The Pine Tree Book of Quotations

Part Four

"All for one, one for all …"

Alexander Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844)

"Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you and act accordingly."

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Third President of the United States,
Founder of the University of Virginia
Author of the Declaration of Independence
From a letter written in 1785.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

John Donne,
English Poet (1572-1631)
From Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man"

William Shakespeare,
English Playwright, poet, actor (1564-1616)
From, Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii

"Give your ears, hear the sayings,
Give your heart to understand them;
It profits to put them in your heart."

Amenemope
Egyptian Courtier of the 11th century B.C.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana.
Spanish philospher, poet and novelist (1863-1952)

"When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge"

Confucius,
Ancient Chinese Philosopher (551-479 B.C.)

"If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it."

Herodotus,
Ancient Greek Historian (c. 485- c. 425 B.C.)
From The Histories of Herodotus, Book I

"The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact."

George Santayana,
Spanish philospher, poet and novelist (1863-1952)

"My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking."

Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929)
Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies in the First World War.
At the Second Battle of the Marne (1918).

"By the push of the bayonets, no firing till you see the whites of their eyes."

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia (1712-1786)
In the battle before Prague, during the Seven Years War.

"Don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes."

William Prescott (1726-1795) or Israel Putnam (1718-1790)
American Commanders at the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775

"The mind of man is capable of anything — because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future."

Joseph Conrad,
Polish-born British Novelist (1857-1924)
From his novel, Heart of Darkness.

"Nearness to nature … keeps the spirit sensitive to impressions not commonly felt, and in touch with the unseen powers."

Ohiyesa (1858-1939)
Santee Dakota (Sioux), known as Charles Alexander Eastman

He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, "I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with blck clouds or with cloudless sunshine."

Horace
Ancient Roman poet (65-8 B.C.)
From the Odes of Horace,Book III, xxix (23 B.C.)

"For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them."

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
English biologist and foremost scientific supporter of Darwin’s theories.
From his essay, A Liberal Education

"In historical events great men — so called — are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like lables, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity."

Leo Tolstoy,
Russian writer, aesthetic philosopher, and mystic (1828-1910)
From his novel, War and Peace

"Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them in your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny."

Carl Schurz,
German-born American statesman and journalist (1829-1906)
Major-General in the American Civil War and United States Senator.
Biographer of Abraham Lincoln and Henry Clay.
From an Address at Faneuil Hall, Boston, April, 1859.

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond;
cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."

Mark Twain,
19th Century American writer and humorist (1835-1910)
Author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
From Pudd’nhead Wilson.

"It is a good thing … to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more."

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill,
English statesman and author (1874-1965)
Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II.
From Roving Commission: My Early Life

"You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth"

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill,
English statesman and author (1874-1965)
Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II.
From Roving Commission: My Early Life

"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill,
English statesman and author (1874-1965)
Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II.
From Address to the Boys at Harrow School, October, 1940

"Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others."

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill,
English statesman and author (1874-1965). Prime Minister of Great Britain during World War II. Churchill served in Parliament for over 50 years. He returned as Prime Minister in 1951 and served until 1955, when he retired at the age of 81.
From a Speech in the House of Commons (1952)

"How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint! How many apples fell on Newton’s head before he took the hint! Nature is always hinting at us. It hints over and over again. And suddenly we take the hint."

Robert Frost
American Poet (1874-1963)

"We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side."

Thomas Mann,
German Novelist (1875-1955)
From his novel, Buddenbrooks.

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."

General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
War As I Knew It

"Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament.
Life and power are scattered with all its beams."

Daniel Webster,
American statesman, orator and lawyer (1782-1852)
Address on the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Bunker Hill Monument (June 17, 1825)

"Liberty and Union, Now and forever, One and inseparable."

Daniel Webster,
American statesman, orator and lawyer (1782-1852)
Second Speech on Foote’s Resolution (January, 1830)
Inscribed on a statue of Webster in New York’s Central Park.

"There is nothing so powerful as truth — and often nothing as strange."

Daniel Webster,
American statesman, orator and lawyer (1782-1852)
Argument on the murder of Captain White (April, 1830)

"Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself."

T. S. Eliot,
American-born British poet, critic and dramatist (1888-1965)
Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca

"Don’t get mad, get even."

Attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy
Father of President John F. Kennedy,
Robert F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy

"Universe is the aggregate of all humanity’s consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences."

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1966)
American engineer, designer of the first geodesic dome.
From Synergetics. Moral of the Work, section 301.10

"Universe to each must be
All that is, including me.
Environment in turn must be
All that is, excepting me."

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1966)
American engineer, designer of the first geodesic dome.
From Synergetics 2, Section 100.12, Universal Requirements

"For it is fixed principle with me, that whatever is done should be done well."

George Washington
Yorktown, Virginia, 1783

To B.-P.

Few pioneers live long enough to see what they have done;
Most men are glad if they can leave the world a single son;
Did ever a man, before he died, see such a dream come true?
Did any leave so many living monuments as you?

A. P. Herbert
"To B-P, 12 January 1941"

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling
English poet and writer (1865-1936)
From the Just So Stories, The Elephant’s Child.

"Only a life lived for others is worthwhile."

Albert Einstein,
German-Swiss mathematical physicist (1879-1955).
Developed the General and Specialized Theories of Relativity, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, 1921. Considered one of the great conceptual revisors of man’s understanding of the Universe.

"In those days B-P’s fame as a soldier eclipsed almost all popular reputations. The other B.P. — the British Public — looked upon him as the outstanding hero of the Boer War….

"Millions who could not follow closely or accurately the main events of the War looked day after day in the papers for the fortunes of Mafeking, and when finally the news of its relief was flashed throughout the world, the streets of London became impassable, and the floods of sterling, cockney patriotism were released in such a deluge of unbridled, delirious joy as was never witnessed again till Armistace Night, 1918…."

Winston S. Churchill
Great Contemporaries

"How lucky for B-P that he was not in the early years of the century taken into the central swim of military affairs, and absorbed in all those arduous and secret preparations which ultimately enabled the British Expeditionary Army to deploy for the battle at Mons."

"How lucky for him, and how lucky for us all! To this he owes his perennially revivifying fame, his opportunity for high personal service of the most enduring character; and to this we owe an institution and an inspiration characteristic of the essence of British genius, and uniting in a bond of comradeship the youth not only of the English-speaking world, but almost every land and people under the sun."

Winston S. Churchill
Great Contemporaries

"Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though."

Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless, 1992

"Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed.. It also enables us to begin to think about being abandoned to the strengths of others, of admitting that we cannot know or do everything."

Max DePree
Leadership Is an Art, 1989

"Full many of a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

Thomas Gray
English Poet (1716-1771)
From: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750)

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. That sums up the progress of an artful leader."

Max DePree
Leadership Is an Art, 1989

"A position of leadership is not a passport to personal privilege or power. The duty of the leader is to serve the needs of those who are led."

Jan Erteszek

"If a man cannot make his point to keen boys in ten minutes, he ought to be shot !"

Robert Baden-Powell
The Scouter, November 1928
Reprinted in Footsteps of the Founder, 1987

"In essence leadership appears to be the art of getting others to want to do something you are convinced should be done."

Vance Packard, The Pyramid Climbers, 1962

"Loyalty is that for the lack of which your gang will shoot you without benefit of trial by jury."

Robert Frost
American Poet (1874-1963)

"The Master said:
He who learns but does not think, is lost.
He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger."

Confucius
Ancient Chinese Philosopher (551 – 479 b.c.)
The Analects, Book II:15

"To make yourself understood to people, one must first speak to their eyes"

Napoleon Bonaparte
Emperor of France (1769-1821)

"The servant leader makes sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test is: Do those being served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit or at least, not be further deprived."

Robert K. Greenleaf, from Servant Leadership.
Greenleaf developed his theory of servant leadership while an executive at ATT.
He was a frequent lecturer at MIT, Harvard, Dartmouth and the University of Virginia.
His work is continued through the Center for Applied Ethics which he founded in 1964.

The Pine Tree Book of Quotations (1997)

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Last Modified: 8:20 AM on May 10, 2010