quotes by Innovator Quotes

“There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.”

“Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.”

“Ideas are the source of all things”

“Serious things cannot be understood without laughable things, nor opposites at all without opposites.”

“The wisest of you men is he who has realized, like Socrates, that in respect of wisdom he is really worthless.”

“My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind.”

“No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.”

“For the man who makes everything that leads to happiness, or near to it, to depend upon himself, and not upon other men, on whose good or evil actions his own doings are compelled to hinge,--such a one, I say, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation; this is the man of manly character and of wisdom.”

“Follow your dream as long as you live, do not lessen the time of following desire, for wasting time is an abomination of the spirit.”

“The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.”

“I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn't, So I jumped in and sank.”

“Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light.”

“Democracy passes into despotism.”

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

“... our purpose in founding our state was not to promote the happiness of a single class, but, so far as possible, of the whole community. Our idea was that we were most likely to justice in such a community, and so be able to decide the question we are trying to answer. We are therefore at the moment trying to construct what we think is a happy community by securing the happiness not of a select minority, but of a whole.”

“Love' is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”

“We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most.”

“Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.”

“There is no color line in death. I swear to the lord I still can't see Why Democracy means Everybody but me. O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - America will be! I am the American heartbreak- The rock on which Freedom Stumped its toe.”

“We become what we contemplate.”

“Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But no crying. When my grandmother died, I didn't cry, either. Something about my grandmother's stories (without her ever having said so) taught me the uselessness of crying about anything."”

“To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.”

“Wonder [said Socrates] is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this.”

“According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.”

“The first of the month falls every month, too, North or South. And them white folks who sends bills never forgets to send them-the phone bill, the furniture bill, the water bill, the gas bill, insurance, house rent.”

“No one is so cowardly that Love could not inspire him to heroism.”

“The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.”

“The beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken.”

“Through obedience learn to command.”

“When there is crime in society, there is no justice.”

“It is beautiful to wish to add another's light to your own.”

“Give me a different set of mothers and I will give you a different world”

“The beginning is half of the whole.”

“One should turn towards the main ocean of the-beautiful-in-the-world so that one may by, contemplation of this Form, bring forth in all their splendor many fair fruits of discourse and meditation in a plenteous crop of philosophy.”

“They (the poets) are to us in a manner the fathers and authors of the wisdom.”

“Violent anger makes me physically ill.”

“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.”

“Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable, inasmuch as he has the fountain of reason in him not yet regulated.”

“It is vain for the sober man to knock at poesy's door.”

“Life is an egg you have to be patient and careful with it or it will break.”

“A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!”

“Folks, I'm telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.”

“Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.”

“My plainness of speech makes people hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth.”

“That a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.”

“I stuck my head out the window this morning and spring kissed me bang in the face.”

“A good decision is based on knowledge, and not on numbers.”

“When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.”

“Let him take heart who does advance, even in the smallest degree.”

“The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues-not faction, but rather distraction-there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . . . Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.”