Famous Quotes & Sayings

James Madison

Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.

Stefan Zweig

One never gets to know a person's character better than by watching his behavior during decisive moments.... It is always only danger which forces the most deeply hidden strengths and abilities of a human being to come forth.

Thomas Hardy

A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

Thomas B. Macaulay

We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.

Tryon Edwards

Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.

Maggie Kuhn

Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.

Maggie Kuhn

Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.

Oscar Wilde

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

William Faulkner

People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.

Whoopi Goldberg

It's being willing to walk away that gives you strength and power - if you're willing to accept the consequences of doing what you want to do.

Ronald Reagan

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.

Ronald Reagan

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Ronald Reagan

Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.

W. Clement Stone

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

Sarah Polley

The ways in which people are damaged are the ways in which they're strong. It's what makes people interesting - what they've overcome and how, and what they haven't and how that's become a good thing. Almost everyone's life is both a gorgeous story and a tragedy. I think being alive is really, really hard, and I'm constantly stunned and amazed by people who make it interesting and beautiful.

Vincent Van Gogh

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

William Blackstone

The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength, - the floating bulwark of our island.

Vladimir Putin

Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.

William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me, Black is the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

William C. Bryant

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.

Walter Scott

Profan'd the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line.

Yo-Yo Ma

Our cultural strength has always been derived from our diversity of understanding and experience.

Winston Churchill

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

William J. H. Boetcker

And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

William J. H. Boetcker

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

Woodrow Wilson

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.

William Wordsworth

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

William Morris Hunt

There is force and vitality in a first sketch from life which the after-work rarely has... In your sketches keep the first vivid impression! Add no details that shall weaken it! Look first for the big things! 1st. Proportions! 2nd. Values - or masses of light and shade. 3rd. Details that will not spoil the beginnings!

William J. Clinton

Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Not one man in a thousand has the strength of mind or the goodness of heart to be an atheist.

Salma Hayek

What is important is to believe in something so strongly that you're never discouraged.

Vladimir Putin

We don't need a weakened government but a strong government that would take responsibility for the rights of the individual and care for the society as a whole.

Vladimir Putin

The strengthening of our statehood is, at times, deliberately interpreted as authoritarianism.