People
Each quote is looked up in the person’s own texts. More people will follow, checked the same way.
Aristotle 384–322 BC
Ἀριστοτέλης
Greek philosopher from Stagira, a pupil of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great, who founded his own school, the Lyceum, in Athens.
7 genuine quotes, 10 that are not Aristotle’s words as shared; 1 work in our sources.
Bernard Baruch 1870–1965
Bernard Mannes Baruch
American financier who made a fortune on the New York Stock Exchange, chaired the War Industries Board in the First World War and advised presidents from Wilson to Truman; in 1946 he put the Baruch Plan for international control of atomic energy to the United Nations.
8 genuine quotes, 5 that are not Baruch’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Charles Bukowski 1920–1994
German-born American poet and novelist of Los Angeles low life: drink, dead-end jobs, the racetrack, women and writing.
6 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Bukowski’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Albert Camus 1913–1960
French writer born in Algeria, who wrote about the absurd and about revolt in novels, essays and plays, and edited the Resistance paper Combat; he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and died in a car crash in January 1960.
9 genuine quotes, 4 that are not Camus’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Chuck Palahniuk born 1962
American novelist and nonfiction writer, best known for Fight Club (1996), whose fiction combines black comedy, social criticism and characters at the margins.
8 genuine quotes, 1 that is not Palahniuk’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Marcus Tullius Cicero 106–43 BC
Roman statesman, lawyer and orator of the late Republic, consul in 63 BC, who was killed in the proscriptions after attacking Mark Antony in the Philippics.
12 genuine quotes, 7 that are not Cicero’s words as shared; 7 works in our sources.
C. S. Lewis 1898–1963
Belfast-born scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge, author of the Narnia books and of widely read works of Christian apologetics.
6 genuine quotes, 6 that are not Lewis’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Fyodor Dostoevsky 1821–1881
Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский
Russian novelist and journalist.
64 genuine quotes, 15 that are not Dostoevsky’s words as shared; 19 works in our sources.
Dr. Seuss 1904–1991
Theodor Seuss Geisel, the American author and illustrator who wrote as Dr.
5 genuine quotes, 5 that are not Seuss’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Albert Einstein 1879–1955
German-born theoretical physicist, author of the special and general theories of relativity, who left Germany in 1933 and spent his last two decades at Princeton; he also wrote and spoke widely on religion, pacifism, Zionism and socialism.
2 genuine quotes, 12 that are not Einstein’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Elbert Hubbard 1856–1915
American writer and publisher, born in Bloomington, Illinois, who founded the Roycroft arts-and-crafts community at East Aurora, New York, in 1895 and ran its press and its magazines, The Philistine and The Fra; he died with his wife on the Lusitania in 1915.
8 genuine quotes, 6 that are not Hubbard’s words as shared; 2 works in our sources.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803–1882
American essayist, lecturer and poet from Boston and Concord, a former Unitarian minister who became the leading voice of New England Transcendentalism and Thoreau’s friend and mentor.
9 genuine quotes, 4 that are not Emerson’s words as shared; 1 work in our sources.
Epictetus 55–135
Ἐπίκτητος
Greek Stoic philosopher (c.
14 genuine quotes, 4 that are not Epictetus’s words as shared; 2 works in our sources.
Epicurus 341–270 BC
Ἐπίκουρος
Greek philosopher (341–270 BC), an Athenian brought up on Samos, who founded his school in Mytilene and Lampsacus and then in Athens, where it met in his Garden; he taught that pleasure, understood as freedom from pain and fear, is the goal of life, and that the gods and death are nothing to fear.
16 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Epicurus’s words as shared; 4 works in our sources.
Frank Zappa 1940–1993
American composer, guitarist and bandleader, leader of the Mothers of Invention, who mixed rock, jazz and orchestral music with satire and campaigned against censorship of records.
8 genuine quotes, 5 that are not Zappa’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Mahatma Gandhi 1869–1948
મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, called Mahatma, an Indian lawyer who led the Indian community’s campaigns of nonviolent resistance (satyagraha) in South Africa and then the movement for India’s independence; he was assassinated in January 1948.
4 genuine quotes, 10 that are not Gandhi’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
André Gide 1869–1951
French novelist, essayist and diarist, a founder of the Nouvelle Revue Française and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947.
13 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Gide’s words as shared; 1 work in our sources.
J. K. Rowling born 1965
British novelist, author of the seven Harry Potter novels (1997–2007) about a boy wizard at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and of crime novels under the pen name Robert Galbraith.
14 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Rowling’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Carl Gustav Jung 1875–1961
Swiss psychiatrist who worked with Freud and broke with him in 1913 to found analytical psychology: the collective unconscious, archetypes, introversion and extraversion, individuation.
2 genuine quotes, 5 that are not Jung’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Lucretius 99–55 BC
Titus Lucretius Carus
Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher of the late Republic (c.
9 genuine quotes, 3 that are not Lucretius’s words as shared; 1 work in our sources.
Mae West 1893–1980
American actress, playwright and comedian, a Broadway and Hollywood star of the 1920s and 1930s known for sexually confident characters and double entendres.
8 genuine quotes, 3 that are not West’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Marcus Aurelius 121–180
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Roman emperor (161–180) and Stoic philosopher.
7 genuine quotes, 11 that are not Aurelius’s words as shared; 1 work in our sources.
Marilyn Monroe 1926–1962
American film actress, born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles, one of the most popular film stars of the 1950s, in comedies such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot; she died at 36.
10 genuine quotes, 7 that are not Monroe’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Mark Twain 1835–1910
American writer and humorist (Samuel Langhorne Clemens).
14 genuine quotes, 13 that are not Twain’s words as shared; 15 works in our sources.
Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
American Baptist minister and leader of the civil rights movement, from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56 to his assassination in Memphis in 1968; Nobel Peace Prize 1964.
14 genuine quotes, 2 that are not King’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Maya Angelou 1928–2014
American poet, memoirist and civil rights activist, born Marguerite Annie Johnson, whose seven autobiographies begin with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969); she read her poem ‘On the Pulse of Morning’ at Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993.
6 genuine quotes, 5 that are not Angelou’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Naval Ravikant born 1974
Indian-born American entrepreneur and investor, co-founder of AngelList, known for short aphorisms on wealth and happiness posted on Twitter/X and spoken on podcasts.
11 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Ravikant’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844–1900
German philosopher and classical philologist who attacked Christian morality and announced the death of God, writing in aphorisms, polemics and poetic prose; he collapsed mentally in 1889 and his sister edited his notes into books he never wrote.
7 genuine quotes, 5 that are not Nietzsche’s words as shared; 1 work in our sources.
Oscar Wilde 1854–1900
Irish playwright, novelist and wit, the most quoted epigrammatist in English.
18 genuine quotes, 9 that are not Wilde’s words as shared; 12 works in our sources.
Fernando Pessoa 1888–1935
Portuguese poet, prose writer and literary critic who wrote in Portuguese and English.
11 genuine quotes, 1 that is not Pessoa’s words as shared; 9 works in our sources.
Robert Frost 1874–1963
American poet of rural New England, born in San Francisco, who farmed in New Hampshire and Vermont, taught for many years at Amherst College, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry four times.
12 genuine quotes, 1 that is not Frost’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Seneca the Younger 4 BC–65 AD
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist (c.
14 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Seneca’s words as shared; 5 works in our sources.
Stephen Chbosky born 1970
American novelist, screenwriter and director, born in Pittsburgh, best known for The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), a coming-of-age novel in letters, which he also adapted and directed as a film in 2012.
6 genuine quotes, 1 that is not Chbosky’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Steve Jobs 1955–2011
American entrepreneur who co-founded Apple, left it in 1985, founded NeXT, led Pixar, and returned to run Apple from 1997 until shortly before his death.
10 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Jobs’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
Henry David Thoreau 1817–1862
American essayist and naturalist from Concord, Massachusetts, a Transcendentalist and friend of Emerson, who lived two years in a cabin at Walden Pond and went to jail rather than pay a poll tax that supported slavery and war.
9 genuine quotes, 5 that are not Thoreau’s words as shared; 2 works in our sources.
William W. Purkey 1929–2024
William Watson Purkey
American educational psychologist, professor of counselor education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1976 and co-founder of the International Alliance for Invitational Education, who wrote on self-concept and ‘invitational education’.
4 genuine quotes, 2 that are not Purkey’s words as shared; checked against cited sources, as we hold no full text.
The pictures are drawn by an image model: portraits after a public-domain painting, photograph or bust, which each person’s page names, cropped here to the head; for people without a portrait, a pattern in a style from their own time and world, with their initials.