hard to develop me as an artist and as a musician. I have so many different influences and play so many different instruments, I don't think anyone knew what to do with me!”
“I think anybody who wants to be president has to be a politician, but I would like to find somebody who's coming from a loving place instead of a political place.”
“I don't think I remember my first memory.”
“If anyone thinks they'd rather be in a different part of history, they're probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You'd probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.”
“It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don't think it's possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car.”
“Computers may out think us one day, but as long as people got feelings we'll be better than they are.”
“Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.”
“A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now.”