Selected impact quotes

1. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

2. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless....

3. Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.

4. The true worth of a man is not to be found in man himself, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others.

5. One man with courage makes a majority.

6. I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.

7. Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

8. Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

9. The most beautiful thing about music is that it transcends most anything.

10. It is still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer.

11. We relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.

12. Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

13. I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And it isn't vague, it strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own.

14. In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.

15. That which hits the fan tends to get flung in all directions.

16. The vast material displacements the machine has made in our physical environment are perhaps in the long run less important than its spiritual contributions to our culture.

17. I don't doubt at all that virtualization is useful in some areas. What I doubt rather strongly is that it will ever have the kind of impact that the people involved in virtualization want it to have.

18. Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

19. If someone listens to our music, and it makes them creative, that makes me happier than anything.

20. The medium is the message.

21. The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years. And the thing that I will really be proud of is if some of the work I have done is still cited in the text books long after I am gone.

22. Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

23. Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I've always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.

24. Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.

25. The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.

26. What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

27. I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line.

28. The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.)

29. No history of the world can be complete which does not mention Mary Helen Keller... whose overcoming of her blindness and deafness were arguably victories more important than those of Alexander the Great, because they have implications still for every living person.

30. Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

31. I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there. And I think a lot of these young kids are going to have to learn the hard way before they realize that you can actually do some damage if you're being careless or frivolous in what you're saying.

32. I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

33. A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild. A teacher, finally, has nothing to go on but faith, a student nothing to offer in return but testimony.

34. When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire.

35. The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.

36. A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

37. My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain- and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel a lot more pleasure than they do pain.

38. Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.

39. We may yet work up to some serious shooting war, or maybe some acts of urban genocide committed with rogue nuclear weapons. But if that were the case, why would we call that '9/11'? If Washington disappeared in a mushroom cloud, we'd give that huge event a different name.

40. How much the greatest event it is that ever happened in the world! and how much the best!

41. Sage's light Oh and Edison He made two sparks ignite All you do It's a scientific chain reaction

42. people see me I'm a challenge to your balance I'm over your heads how I confound you and astound you

43. Before Elvis, there was nothing.

44. A face on her that'd make a freight train take a dirt road.

45. Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.

46. I read On the Road in maybe 1959. It changed my life like it changed everyone else's.

47. No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.

48. Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

49. 'You gotta eat lightning and crap thunder!'

50. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE!!!???

51. I say the time is ripe for a William Saroyan revival... Bill Saroyan, that rollicking elf of an author who knew well of irony and compassion and laughter, wrote first-class original works for television, and the adaptations of his plays invariably hit the mark. I am thinking now in particular of the Playhouse 90 production of 'The Time of Your Life.' In it Jackie Gleason delivered a tremendous portrayal as Joe the philosopher who had this wistful greeting for everyone who entered the bar: 'What's the dream?' ... In one of his last essays you may find a perceptive line that tells of the Saroyan working philosophy: 'The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it.' ... He looked, William Saroyan, exactly the way you would expect him to look. He had a huge mustache and a booming voice and a commanding presence. He was exuberant. He was mischievous. He was fun. ... How he could make the English language soar! His words danced. This was writing that was never inhabited by wallflowers. This was Bill Saroyan.

52. It would be difficult Bland thought, to forget Hercule Poirot, and this not entirely for complimentary reasons.

53. One minute decides the outcome of a battle, one hour the success of a campaign, one day the fate of empires.

54. If nobody minds, it doesn't matter.

55. I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

56. All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence.

57. He was quite remarkable enough to fill a volume of Eloge. Someone wrote to me yesterday that no Jew for 1800 years has played so great a part in the world. That would be no Jew since St. Paul; and it is very startling.

58. I've always maintained that it isn't the form that's going to make the difference. It isn't the rule or the procedure or the ideology, but it's human beings that will make it.

59. He gave the world another world.

60. There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch.

61. I want to make a movie that has enough impact that it's going to do what it needs to do. But I don't want to make a film that serial killers masturbate to.

62. I'm always interested in movies that scar.

63. He is gone from among us, and is no more to be seen in the walks of men, but in his death like Sampson, he slew more of his enemies than in all his life. Even his most bitter enemies here, I believe, have buried all animosity, and join the general lamentation over his untimely end.

64. Nothing would prove more disastrous to our ideas, we contended, than to neglect the effect of the internal upon the external, of the psychological motives and needs upon existing institutions. (p. 402)

65. 'Give,' said the little stream, 'Give, oh give, give, oh give,' As it hurried down the hill. 'I am small, I know, but wherever I go The fields grow greener still.'

66. My life is as if you've hit me with it.

67. Vermont is a small state which makes an enormous difference.

68. If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.

69. Du grosses Gestirn! Was ware dein Gluck, wenn du nicht Die hattest, welchen du leuchtest!

70. The Beatles saved the world from boredom.

71. Women who were housewives, who were pretty miserable ... felt inspired by her book and their life changed. They didn't become megastars, but they became a librarian or something. I've heard women say again and again when the subject of Germaine comes up: 'Well, her book changed my life for the better.' And they'll be modest women living pretty ordinary lives, but better lives.

72. Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

73. Heath has touched so many people on so many different levels during his short life but few had the pleasure of truly knowing him. He was a down to earth, generous, kind-hearted, life-loving, unselfish individual who was extremely inspirational to many.

74. I adored him. I don't know how to compare his talent to others but he's touched me deeply as a talent and it's a great loss - losing him at any age would be a loss but it was pretty rough news. I was really shocked by it.

75. Some people bring happiness wherever they go. You bring happiness whenever you go.

76. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

77. Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

78. The flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can.

79. A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

80. His coming to the world is like the appearance of a rare comet, whose brilliance appears only every other century.

81. My Chemical Romance saves the entire world with the music we play.

82. Greatness is nothing unless it be lasting.

83. Speeches pass away, but acts remain.

84. You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of the referee.

85. They liked the book the better the more it made them cry.

86. He was the first person that came into my life and gave me hope.

87. she cried in a voice that hit me between the eyebrows and went out at the back of my head.

88. She's all for not letting the sun go down without having started something calculated to stagger humanity.

89. Pick a flower on earth and you move the farthest star.

90. Writer X may sell 500,000 copies. All those 500,000 people may think, nice book. I liked it. I'll read the guy's next one. And 40,000 people may read a Phil Dick book, and be loud and vocal and persuasive about feeling the book had incredible impact on them intellectually and emotionally. The guy with the 500,000 will not be seen as a major writer and the guy with the 40,000 will. Because nobody's talking about the guy with the 500,000 readers.

91. The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice.

92. It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it.

93. Uncle Tom's Cabin was no literary masterpiece but it was a culture-bearing book. It came at a time when the entire culture was about to reject slavery. People seized upon it as a portrayal of their own new values and it became an overwhelming success. The success of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance seems the result of this culture-bearing phenomenon. The involuntary shock treatment described here is against the law today. It is a violation of human liberty. The culture has changed.

94. O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! - I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!

95. The event that came to be known as The Pulse began at 3:03 p.m., eastern standard time, on the afternoon of October 1. The term was a misnomer, of course, but within ten hours of the event, most of the scientists capable of pointing this out were either dead or insane. The name hardly mattered, in any case. What mattered was the effect.

96. I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

97. Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.

98. Vous creez un frisson nouveau.

99. Mozart exists, and will exist, eternally; divine Mozart - less a name, more a soul descending to us from the heavens, who appeared on this earth, stayed for a little over thirty years, and left it all the more rejuvenated, richer and happier for his appearance.

100. ...as you'll know, the word 'fuck' sort of is used quite a lot in my house. Now, that's not to say, I think to say 'fuck this' or 'fuck you' a lot more, so it should be entered into the English language, because it has a lot more impact when you say, 'I fucking hate this thing.'