Writers’ Quotes

Quotes of all types by writers.

Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time. — Arnold H. Glasow

Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement. — Rita Mae Brown

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion. — Anatole France

We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence upon those who would do us harm. — George Orwell

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes. — Hannah Arendt

The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis. — Dante Alighieri

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. — Robert Frost

Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture. — Jean Cocteau

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. — Oscar Wilde

Some people say that I must be a terrible person, but it’s not true. I have the heart of a young boy…in a jar on my desk. — Stephen King

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. — George Bernard Shaw

Writing, is not necessarily something to be ashamed of—but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. — Robert A. Heinlein

Driving a Porsche in London is like bringing a Ming vase to a football game. — Douglas Adams

Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank paper until your forehead bleeds. — Douglas Adams

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year. — Mark Twain

Students will not be prepared for work in an economy that demands higher-order skills if their schools focus exclusively on the basics. Students will not learn to think for themselves if their schools expect them just to stay in line and keep quiet. — Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond, The Washington Post

This Universe never did make sense; I suspect that it was built on government contract. — Robert A. Heinlein, The Number of the Beast

On the other hand, if you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea. — Stephen King

‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ is better than all the songs Ms. [Celine] Dion has recorded, put together. — Stephen King

Hell is other people. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life. — Terry Pratchett

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. — Henry Drummond

Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one’s own person is its ultimate reward. — Patricia Sampson

The best way to predict the future is to create it. — Peter Drucker

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. — William Faulkner

Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations. — Ralph Charell

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life. — Samuel Johnson

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze new problems, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. — Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer. — Oscar Wilde

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. — Bertrand Russell

We all sit around in a circle and suppose, while the secret sits in the center and knows. — Robert Frost

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best. — William M. Thackeray

Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. — William Jennings Bryan

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great. — Comte DeBussy-Rabutin

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. — Tom Clancy

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. — Mark Twain

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. — Samuel Johnson

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. — Ambrose Pierce

The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don’t have it. — George Bernard Shaw

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. — Emile Zola

Too much democracy leads to tyranny.…Tyranny of the majority need not be institutionalized by law. Public opinion, when regarded too highly, also exercises tyranny. — Alexis de Tocqueville

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. — Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. — Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright. — Robert A. Heinlein

I hate it when reality steals my plots. — Scott Bradford

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws…[that] disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. — Cesare Beccaria, “On Crimes and Punishments”, 1764

If you want to build a ship, then don’t drum up men to gather wood, give orders, and divide the work. Rather, teach them to yearn for the far and the endless sea. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. — Mark Twain

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. — Douglas Adams

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions. — G. K. Chesterton

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane[,] and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are. — Henry Louis Mencken

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. — Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them. — Mark Twain

Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty. — John Basil Barnhill, Indictment of Socialism No. 3

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. — Douglas Adams

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. — Mark Twain

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. — John Kenneth Galbraith

…the [Catholic Church] has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. — G. K. Chesterton

Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof. — P. J. O’Rourke

Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college. — P. J. O’Rourke

I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books. — P. J. O’Rourke

To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze. — P. J. O’Rourke

The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it. — P. J. O’Rourke

You can’t get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism. — P. J. O’Rourke

Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking. — P. J. O’Rourke

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. — “Yes, Virginia…” Editorial, The New York Sun, 1897

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one…. — Thomas Paine, Common Sense

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe. — Edmund Burke

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition. — Edmund Burke

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts. — Edmund Burke

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety. — Edmund Burke

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. — Rita Mae Brown

Normal is the average of deviance. — Rita Mae Brown

Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true. — Blaise Pascal

We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation—to make a point—than to further the cause of truth. The latter end is only pursued when it seems coincident with the former. — Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Roget

Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss [religion]. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed. — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

There was far more courage to the square mile in the Middle Ages, when no king had a standing army, but every man had a bow or sword. — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Now, the psychological discovery is merely this, that whereas it had been supposed that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by extending our ego to infinity, the truth is that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by reducing our ego to zero. — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men. — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

But if there really be anything of the nature of progress, it must mean, above all things, the careful study and assumption of the whole of the past. — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

But if we do revive and pursue the pagan ideal of a simple and rational self-completion we shall end where Paganism ended. I do not mean that we shall end in destruction. I mean that we shall end in Christianity. — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

With us the governing class is always saying to itself, ‘What laws shall we make?’ In a purely democratic state it would be always saying, ‘What laws can we obey?’ — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Being full of that kindliness which should come at the end of everything, even of a book, I apologize to the rationalists even for calling them rationalists. There are no rationalists. We all believe fairy-tales, and live in them. — G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Salvation, while personal, is not private. To be incorporated into Christ is to be incorporated into his Church. You cannot sunder the two: it is not two in any case. It is one thing. — Thomas Howard, On Being Catholic

It is not just an accident that in our age inflation has become the accepted method of monetary management. Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism. — Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit

If God exists, then He must be outside the natural world, and therefore the tools of science are not the right ones to learn about Him. Instead…the evidence of God’s existence would have to come from other directions, and the ultimate decision would be based on faith, not proof. — Francis S. Collins, The Language of God

The church is made up of fallen people. The pure, clean water of spiritual truth is placed in rusty containers, and the subsequent failings of the church down through the centuries should not be projected onto the faith itself, as if the water had been the problem. — Francis S. Collins, The Language of God

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. — Flannery O’Connor

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana

For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England

Reason itself is a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. — G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. — John Maynard Keynes

Art is not freedom from discipline, but a disciplined freedom. — Father Edward Catich

When circumstances change, I change my opinion. — John Maynard Keynes

I am an American by choice and conviction. I was born in Europe, but I came to America because this was the country based on my moral premises and the only country where one could be fully free to write. — Ayn Rand

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. — Ayn Rand

Few people deny the existence of heaven (though, oddly, some do), but there are many who deny the existence of hell. And their motivation for doing so is understandable, if not correct. The only doctrine of the Church I wish weren’t true is the doctrine that hell exists. — Patrick Madrid

Interpretation of Scripture can never be a purely academic affair, and it cannot be relegated to the purely historical. Scripture is full of potential for the future, a potential that can only be opened up when someone ‘lives through’ and ‘suffers through’ the sacred text. — Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

The prevailing view today is that everyone should live by the religion—or perhaps by the atheism—in which he happens to find himself already. This, it is said, is the path of salvation for him. Such a view presupposes a strange picture of God and a strange idea of man and of the right way for man to live. — Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

In a word, the true morality of Christianity is love. And love does admittedly run counter to self-seeking—it is an exodus out of oneself, and yet this is precisely the way in which man comes to himself. — Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products. — Steve Jobs

Normally, thought precedes word; it seeks and formulates the word. But praying the Psalms and liturgical prayer in general is exactly the other way round: The word, the voice, goes ahead of us, and our mind must adapt to it. — Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

…[The] ancient world did in fact experience the birth of Christianity as a liberation from the fear of demons that, in spite of skepticism and enlightenment, was all-pervasive at the time. The same thing also happens today wherever Christianity replaces old tribal religions, transforming and integrating their positive elements into itself. — Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes. — Chuck Swindoll

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. — Alvin Toffle

…whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence. — John Locke, Second Treatise on Government

It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason. — Voltaire

An atheist has to know a lot more than I know. An atheist is someone who knows there is no god. By some definitions atheism is very stupid. — Carl Sagan

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. — Carl Sagan