79 Valuable Quotes

In our daily lives, we often find ourselves seeking words of wisdom to inspire, motivate, and guide us through various moments. Whether it's a challenging day at work, a personal struggle, or simply a desire for introspection, the right quote can offer profound insight and encouragement. This blog post brings together a curated collection of 79 valuable quotes that resonate across different facets of life. Each quote has been handpicked to provide you with a source of reflection, inspiration, and empowerment, helping you navigate your journey with a bit more clarity and purpose. So, get ready to immerse yourself in a treasure trove of wisdom from thinkers, leaders, and visionaries who have left an indelible mark on the world.

1. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” - Henry David Thoreau

2. “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” - J. Krishnamurti

3. “That's the thing you learn about values: they're what people make up to justify what they did.” - Max Barry

4. “you can't be value free when it comes to marriage” - Al Gore

5. “Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” - Gandhi

6. “The Wit of Cheats, the Courage of a Whore,Are what ten thousand envy and adore:All, all look up, with reverential Awe,At crimes that 'scape, or triumph o'er the Law:While Truth, Worth, Wisdom, daily they decry-`'Nothing is sacred now but Villainy'- Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I” - Alexander Pope

7. “If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.” - Richard Bach

8. “You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind wonders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.” - W. Somerset Maugham

9. “Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.” - Albert Einstein

10. “[T]he state should not impose a preferred way of life, but should leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends, consistent with a similar liberty for others.” - Michael J. Sandel

11. “Knowledge rooted in experience shapes what we value and as a consequence how we know what we know as well as how we use what we know.” - bell hooks

12. “Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own case and deciding in its own favour would be rather simple minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged: or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.” - C.S. Lewis

13. “When all that says 'it is good' has been debunked, what says 'I want' remains. (...) The Conditioners, therefore, must come to be motivated simply by their own pleasure. (...) My point is that those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse. (...) I am very doubtful myself whether the benevolent impulses, stripped of that preference and encouragement which the Tao teaches us to give them and left to their merely natural strength and frequency as psychological events, will have much influence. I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside traditional morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.” - C.S. Lewis

14. “Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundations that underlies and gives reality to all other virtue and personal values. (p. 13)” - Rollo May

15. “Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.” - Ronald Reagan

16. “Keep in Mind to be Kind.” - A. Volta

17. “Find people who share your values, and you'll conquer the world together.” - John Ratzenberger

18. “History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what do do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.” - Jill Lepore

19. “Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.” - Samuel Johnson

20. “When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves.” - Eda LeShan

21. “Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.” - William Shakespeare

22. “If you’re honest with yourself as a writer, trying to tell the best story you can, your story will be an honest one. And your values will come out, no matter how hard you try to disguise them.” - Joe Clifford Faust

23. “If it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

24. “Do you think it is a vain hope that one day man will find joy in noble deeds of light and mercy, rather than in the coarse pleasures he indulges in today -- gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting, and envious vying with his neighbor? I am certain this is not a vain hope and that the day will come soon.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

25. “Money can't buy happiness but it can buy a huge yacht that sails right next to it.” - David Lee Roth

26. “In four months we could actually have an administration that believes in science.” - Mark Warner

27. “Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.” - Aesop

28. “Values aren't buses... They're not supposed to get you anywhere. They're supposed to define who you are.” - Jennifer Crusie

29. “Pain los[es] its power when other things bec[o]me more important.” - Brandon Sanderson

30. “I consider marriage a very important institution, but it is important when and if two people have found the person with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives—a question of which no man or woman can be automatically certain. When one is certain that one’s choice is final, then marriage is, of course, a desirable state. But this does not mean that any relationship based on less than total certainty is improper. I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them. Either is moral, provided only that both parties take the relationship seriously and that it is based on values.” - Ayn Rand

31. “Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.” - George Packer

32. “Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.” - Deepak Chopra

33. “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

34. “Before I can say I am, I was. Heraclitus and I, prophets of flux, know that the flux is composed of parts that imitate and repeat each other. Am or was, I am cumulative, too. I am everything I ever was, whatever you and Leah may think. I am much of what my parents and especially my grandparents were -- inherited stature, coloring, brains, bones (that part unfortunate), plus transmitted prejudices, culture, scruples, likings, moralities, and moral errors that I defend as if they were personal and not familial.” - Wallace Stegner

35. “I didn't know the answers, but I could feel that the things that gave life meaning came from a place within and from the nurturing of values like tolerance, charity, and community.” - Dick Van Dyke

36. “To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)” - Dorothy L. Sayers

37. “We have become a more juvenile culture. We have become a childish "me, me, me" culture with fifteen-second attention spans. The global village that television was supposed to bring is less a village than a playground...Little attempt is made to pass on our cultural inheritance, and our moral and religious traditions are neglected except in the shallow "family values" arguments.” - Wes Jackson

38. “Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.” - José Ortega y Gasset

39. “أي قتيل في سبيل شيئ فوق نفسه فهو شهيد، وقد تتغير قيم الأشياء أما موقف الإنسان منها فهو قيمة لا تتغير.” - نجيب محفوظ

40. “لو أن لبائع اللب قدرة على الجدل لدلل على أنه يلعب دوراً خطيراً في حياة البشر، ولا يبعد أن يكون لكل شيئ قيمة ذاتية ولا يبعد كذلك ألا يكون لشيئ قيمة البتة، كم مليوناً من البشر يلفظون أنفاسهم في هذه اللحظة؟ في الوقت نفسه يرتفع صوت طفل بالبكاء على فقد لعبة، أو صوت عاشق يبث الليل والكون متاعب قلبه، أأضحك أم أبكي؟” - نجيب محفوظ

41. “Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.” - Jared Diamond

42. “Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people.” - Jared Diamond

43. “[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.” - Jared Diamond

44. “It is not easy to get rid of weeds; but it is easy, by a process of neglect, to ruin your food crops and let them revert to their primitive state of wildness. [...] In political civilization, the state is an abstraction and the relationship of men utilitarian. Because it has no roots in sentiments, it is so dangerously easy to handle. Half a century has been enough for you to master this machine; and there are men among you, whose fondness for it exceeds their love for the living ideals which were born with the birth of your nation and nursed in your centuries. It is like a child who in the excitement of his play imagines he likes his playthings better than his mother.” - Rabindranath Tagore

45. “Language itself is so value-laden as to render value-neutrality almost impossible. Growing up in England I was introduced to the American Revolution by a 'footnote' to colonial history about the 'revolt' of the American colonies. Word choice and the organization of material gave the game away.” - Arthur F. Holmes

46. “I don't want to become obsessed with work or money or change any of the values I have now. I don't have reason to believe that I ever should change, as much as I have this feeling of urgency to pursue my dreams...” - Tanya Kimberly Orme

47. “Money is only a human invention.” - Vanna Bonta

48. “I think honesty is the most heroic quality one can aspire to.” - Daniel Radcliffe

49. “I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began."And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all.""I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly."Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.” - Iain Pears

50. “Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.” - Ayn Rand

51. “It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncertainty, especially for an active Mormon and a good Christian, both lost in a Zoroastrian Hell. We were like virgin newlyweds. All my life I’d been raised to believe this kind of thing was wrong. All my life I had lived with a strong sense of morality. How do you give it up? How do you do things you thought you’d never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives? It was difficult. So tricky to untangle.” - Steven L. Peck

52. “Better naked and alive than decent and dead, I thought.” - Zoë Marriott

53. “One is often so busy doing life that it is easy to avoid evaluating whether you are putting your energy in the direction you value most.” - Deborah Day

54. “To feel more fulfilled your actions and activities need to be in alignment with what you deem important.” - Deborah Day

55. “Your choice is to be active or passive in your responses.” - Deborah Day

56. “The problem with our society is that our values aren’t in the right place. There’s an awful lot of bleeding and naked bodies on prime-time networks, but not nearly enough cable television on public programming.” - Bauvard

57. “I don't know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful, it will make little difference whether she lives at all.” - Cormac McCarthy

58. “We set no special value on the possession of a virtue until we percieve that it is entirely lacking in our adversary.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

59. “Es ist [...] meine tiefe Überzeugung, dass die Freiheit das Allerwichtigste im Zusammenleben ist und erst Freiheit unserer Gesellschaft Kultur, Substanz und Inhalt verleiht.” - Joachim Gauck

60. “Es ist wichtig zu begreifen, dass wir der Toleranz nicht dienen, wenn wir unser Profil verwässern, sondern indem wir uns umgekehrt unserer eigenen Werte wieder vergewissern. [...] Wir tun der Toleranz auch nichts Böses an, wenn wir die Menschenrechte verteidigen, wie sie in den letzten Jahrhunderten und Jahrzehnten entwickelt und niedergeschrieben wurden in der Allgemeinen Erklärung der Menschenrechte der Vereinten Nationen und einer Vielzahl von Konventionen, die detailliert den Schutz einzelner Menschenrechte regeln - etwa zum Schutz von Flüchtlingen, zur Verhinderung von Völkermord, gegen die Diskriminierung der Frau etc. Fast alle Staaten der Welt haben sich nach tiefer leidvoller Erfahrung, nach nationaler Hybris und nach ideologischem oder religösem Fanatismus im Prinzip auf diese Grundrechte und die Rule of Law als Minimum einer Überlebensordnung geeinigt. Die als universell, unveräußerlich und unteilbar angesehenen Menschenrechte sind daher ein gemeinsames Gut der Menschheit. Und wir dürfen und müssen gegenüber kommunistischen, fanatisch-islamistischen oder despotischen Staaten über ihre Verletzung sprechen; denn als Menschen sind wir verpflichtet, die Menschenrechte unserer Mitmenschen zu respektieren und zu verteidigen.” - Joachim Gauck

61. “Charles is going to be fine," said Annie. "Yep," said Jack with a smile. "He never even knew that it was us who helped him." "That's the best way to help someone, I think," said Annie. "Why?" asked Jack. "Then you know you're not helping them just to get a lot of credit," said Annie. "You're helping because it's the right thing to do.” - Mary Pope Osborne

62. “You have many fine qualities that I admire. But you are out of time. You should have been born a century ago, when values such as yours meant something.” - Jasper Fforde

63. “We live among ruins in a World in which ‘god is dead’ as Nietzsche stated. The ideals of today are comfort, expediency, surface knowledge, disregard for one’s ancestral heritage and traditions, catering to the lowest standards of taste and intelligence, apotheosis of the pathetic, hoarding of material objects and possessions, disrespect for all that is inherently higher and better — in other wordsa complete inversion of true values and ideals, the raising of the victory flag of ignorance and the banner of degeneracy. In such a time, social decadence is so widespread that it appears as a natural component of all political institutions. The crises that dominate the daily lives of our societies are part of a secret occult war to remove the support of spiritual and traditional values in order to turn man into a passive instrument of dark powers.The common ground of both Capitalism and Socialism is a materialistic view of life and being. Materialism in its war with the Spirit has taken on many forms; some have promoted its goals with great subtlety, whilst others have done so with an alarming lack of subtlety, but all have added, in greater or lesser measure, to the growing misery of Mankind. The forms which have done the most damage in our time may be enumerated as: Freemasonry, Liberalism, Nihilism, Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism, Imperialism, Anarchism, Modernism and the New Age.” - Seyyed Hossein Nasr

64. “Is it really worth dying for the person you love?”[Maureen] thinks about this for a moment. “That’s not the real question, Oliver. What you should be asking is, Can you live without her?” - Jodi Picoult

65. “See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

66. “How you look at it is pretty much how you'll see it” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

67. “They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

68. “Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

69. “Bridges are built not to cross over it but it is built to lift you to the other side safely.” - Edwin Lawrence

70. “As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a cannibal any man’s demand for your help. To demand it is to claim that your life is his property – and loathsome as such claim might be, there’s something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you ask if it’s ever proper to help another man? No- if he claims it as his right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes- if such is your own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his person and his struggle. Suffering as such is not a value, only man’s fight against suffering is. If you choose to help a man who suffers, do it only on the ground of his virtues, of his fight to recover, of his rational record, or of the fact that he suffers unjustly; then your action is still trade, and his virtue is the payment for your help. But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim – is to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. A man who has no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death; to help him is to sanction his evil and to support his career of destruction. Be it only a penny you will miss or a kindly smile he has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the desolation of your world was made.” - Ayn Rand

71. “Families can also be divided into subgroups with different values, perspectives, and and communication styles, even if a subgroup consists of only one individual.” - David Bedrick

72. “Tolerance is not a Christian value. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty--these are Christian values.” - Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

73. “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.” - Parker J. Palmer

74. “By using repetition, images, and other strategies - all of which communicate truths in ways that are not cognitively or propositional - marketing forms us into the kind of persons who want to buy beer to have meaningful relationships, or to buy a car to be respected, or buy the latest thing to come along simply to satisfy the desire that has been formed and implanted in us. It is important to appreciate that these disciplinary mechanisms transmit values and truth claims, but not via propositions or cognitive means; rather, the values are transmitted more covertly...This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.” - James K.A. Smith

75. “If every day at work feels like a Friday, then you are doing what you were meant to do.” - Alan W. Kennedy

76. “In a rule-based society, we often choose efficiency over value, but, while rules-based governance systems may often serve well the values of fairness and representation, their seeming efficiency hides a deep and important flaw: We often rely on rules when they are not, in fact, the most efficient or effective solution to getting the result that we desire.” - Dov Seidman

77. “You can't stop negative thoughts from coming in, but you can make sure they leave as quickly as they enter.” - Nkem Mpamah

78. “I believe strongly that my books are entertainment. I hope you might learn a thing or two while reading them, but first and foremost, my job is to entertain you. If I’m waving a flag in Hot Target, it’s the same flag I’ve always waved in all my books—the American flag. And that’s a flag that’s supposed to stand for acceptance and understanding. For freedom for all—and not just freedom for all Americans, but freedom for all of the diverse and wonderful people living on this planet; freedom to live their lives according to their definitions of freedom. It’s a flag that’s supposed to stand for real American values like honor and honesty and peace and love and hope.” - Suzanne Brockmann

79. “It is hard to dislike someone you know if that person is someone you value.” - Sharon Leslie Morgan