Life Celebration Quotes
Crafted with the reader in mind, this collection is clearly divided by themes:
Abraham Lincoln
The best way to predict your future is to create it.
Alan Watts
Anybody who tells you that he has some way of leading you to spiritual enlightenment is like somebody who picks your pocket and sells you your own watch.
You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.
Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
A hundred times a day, I remind myself that my inner and outer lives are based on the labors of other people… living and dead… and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received.
Aldous Huxley
If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
What drivel it all is! A string of words called religion. Another string of words called philosophy. Half a dozen other strings called political ideals. And all the words either ambiguous or meaningless. And people getting so excited about them they’ll murder their neighbors for using a word they don’t happen to like. A word that probably doesn’t mean as much as a good belch. Just a noise without even the excuse of gas on the stomach.
Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
Anaïs Nin
Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.
Aristotle
Be a free thinker and don’t accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in.
There is only one way to avoid criticism; do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.
Bertrand Russel
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.
Buddha
Don’t blindly believe what others say. See for yourself what brings contentment, clarity and peace. That is the path for you to follow.
Carl Jung
The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.
I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.
Charles Bukowski
And beware those who only take instructions from their god, for they have failed completely to live their own lives.
Most of them speak what they have been taught, not what they have learned.
Nobody can save you but yourself. You will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. They will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise, and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. But don't, don't, don't. It's a war not easily won, but if anything is worth winning then this is it. Nobody can save you but yourself, and you're worth saving.
Confucius
A man is great not because he hasn’t failed; a man is great because failure has not stopped him.
No matter how busy you make think you are you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
Dalai Lama
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
Epictetus
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
Put your principles into practice - now. Stop the excuses and the procrastination. This is your life! You aren’t a child anymore. The sooner you set yourself to your spiritual program, the happier you will be. Separate yourself from the mob. Decide to be extraordinary and do what you need to do - now.
Frida Kahlo
I think that little by little, I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
Hermann Hesse
Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.
Isaac Asimov
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
Jean-Paul Sartre
We are our choices.
Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be, and since he conceives of himself only after he exists, just as he wills himself to be after being thrown into existence man is nothing other than what he makes himself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You alone can bring about clarity, and therefore you are utterly, completely responsible, nobody else. That means you have to be a light to yourself, not the light of a professor, analyst or psychologist, or the light of Jesus or the Buddha. You have to be a light to yourself in a world that is becoming utterly dark. That means you have to be responsible.
Forget all you know about yourself; forget all you have ever thought about yourself; start as if you know nothing.
… there is no teacher, no pupil; there is no leader; there is no guru; there is no Master, no Saviour. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything. And to understand is to transform what is.
Nobody can teach you about yourself.
We want somebody to tell us what to do. And we have, as human beings, relied for thousands of years on somebody to tell us what to do: your books, your gurus, your philosophers, the Upanishads, all the rest of it. Probably, most of you have read them, but you are where you are in spite of all that.
We are going to learn about ourselves, not according to the speaker, or some analyst, or philosopher. If we learn according to Freud, we learn about Freud, not about ourselves. To learn about oneself, all authority must come to an end.
John Stuart Mill
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
Mahatma Gandhi
A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.
Marcus Aurelius
Just do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.
Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hope, get active in your own rescue.
Margaret Atwood
Nothing makes me more nervous than people who say, ‘It can’t happen here.’ Anything can happen anywhere, given the right circumstances.
Marie Curie
You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement and, at the same time, share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.
Oscar Wilde
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its shame.
Plato
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Richard Feynman
We must be careful not to believe things simply because we want them to be true. No one can fool you as easily as you can fool yourself.
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. it’s their mistake, not my failing.
Seneca
Everything hangs on one’s thinking.
Simone de Beauvoir
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
Socrates
To find yourself, think for yourself.
Voltaire
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.
Why not keep this resource at your fingertips?
Other Voices
For these sections without caricature the quote comes first, the cited person after. In case you are using text-to-speech be aware.
I’m not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.
Aeschylus
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about you are.
Anne Lamott
Right is right even if no one is doing it: wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
Augustine of Hippo
I do not advise you what you should believe or not believe. But I do advise you that we all need to learn as much as we can about everything that we can, because one thing I have learned in my life is that most of what we have ever been taught has been a lie. And that whoever these people are...who are the priests, the Adepts and the Initiates of the Mystery Schools, they are in control and they are shaping the future, and that future will affect all of us. So we had better learn as much about them as we can.
Bill Cooper
I’ve got my own religion. Iceland sets a world record. The U.N. asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out for one thing. When we were asked what we believe, 90% said, “ourselves”. I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no god, or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself.
Bjork
Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
Crazy Horse
Your wound is probably not your fault, but your healing is your responsibility.
Denice Frohman
There is only one virtue, justice; only one duty, to be happy; only one corollary, not to overvalue life and not to fear death.
Denis Diderot
Carl Jung had the idea that we are all born whole and then lose pieces of ourselves in the crucible of childhood… The main task of midlife, Jung thought, was to weather the crisis that arises from this experience of loss and become a whole, integrated person again.
Eric Maisel
You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
Galileo Galilei
To think deconstructively is to not only call into question accepted truths, but to ask in whose interests it is that they are accepted, challenging narratives and norms by asking “why?” And “for whom?”
Jacques Derrida
No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.”
John Ruskin
Dreams get you started; discipline keeps you going.
Jim Rohn
Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.
Leon Festinger
Seek not the paths of the ancients; Seek that which the ancients sought.
Matsuo Basho
If you suffer, it is because of you. If you feel blissful, it is because of you. Nobody else is responsible, only you and you alone. You are your hell and your heaven too.
Osho
A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good, just becauseit’s accepted by the majority.
Rich Warren
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
Sigmund Freud
My own mind is my church.
Thomas Paine
Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.
Walt Whitman
I do not advise you what you should believe or not believe. But I do advise you that we all need to learn as much as we can about everything we can, because one thing I have learned in my life is that most of what we have been taught has been a lie.
William Cooper
