The Times Great Quotations: Famous quotes to inform, motivate and inspire

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When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this — you haven’t.

Thomas Edison, American inventor (1847–1931)

CHANCE

Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it.

Douglas Jerrold, English playwright and journalist (1803–1857)

•

Luck is preparation meeting opportunity.

Oprah Winfrey, American talk show host and philanthropist (1954–)

•

The more I practise the luckier I get.

Arnold Palmer, American professional golfer (1929–2016)

•

Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.

Luck is not chance (1875)

Emily Dickinson, American poet (1830–1886)

•

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be fish.

Heroides (c. 25–16 BC)

Ovid, Roman poet (43 BC–AD 18)

CHANGE

Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.

Richard Hooker, English priest and theologian (1554–1600)

•

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse … it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.

Tales of a Traveler (1824)

Washington Irving, American writer, historian and diplomat (1783–1859)

•

The issues are the same. We wanted peace on earth, love, and understanding between everyone around the world. We have learned that change comes slowly.

The Observer (1987)

Sir Paul McCartney, English singer-songwriter and composer (1942–)

•

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change the more they remain the same.

Les Guêpes (1849)

Alphonse Karr, French critic and writer (1808–1890)

•

Future shock … the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

Future Shock (1970)

Alvin Toffler, American writer, futurist and businessmen (1928–2016)

CHRISTMAS AND FESTIVE SPIRIT

Still xmas is a good time with all those presents and good food and i hope it will never die out or at any rate not until i am grown up and hav to pay for it all.

How to Be Topp (1954)

Geoffrey Willams (1911–1958) and Ronald Searle (1920–2011), English humourists

•

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

Leaving Home (1987)

Garrison Keillor, American writer, humourist and radio personality (1942–)

•

Hogmanay, like all festivals, being but a bank from which we can only draw what we put in.

Sentimental Tommy (1896)

JM Barrie, Scottish writer and dramatist (1860–1937)

•

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

[Letter to a US newspaper, 1863]

Mark Twain, American writer (1835–1910)

•

Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realise what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.

Modern Manners (1983)

PJ O’Rourke, American political satirist and journalist (1947–)

•

Christmas is the time for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.

Old Christmas (1876)

Washington Irving, American writer, historian and diplomat (1783–1859)

•

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!

A Christmas Carol (1843)

Charles Dickens, English writer and social critic (1812–1870)

•

At Christmas I no more desire a rose

Than wish a snow in May’s new fangled shows;

But like of each thing that in season grows.

Love’s Labour’s Lost (1597)

William Shakespeare, English poet and dramatist (1564–1616)

•

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?

Bob Hope, English-born American comedian and actor (1903–2003)

COMPETITION

If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.

Jesse Owens, American Olympic gold medallist for track and field (1913–1980)

•

The important thing in life is not the victory but the contest; the essential thing is not to have won but to have fought well.

[Speech in London, 1908]

Baron Pierre de Coubertin, French founder of the International Olympic Committee (1863–1937)

•

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize.

The Bible

Corinthians 9:24

•

Winning is everything. The only ones who remember you when you come second are your wife and your dog.

The Sunday Times (1994)

Damon Hill, British Formula One world champion (1960–)

•

When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were — to the very last minute — a chance to lose it.

[The President’s News Conference, 1956]

Dwight D Eisenhower, 34th president of the US (1890–1969)

CONFLICT AND AGGRESSION

War settles nothing … to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one!

An Autobiography (1977)

Agatha Christie, English writer (1890–1976)

•

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

Combat (1945)

Albert Camus, French philosopher, writer and journalist (1913–1960)

•

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

[Interview with George Sylvester Viereck, 1931]

Albert Einstein, German theoretical physicist (1879–1955)

•

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

[Telegram to prominent Americans, 1946]

Albert Einstein, German theoretical physicist (1879–1955)

•

There are not fifty ways of fighting, there’s only one, and that’s to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.

L’Espoir (1937)

André Malraux, French writer (1901–1976)

•

We are in an armed conflict; that is the phrase I have used. There has been no declaration of war.

[Speech on the Suez crisis, House of Commons, 1956]

Anthony Eden, prime minister of the UK (1897–1977)

•

Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.

Notebooks (1921)

Anton Chekhov, Russian writer (1860–1904)

•

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

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

•

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.

Once Around the Sun (1951)

Brooks Atkinson, American theatre critic and writer (1894–1984)

•

It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

Jane Eyre (1847)

Charlotte Brontë, English writer (1816–1855)

•

First, we are going to cut it off, and then, we are going to kill it.

[Pentagon press briefing on the Gulf War, 1991]

Colin Powell, US general and politician (1937–)

•

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

Outspoken Essays: First Series “Patriotism” (1919)

Dean Inge, English writer, priest and educator (1860–1954)

•

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

Philosophy of Plotinus (1923)

Dean Inge, English writer, priest and educator (1860–1954)

•

History is littered with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.

The Times (1967)

Enoch Powell, British politician and scholar (1912–1998)

•

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

George Orwell, English writer (1903–1950)

•

The weak have one weapon: the errors of those who think they are strong.

The Observer (1962)

Georges Bidault, prime minister of France (1899–1983)

•

I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it.

[Armistice Day sermon in New York, 1933]

Harry Emerson Fosdick, American pastor (1878–1969)

•

Older men declare war. But it is the youth who must fight and die.

[Speech in Chicago to the 23rd Republican national convention, 1944]

Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the US (1874–1964)

•

Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.

Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the US (1874–1964)

•

Those who in quarrels interpose

Must often wipe a bloody nose.

Fables (1727)

John Gay, English poet (1685–1732)

•

If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

Eating Animals (2009)

Jonathan Safran Foer, American writer (1977–)

•

If peace cannot be maintained with honour, it is no longer peace.

[Speech in Greenock, 1853]

Lord John Russell, prime minister of the UK (1792–1878)

•

A war can perhaps be won single-handedly. But peace — lasting peace — cannot be secured without the support of all.

[Speech to the UN, 2003]

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil (1945–)

•

All I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.

[Speech to Congress after the assassination of John F Kennedy, 1963]

Lyndon B Johnson, 36th president of the US (1908–1973)

•

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

Mahatma Gandhi, Indian politician, social activist and writer (1869–1948)

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Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

[In response to a charge of sedition, 1922]

Mahatma Gandhi, Indian politician, social activist and writer (1869–1948)

•

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.

Einstein’s Monsters (1987)

Martin Amis, British writer (1949–)

•

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Napoleon Bonaparte, French statesman and military leader (1769–1821)

•

It is only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

[After the retreat from Moscow, 1812]

Napoleon Bonaparte

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