The Times Great Quotations

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Give me but one firm spot on which to stand and I will move the Earth.

Archimedes, Greek mathematician and physicist (287–212 BC)

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Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

The World as Will and Representation (1819)

Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788–1860)

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For myself, losing is not coming second. It’s getting out of the water knowing you could have done better.

Ian Thorpe, Australian Olympic swimmer (1982–)

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One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of the UK (1804–1881)

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Well done is better than well said.

Benjamin Franklin, founding father of the US (1706–1790)

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To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.

The Price of My Soul (1969)

Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Irish civil rights leader (1947–)

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It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself.

The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Betty Friedan, American writer and activist (1921–2006)

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Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Mother Teresa, Albanian nun and missionary (1910–1997)

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It’s the stuff of dreams … Kids from Kilburn don’t become favourite for the Tour de France. You’re supposed to become a postman or a milkman or work in Ladbrokes.

Bradley Wiggins, British professional road racing cyclist (1980–)

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The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Broca’s Brain (1979)

Carl Sagan, American astronomer and educator (1934–1996)

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Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never led to good intention’s goal.

Don Quixote (1605)

Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish writer (1547–1616)

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The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.

Dwight Morrow, American diplomat (1873–1931)

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The two kinds of people on earth I mean are the people who lift, and the people who lean.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American writer and poet (1850–1919)

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I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took any excuse.

Florence Nightingale, English social reformer and nurse (1820–1910)

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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Man and Superman (1903)

George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright (1856–1950)

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Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

Graham Greene, English writer (1904–1991)

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If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

Henry Ford, American industrialist and businessman (1863–1947)

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Not in the clamour of the crowded street, not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng, but in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet (1807–1882)

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Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

Lycidas (1637)

John Milton, English poet (1608–1674)

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All the world’s great have been little boys who wanted the moon.

Cup of Gold (1929)

John Steinbeck, American writer (1902–1968)

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Whether our efforts are, or not, favoured by life, let us be able to say when we come near the great goal, “I have done what I could”.

Louis Pasteur, French biologist and chemist (1822–1895)

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I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

Marie Curie, French-Polish physicist and chemist (1867–1934)

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All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

Mark Twain, American writer (1835–1910)

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To live at all is miracle enough.

Mervyn Peake, English writer (1911–1968)

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In most things success depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.

Pensées et fragments inédits

Montesquieu, French political philosopher (1689–1755)

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The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

New England Reformers (1844)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet, essayist and philosopher (1803–1882)

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The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic and lexicographer (1709–1784)

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I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Samuel Johnson, English writer, critic and lexicographer (1709–1784)

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It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer (1919–2008)

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We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

Sir Karl Popper, Austrian-British philosopher and professor (1902–1994)

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All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.

[Letter to JG Lockhart, 1830]

Sir Walter Scott, Scottish writer (1771–1832)

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My mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living.

She was a mother hen, and the other mountains were chicks under her wings.

Man of Everest (1955)

Tenzing Norgay, Nepali Sherpa mountaineer (1914–1986)

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Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.

Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)

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Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)

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It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year.

Tom Lehrer, American humourist and singer-songwriter (1928–)

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Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

The Family Reunion (1939)

TS Eliot, English-American poet, critic and dramatist (1888–1965)

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In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.

International Herald Tribune (1988)

Umberto Eco, Italian philosopher, writer and professor of semiotics (1932–2016)

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Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter (1853–1890)

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I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial.