“We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.”
Eleanor Roosevelt · You Learn by Living, 1960
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Wisdom Quotes
WisdomTruth
649 quotes on wisdom and truth — from the classics to the everyday.
“The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”
Molière · Le Dépit Amoureux, 1656
“You don't climb mountains without a team, you don't climb mountains without being fit, you don't climb mountains without being prepared and you don't climb mountains without balancing the risks and rewards.”
Howard Skinner · widely attributed
“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”
William Ellery Channing · Self-Culture, 1838
“You are never strong enough that you don't need help.”
César Chávez · widely attributed, labor movement speeches
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
Confucius · attributed to Confucius, various collections
“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
