Robert > Robert's Quotes

“The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“The robb'd that smiles, steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“Mere prattle without practice”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“The secret is that everything is always on the line. The more present we are at practice, the more present we will be in competition, in the boardroom, at the exam, the operating table, the big stage. If we have any hope of attaining excellence, let alone of showing what we’ve got under pressure, we have to be prepared by a lifestyle of reinforcement. Presence must be like breathing.”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

“It is difficult, my dear Lucius, to escape becoming the person others believe one to be. A slave is twice enslaved, once by his chains and once again by the glances that fall upon him and say "thou slave.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

“Confusing a model – such as that of a perfectly competitive market – with the theory of which it is one representation can limit applicability still further.”
― Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

“Search whike thou wilt, and let thy reason goe
To ransome truth even to the Abysse below.
Rally the scattered causes, and that line
Which nature twists be able to untwine.”
― Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“The fact of the matter is that there will be nothing learned from any challenge in which we don’t try our hardest. Growth comes at the point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies at the outer reaches of our abilities. *”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

“There is no antidote against the Opium of time”
― Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“wee carry with us the wonders we seeke without us: There is all Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learnes in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endlesse volume.”
― Thomas Browne, The Prose of Sir Thomas Browne

“I understand a fury in your words
But not your words.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“it is the continual effort of the beginning that creates the hoarded energy of the end;”
― Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of natural selection and inheritance to political society

“And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!”
― George Gordon Byron

“They had been brought up to think that the domestic virtues were self-evident and universal; they had been starved of the knowledge that most attracts the young mind: that the crown of life is the exercise of choice”
― Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

“Nothing is more inimical to the progress of science than the belief that we know what we do not yet know.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

“The first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerously to living; to men who know this an Aristotle and a Plato have much to say; but those who have imposed cautions on themselves and petrified themselves in a system of ideas, them the masters themselves will lead into error”
― Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

“There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

“Perhaps,” observes James McPherson, “McClellan’s career had been too successful. He had never known . . . the despair of defeat or the humiliation of failure. He had never learned the lessons of adversity and humility.” Lincoln had clearly learned those lessons.”
― Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.”
― Ayn Rand

“The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”
― Thomas Macaulay

“A person with a melancholy temperament had been fated with both an awful burden and what Byron called “a fearful gift.” The burden was a sadness and despair that could tip into a state of disease. But the gift was a capacity for depth, wisdom—even genius.”
― Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

“Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.”
― Thomas Babington Macaulay, Machiavelli

“Thomas More: Will, I'd trust you with my life. But not your principles. You see, we speak of being anchored to our principles. But if the weather turns nasty you up with an anchor and let it down where there's less wind, and the fishing's better. And "Look," we say, "look, I'm anchored! To my principles!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts

“No half measures,” he muttered several times. It was his personal motto; he intended to have it latinised and put on a crest.”
― Larry McMurtry, The Last Kind Words Saloon

“Unfortunately, many analysts – in academia, special-interest groups, governments, and the press – still presume that common-pool problems are all dilemmas in which the participants themselves cannot avoid producing suboptimal results, and in some cases disastrous results.”
― Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

“RICH I’m lamenting. I’ve lost my innocence.

CROMWELL You lost that some time ago. If you’ve only just noticed, it can’t have been very important to you.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts

“Driven by a concern with institutions, we re-enter the world of the behavioralists. But we do so not in protest against the notion of rational choice, but rather in an effort to understand how rationality on the part of individuals leads to coherence at the level of society. (Bates 1988, p. 399)”
― Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

“The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.”
― Lord Macaulay