Thought Provoking famous quotes
05-22-2025
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We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel -
I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.
-- Albert Einstein -
The love of libraries, like most loves, must be learned.
-- Alberto Manguel -
The Playtex Secrets survey truly uncovered some thought-provoking and provocative secrets of real American housewives. In fact, many of the findings would make great fodder for a storyline on the show!
-- Alfre Woodard -
You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.
-- Alvin Toffler -
Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
In Sarajevo and in Syria, these are societies - in Bosnia, in Serbia, in Kosovo, in Syria - where ethnicities live side by side and intermarry for long periods of time until it becomes valuable to exploit the division. And yes, the division's there because you can always revert back to history, you can always inflame it, but it is manipulated for political ends.
-- Anne-Marie Slaughter -
What I'm suggesting is we are going to look back, and we're going to see what happened in Syria, and we're going to see the larger destabilization of the Middle East, the rise of extremism, and we're going to wonder... Why didn't we at least try to force a political solution - at an acceptable cost to us, because no one is saying we should send in ground troops - and if we did it would be worse than doing nothing... If we do not act, we are going to look back and wonder why we didn't.
-- Anne-Marie Slaughter -
I like my films to have a certain amount of realism - something that's thought provoking and intelligently written. More than the amount on the pay cheque, I look for a level of respectability as an actor.
-- Arjun Rampal -
Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
-- Arnold Bennett -
It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
Courage is never to let your actions be influenced by your fears.
-- Arthur Koestler -
There are lots of great movies coming out of the U.S. but it's not something I've ever really been interested in. They're great films but I much prefer the smaller independent films, which are more thought provoking and experimental.
-- Billie Piper -
Jerusalem Maiden is a page-turning and thought-provoking novel. Extraordinary sensory detail vividly conjures another time and place; heroine Esther Kaminsky’s poignant struggle transcends time and place. The ultimate revelation here: for many women, if not most, 2011 is no different than 1911, but triumph is nonetheless possible.
-- Binnie Kirshenbaum -
Look, it's a mainstream animated movie, and how often are those considered thought provoking? It's meant to be a great time at the theater, but it's also designed to work on more than one level
-- Brad Bird -
The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.
-- Bruce Lee -
The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
-- C. S. Lewis -
If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose.
-- Charles Bukowski -
To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.
-- Charles Bukowski -
People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.
-- Charles Bukowski -
Electric communication will never be a substitute for the face of someone who with their soul encourages another person to be brave and true.
-- Charles Dickens -
I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking.
-- Charlie Kaufman -
Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.
-- Chinua Achebe -
In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.
-- Chinua Achebe -
It is praiseworthy to be brave and fearless, but sometimes it is better to be a coward. We often stand in the compound of a coward to point at the ruins where a brave man used to live.
-- Chinua Achebe -
The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.
-- Chinua Achebe -
If you don't like someone's story, write your own.
-- Chinua Achebe -
The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.
-- Chinua Achebe -
When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.
-- Chinua Achebe -
A library book, I imagine, is a happy book.
-- Cornelia Funke -
Five Minute Marketing is entertaining and thought provoking marketing advice by a Canadian for Canadians.
-- Dan Poynter -
Don't ever miss a day without improving something personally.
-- David D. Glass -
Jack Bogle's passionate cry of Enough! contains a thought-provoking litany of life lessons regarding our individual roles in commerce and society. Employing a seamless mix of personal anecdotes, hard evidence and all-too-often-underrated subjective admonitions, Bogle challenges each of us to aspire to become better members of our families, our professions and our communities. Rarely do so few pages provoke so much thought. Read this book.
-- David F. Swensen -
Ambitious and thought-provoking, Higher Education in America represents an informed and informative addition to ongoing debates at the national, state, and institutional levels about the aims higher education ought to aspire to and how best to achieve them.
-- David M. Brown -
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.
-- Doris Lessing -
Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.
-- Edward Abbey -
God made (human beings) because he loves stories.
-- Elie Wiesel -
One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them.
-- Elie Wiesel -
If the victims are my problem, the killers are yours.
-- Elie Wiesel -
I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone - terribly alone in a world without God and without (hu)man(ity).
-- Elie Wiesel -
Jesus asks for everything, but we try to give Him less.
-- Francis Chan -
The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time.
-- Francis Chan -
Lukewarm people don't really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.
-- Francis Chan -
Don't fall into the trap of studying the Bible without doing what it says.
-- Francis Chan -
As a piece of travel literature alone, 'The Ends of the Earth' succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking.
-- Francis Fukuyama -
Failure isn't something to be embarrassed about; it's just proof that you're pushing your limits, trying new things, daring to innovate.
-- Gavin Newsom -
A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.
-- Germaine Greer -
Big Data will spell the death of customer segmentation and force the marketer to understand each customer as an individual within eighteen months, or risk being left in the dust.
-- Ginni Rometty -
A God without wrath brought human beings without sin into a kingdom without judgment through ministrations of a Christ without a cross.
-- H. Richard Niebuhr -
In the last resort, a love of God without love of humanity is no love at all.
-- Hans Kung -
Jim Rohn is one of the most articulate, powerful, thought-provoking speakers I've seen. His unique delivery and style puts him head and shoulders above the rest.
-- Harvey Mackay -
This company doesn't pay anybody. Only customers can do that. The company merely handles the money.
-- Henry Ford -
If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organise, co-ordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to those four words.
-- Henry Mintzberg -
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.
-- Hunter S. Thompson -
Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.
-- Isaiah Berlin -
Your job is not to be perfect, your job is only to be human.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Sometimes the most important things that we do are things we cannot measure.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
My dream is to find individuals who take financial resources and convert them into changing the world in the most positive ways.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Being poor doesn't mean being ordinary.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
There are probably no more market-oriented individuals on the planet, than low income people.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
The time for us to begin innovating and looking for new solutions is now.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
I was going to save the world, and I thought I would start with the African continent.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
When systems are broken, it's an opportunity for invention and innovation.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
May each of you live lives of immersion. They won't necessarily be easy lives. But in the end, it is all that will sustain us.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
After all this atrocity, this is how human beings really pray.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
We are connected to each other not only as humans, but to every living thing on the planet.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
What is the cost of not daring? What is the cost of not trying?
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Nothing important happens in life without a cost.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Honour what is most beautiful about the past and build it into the promise of the future.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
I have also been touched by the dark side of power and leadership.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
What we really yearn for as human beings is to be visible.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Our lives are so short. And our time on this planet is so precious. All we have is each other.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Very small investments can release the infinite potential that lies in all of us.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it's in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
We need moral leadership and courage in our world.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
We don't see profit as a blind instrument.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Four billion people on Earth make less than four dollars a day.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
We often don't realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
All people deserve access to health at prices they can afford.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Traditional charity and aid are never going to solve the problems of poverty.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Human beings want to see each other. We want to be heard by each other.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
When people gain income, they gain choice, and that is fundamental to dignity.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Listening is not only about waiting, but it's also learning how better to ask questions.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Things are always harder than you think they're going to be.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
What we call people so often distances us from them, and makes them little.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Failure can be an incredibly motivating force.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
People really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
Africans didn't want saving, thank you very much, least of all not by me.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
It's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share.
-- Jacqueline Novogratz -
We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better.
-- Janet Mock -
Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan -
Rian Johnson's 'Looper' is inventive, entertaining, and thought-provoking in every way a movie can be. It is in fact the kind of movie that reminds us why we watch them and make them, a beautifully told story that deserves to be not only remembered, but acknowledged for its writing.
-- Jason Reitman -
Abdur Rab offers a comprehensive vision of Islam using the Quran as his sole religious textual source. He intentionally avoids the hadith literature, which he believes, and argues, has done much damage to the message of the Quran. His work provides many thought-provoking insights and should be a significant contribution to the 'Quran only' movement in modern Islam.
-- Jeffrey Lang
