Potent Quotables

I collect quotes.  Funny quotes, inspiring quotes.

I had all these handwritten (because that was more romantic than typed) in a journal, and in typing them all up (you’re welcome), I have realized that I live my life based mostly on the words of kick-ass feminists, cliche famous people, assorted movies from the 80s and 90s, Harry Potter, and Oprah.  Can’t get any better than that.

Have any quotes to share?  Leave me a comment!

Here they are in no particular order the order in which I found them and wrote them down, most recent added at the bottom.

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“I began to understand with a terrible sureness that we teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.” – Gloria Steinem

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“A mother who radiates self-love and self-acceptance actually vaccinates her daughter against low self-esteem.” – Naomi Wolf

“The first step to revolution is consciousness.” – Unknown

“Education is that which remains after you have forgotten all that you learned in school.” – Albert Einstein

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” – Moulin Rouge

“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” – Gloria Steinem

“You do what you know, and when you know better, you do better.” – Oprah Winfrey

“How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?  One, as long as the lightbulb wants to change.” – Mary Pipher

“I’ve never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” – Rebecca West

“My body is fucking beautiful, and every time I look in the mirror and acknowledge that, I am contributing to the revolution.” – Nomi Lamm

“Well behaved women seldom make history.” – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

“Feminism is not simply the idea that women can benefit from rediscovering themselves but also that our whole culture can benefit from correcting its psychic/sexual imbalance through each person becoming whole again.” – Anne Kent Rush

“Carpe Diem.  Make your lives extraordinary.” – Dead Poets Society

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

“It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.” – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“We all must face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.” – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” – Malachy McCourt

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.” – Martin Farquhar Tupper

“When I am angry, it’s because I know I’m worth being angry about.” – Shama

“We are loved beyond our capacity to comprehend.” – Jewel Kilcher

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Gandhi

“Through our thoughts we are either gaining power or losing it. Positive thoughts generate power, negative ones waste it.” – Unknown

“Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.” – Polly Berrien Berends

“It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it than to be sane and have one’s doubts.” – G.B. Burgin

“I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” – Lost in Translation

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” – The Princess Bride

“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.” – Mae West

“There are only two things in this world that I hate: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures…and the Dutch.” – Austin Powers III

“Try to see the world beyond your front door. Try to figure out what all this is for.” – Pinch Me by The Barenaked Ladies

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love…these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life!…of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless…of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer: that you are here…that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.’ That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?” – Dead Poets Society

“Free your mind, and the rest will follow.” – EnVogue

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” – Anne Frank

“Out of the ash/ I rise with red hair/ and I eat men like air.” – Sylvia Plath

“People are more afraid to love than they are to kill.” – Eve Ensler

“To me, there are three things we all should do everyday. Number one is laugh. You should laugh everyday. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is that you should have your emotions moved to tears. Think about it: if you laugh, think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re gonna have something special.” – Jimmy Valvano, ESPY Awards 1993

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” – Jean Paul Sartre

“In order to be walked on, you have to be lying down.” – Brian Weir

“When the people decide they want peace more than security, they will find both.” – Ron Atchison

“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin

“Instead of transcending ourselves, we must move into ourselves.” – Marion Woodman

“Be bold and love your body. Stop fixing it. It was never broken.” – Eve Ensler

“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” – Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” – Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“When we’re connected to others, we become better people.” – Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” – Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“Never lose that childhood wonder. It’s important. It’s what drives us.” – Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” – Unknown

“The surest and most insidious enemy of freedom is not dictatorship, but complacency.” – Natalie Angier

“You are the leader you’ve been waiting for.” – Gloria Steinem

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Unknown

“Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.” – Brendan Gill

“I would love to live like a river, carried by the surprise of my own unfolding.” – John O’Donohue

“You have to believe in something greater than yourself or you’ll never do anything greater than yourself.” – Unknown

“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” – Unknown

“When you judge others, you are the one who feels pain.” – Unknown

“Crisis can’t survive without your participation.” – Unknown

“What other people think of me is none of my business.” – Unknown

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou

“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” – Nancy Willard

“We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision.” – Gary Collins

“People do not change their lives based on what they know. They change their lives based on what they feel.” – Dr. Oz

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” – A Million Little Pieces

“Service is the rent you pay for living.” – Unknown

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different. It’s accepting the past for what it was.” – Oprah

“Justice is what love looks like in public, tenderness is what love feels like in private.” – Cornell West

“Optimism is evidence-based.” – Cornell West

“Please take responsibility for the energy you bring into this space.” – Oprah on her last show

“You alone are enough.” – Oprah on her last show

“Everybody just wants to be seen, to be heard, to know their words matter to you.” – Oprah on her last show

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain

“People were created to be loved.  Things were created to be used.  The reason the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.” – Unknown

“Peace: It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.  It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” – Unknown

“If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.” — the Dalai Lama

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving.  When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” – bell hooks

“Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries.” – Astrid Alauda

“Comparison is the death of joy.” – Mark Twain