great
Quotations
Quotations on the topic of ‘great’ from all listed authors (click on the ‘click to view listing’ links to view each quote in full).
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“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” -Isaac Newton
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“A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.” -Joseph Addison
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“He was as great as a man can be without morality.” -Alexis de Tocqueville
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“To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it those who have, fear it.” -Horace
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“I remember a great America where we made everything. There was a time when the only thing you got from Japan was a really bad cheap transistor radio that some aunt gave you for Christmas.” -Cher
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“We should all aspire in life to do a multitude of things well – to be a great father, to be a good husband, to be a good lover, you know, to try to do things the best you can is very important to me.” -Matthew Modine
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“A large part of acting is just pretending. You get to work with these other great make-believers, all making believe as hard as they can.” -Jeff Bridges
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“Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” -Nathaniel Hawthorne
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“I wear black skinny-fit jeans – I can’t get away from them. It’s funny because I wore baggy jeans for ages, then one day my friend convinced me to try on a skinny pair and I thought they were great.” -Shaun White
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“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” -Adam Smith
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“Great is the difference betwixt a man’s being frightened at, and humbled for his sins.” -Thomas Fuller
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“Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue. Anthropological Commentary The opposite of a trivial truth is false the opposite of a great truth is also true.” -Niels Bohr
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“Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.” -Henry A. Kissinger
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“His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.” -F. Scott Fitzgerald
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“Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living. It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.” -Peace Pilgrim
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“A great man is made up of qualities that meet or make great occasions.” -James Russell Lowell
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“The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.” -Christopher Hitchens
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“I haven’t had that one great love, which is good. I don’t want that to be in the past – I want it to be in the future.” -Taylor Swift
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“Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.” -Bette Davis
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“Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection.” -Pindar
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“The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.” -Jacques Yves Cousteau
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“I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.” -Shelby Foote
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“I played a great horse yesterday! It took seven horses to beat him.” -Henny Youngman
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“Mankind is made great or little by its own will.” -Friedrich Schiller
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“Mistakes are part of the game. It’s how well you recover from them, that’s the mark of a great player.” -Alice Cooper
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“So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.” -Matthew Henry
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“A great book provides escapism for me. The artistry and the creativity in a story are better than any drugs.” -Wentworth Miller
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“A great wind swept over the ghetto, carrying away shame, invisibility and four centuries of humiliation. But when the wind dropped people saw it had been only a little breeze, friendly, almost gentle.” -Jean Genet
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“All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.” -James Freeman Clarke
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“You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.” -Alan Watts
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“I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria – when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.” -Arnold Schwarzenegger
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“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” -James Madison
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“All men were made by the Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.” -Chief Joseph
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“Failure is a great teacher, and I think when you make mistakes and you recover from them and you treat them as valuable learning experiences, then you’ve got something to share.” -Steve Harvey
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“You know, be able to do something great in your life, you’re gonna have to realize your failures. You’re gonna have to embrace them and figure out how to overcome it.” -Dave Chappelle
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“I tell students that even if they don’t like math right now, they can use math as a brain-sharpening tool – a tool that not only builds the foundation for a great career, but that also builds self-confidence, no matter what they choose to do with their lives.” -Danica McKellar
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“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” -Rosalynn Carter
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“Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.” -Elsa Schiaparelli
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“Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.” -Giorgos Seferis
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“I am a leader. Leaders always get heat. They’re always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat Bob Marley got heat Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you’re doing something right.” -Ziggy Marley
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“It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.” -Pythagoras
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“Children are our second chance to have a great parent-child relationship.” -Laura Schlessinger
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“Ambition is an idol, on whose wings great minds are carried only to extreme to be sublimely great or to be nothing.” -Shakti Gawain
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“Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.” -Bryant H. McGill
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“Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.” -Anatole France
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“There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.” -Samuel Johnson
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“I protest that if some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and would up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer.” -Thomas Huxley
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“Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.” -Irving Berlin
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“I don’t have perfect teeth, I’m not stick thin. I want to be the person who feels great in her body and can say that she loves it and doesn’t want to change anything.” -Emma Watson
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“I love what I do. I take great pride in what I do. And I can’t do something halfway, three-quarters, nine-tenths. If I’m going to do something, I go all the way.” -Tom Cruise
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“In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society.” -Noam Chomsky
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“I will always listen to my coaches. But first I listen to my body. If what they tell me suits my body, great. If my body doesn’t feel good with what they say, then always my body comes first.” -Haile Gebrselassie
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“I’m surrounded by nothing but great people. I’ve been blessed with that, so really, I’ve got no choice but to be an all-around good person.” -Tim Duncan
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“A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” -Mary Kay Ash
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“And that is the reason why this victory is great, because different players have made contributions to the win.” -Sachin Tendulkar
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“To me, acting is the most logical way for people’s neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves.” -James Dean
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“In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.” -Gore Vidal
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“The great man is he who does not lose his child’s-heart.” -Mencius
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“By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.” -Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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“You’ve got to be ready to be in a great relationship.” -Billy Corgan
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“I don’t think actors should ever expect to get a role, because the disappointment is too great. You’ve got to think of things as an opportunity. An audition’s an opportunity to have an audience.” -Al Pacino
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“I’m beginning to understand myself. But it would have been great to be able to understand myself when I was 20 rather than when I was 82.” -Dave Brubeck
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“Well I think they broke the mould when they made me and being humble is one of my great assets.” -Larry Hagman
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“I’ve got the greatest job in the world. There’s no other job in government where cause and effect is so tightly coupled where you can make a difference every day in so many different ways and in so many different people’s lives. It’s a great challenge.” -Michael Bloomberg
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“The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.” -Alexander Pope
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“It’s wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.” -Dan Quayle
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“To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.” -Herman Melville
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“Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.” -Simone Weil
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“Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.” -P. J. O’Rourke
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“For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.” -Aeschylus
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“Just hit my 75th birthday, I’m feeling great!” -Colin Powell
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“Life should be great rather than long.” -B. R. Ambedkar
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“The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.” -William Butler Yeats
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“Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly.” -Plutarch
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“If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life – that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment – that would be the perfect state.” -Cate Blanchett
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“Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.” -W. Somerset Maugham
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“There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.” -R. D. Laing
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“Music is the fourth great material want, first food, then clothes, then shelter, then music.” -Christian Nestell Bovee
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“Great moments are born from great oppurtunities.” -Herb Brooks
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“The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.” -George Santayana
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“No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.” -Milan Kundera
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“The mark of a great player is in his ability to come back. The great champions have all come back from defeat.” -Sam Snead
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“Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.” -Anna Quindlen
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“No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.” -John Ruskin
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“It does not matter much whom we live with in this world, but it matters a great deal whom we dream of.” -Willa Cather
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“We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.” -Jane Austen
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“Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade. It is great power that has been entrusted to your keeping which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world. It is all part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind.” -Calvin Coolidge
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“There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.” -Woodrow Wilson
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“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.” -Andy Warhol
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“I try something new every night. It’s an hour show if it works I maybe try it a few more times and then move that off and try something new. It’s a great workshop for me.” -Kate Clinton
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“If you don’t die of thirst, there are blessings in the desert. You can be pulled into limitlessness, which we all yearn for, or you can do the beauty of minutiae, the scrimshaw of tiny and precise. The sky is your ocean, and the crystal silence will uplift you like great gospel music, or Neil…
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“Let’s face it – think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the…
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“Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there’s no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.” -Tallulah Bankhead
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“I see humanity now as one vast plant, needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection.” -Luther Burbank
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“It’s great to be here. It’s great to be anywhere.” -Keith Richards
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“India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration.” -Sri Aurobindo
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“It is great to be a blonde. With low expectations it’s very easy to surprise people.” -Pamela Anderson
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“In Britain, like most of the developed world, stem-cell research is regarded as a great opportunity. America will be left behind if it doesn’t change policy.” -Stephen Hawking
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“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.” -Stanley Kubrick
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“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.” -E. M. Forster
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“The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.” -Denis Diderot
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“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.” -Arthur Schopenhauer
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“I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.” -Jack Kerouac
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“When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.” -Francis Bacon
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“When I was 20, I thought I was 30 – but I was so far from it. When you’re young, you want everything to happen now. As you mature, you can look back and see all the great things you achieved with time and patience.” -Elisha Cuthbert
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“I really think that there was a great advantage in many ways to being a woman. I think we are a lot better at personal relationships, and then have the capability obviously of telling it like it is when it’s necessary.” -Madeleine Albright
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“I don’t get angry very often. I lose my temper rarely. And when I do, there’s always a legitimate cause. Normally I have a great lightness of being. I take things in a very happy, amused way.” -Julia Roberts
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“If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” -Jeff Bezos
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“I wanted to learn everything I could about what it takes to be a great chef. It was a turning point for me.” -Thomas Keller
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“It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.” -John Locke
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“There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.” -Frida Kahlo
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“I can relate to having those people in your life that you feel are moving on to this great, big, normal life and you’re like, ‘What’s wrong with me?’” -Kristen Wiig
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“The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.” -John Burroughs
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“Police and firefighters are great, but they don’t create wealth. They protect it. That’s crucial. Teaching is a wonderful profession. Teachers help educate people to become good citizens so that citizens can then go create wealth. But they don’t create the wealth themselves.” -Rush Limbaugh
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“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.” -Ludwig Wittgenstein
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“The Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions.” -Noah Webster
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“The digital camera is a great invention because it allows us to reminisce. Instantly.” -Demetri Martin
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“Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.” -Renata Adler
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“The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.” -Otto von Bismarck
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“I’m one of the great unemployed looking for the next job. I’m waiting for the right offer. Like anyone, I want something that turns me on inside.” -Francesca Annis
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“Mental health needs a great deal of attention. It’s the final taboo and it needs to be faced and dealt with.” -Adam Ant
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“A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.” -Daisaku Ikeda
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“Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.” -Margot Fonteyn
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“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis – once that crisis can be recognized and understood.” -Norman Cousins
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“You cannot escape the results of your thoughts. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain or rise with your thoughts, your vision, your ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire as great as your dominant aspiration.” -James Lane Allen
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“I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.” -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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“Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.” -R. Buckminster Fuller
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“I was passionate. I found something that I loved. I could be all alone in a big old skating rink and nobody could get near me and I didn’t have to talk to anybody because of my shyness. It was great. I was in my fantasy world.” -Dorothy Hamill
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“All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.” -Philip Johnson
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“If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that’s exactly what I did.” -Gordon Ramsay
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“I’m working harder than ever now, and I’m putting on my pants the same as I always have. I just get up every day and try to do a little better than the day before, and that is to run a great restaurant with great food, great wine, and great service. That’s my philosophy.” -Emeril…
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“When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.” -Honore de Balzac
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“Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world.” -Frank Lloyd Wright
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“Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.” -Emma Goldman
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“Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist.” -Steven Seagal
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“When you are happy you can forgive a great deal.” -Princess Diana
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“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” -Meryl Streep
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“The great accomplishment of Jobs’s life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies – his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness – in the service of perfection.” -Malcolm Gladwell
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“The essence of America – that which really unites us – is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea – and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things.” -Condoleezza Rice
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“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” -John W. Gardner
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“Her angel’s face, As the great eye of heaven shined bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place.” -Edmund Spenser
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“After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true.” -H. G. Wells
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“The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels the great need of your assistance, your prayers, your sacrifice, and he most humbly asks this of you.” -Pope John Paul II
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“Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.” -George Eliot
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“Duty is the great business of a sea officer all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it may be.” -Horatio Nelson
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“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.” -Newt Gingrich
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“Rock ‘n’ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.” -Bono
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“A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.” -Oliver Goldsmith
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“I was an OK boxer, I wasn’t great, I was OK, but I loved the discipline of getting together every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, usually Saturday afternoons too, with a whole bunch of mates and training, very, very hard for about two-and-half hours.” -Liam Neeson
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“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.” -John Kenneth Galbraith
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“I went through life like an idiot for a great deal of the time, saying there’s nothing I would change. That was a very arrogant thing to say. There’s a lot I would change. There are people I would have steered clear of.” -Hugh Leonard
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“A great tennis career is something that a 15-year-old normally doesn’t have. I hope my example helps other teens believe they can accomplish things they never thought possible.” -Maria Sharapova
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“Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.” -Igor Stravinsky
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“Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.” -Julius Caesar
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“We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” -Lee Iacocca
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“I think, in a way, I invented the term ‘fight club’ and that these things have always existed, but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I’ve been paid a great deal of money for inventing two words and labeling…
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“From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.” -Samuel Butler
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“Obama has no solutions. Obama has failed the country and its great citizens, and they don’t like it when somebody such as myself speaks the truth about this – it hurts too much.” -Donald Trump
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“As the mother of two daughters, I have great respect for women. And I don’t ever want to lose that.” -Vera Wang
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“To walk around with an ego is a bad thing. To have confidence in yourself is a great thing.” -Fred Durst
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“Good is somebody who delivered and allowed the company to overcome obstacles, without leaving a profound impact on its culture. Great is somebody who leads his company to achievements and performance and value that nobody was expecting it had.” -Carlos Ghosn
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“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.” -Daniel J. Boorstin
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“Coffee and smoking are the last great addictions.” -Lara Flynn Boyle
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“Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter.” -Brad Henry
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“Working hard is great, being lazy sometimes is great, but failed potential is the worst.” -Campbell Scott
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“It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.” -Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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“Like all of us in this storm between birth and death, I can wreak no great changes on the world, only small changes for the better, I hope, in the lives of those I love.” -Dean Koontz
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“Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.” -Benjamin Disraeli
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“A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.” -Isaac Asimov
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“The one great principle of English law is to make business for itself.” -Charles Dickens
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“Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.” -John Keats
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