286 quotes on wisdom and truth — from the classics to the everyday.
“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”
Franklin A. Thomas · widely attributed to Franklin A. Thomas, former president of the Ford Foundation
“Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”
Martin Luther King Jr. · "A Question of Life or Death," speech, Louisville, Kentucky, March 1956
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
William Shakespeare · Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5
“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”
Audre Lorde · "Learning from the 60s," speech at Harvard, February 1982
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
W.E.B. Du Bois · "John Brown," 1909
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin · "As Much Truth As One Can Bear," The New York Times Book Review, 1962
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Harriet Tubman · widely attributed, circa 1896
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass · "If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress," speech, 1857
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
Charles R. Swindoll · Strengthening Your Grip, 1982
“The future depends on what you do today.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Either you run the day, or the day runs you.”
Jim Rohn
“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”
Aristotle · Nicomachean Ethics
“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.”
Albert Einstein
“Nothing will work unless you do.”
Maya Angelou
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle · Nicomachean Ethics (paraphrased by Will Durant)
“Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small.”
Lao Tzu · Tao Te Ching
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
Confucius
