John Quotes

Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind.

It is the business of the teacher ... to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.

One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant.

Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority.

There is some lack either of sense or of character in one who becomes involved in difficulties with the worthless or the vicious.

It is unpleasant to turn back, though it be to take the right way.

The writers who accomplish most are those who compel thought on the highest and most profoundly interesting subjects.

If thou wouldst be interesting, keep thy personality in the background, and be great and strong in and through thy subject.

If there are but few who interest thee, why shouldst thou be disappointed if but few find thee interesting?

The will the one thing it is most important to educate we neglect.

Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.

The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.

The important thing is how we know, not what or how much.

Thy money, thy office, thy reputation are nothing; put away these phantom clothings, and stand like an athlete stripped for the battle.

Passion is begotten of passion, and it easily happens, as with the children of great men, that the base is the offspring of the noble.

We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us.

If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?

Say not thou lackest talent. What talent had any of the greatest, but passionate faith in the efficacy of work?

Unless we consent to lack the common things which men call success, we shall hardly become heroes or saints, philosophers or poets.

When we know and love the best we are content to lack the approval of the many.

Though what we accept be true, it is a prejudice unless we ourselves have considered and understood why and how it is true.

The common man is impelled and controlled by interests; the superior, by ideas.

The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of casuality[sic], color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world.

It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good.

What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow.

They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children.

If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain.

In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed.

Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received.

He who leaves school, knowing little, but with a longing for knowledge, will go farther than one who quits, knowing many things, but not caring to learn more.

The innocence which is simply ignorance is not virtue.

Reform the world within thyself, which is thy proper world.

Base thy life on principle, not on rules.

If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.

The common prejudice against philosophy is the result of the incapacity of the multitude to deal with the highest problems.

People would rather earn 60 grand in an area where their neighbours earn 40, than earn 80 in an area where their neighbours earn a hundred.

Sometimes, the only way of doing something is to do it.

Economics as a discipline has in effect become the study of capitalism. The two are taken as the same subject.

The financial system in its current condition poses an existential threat to Western democracy far exceeding any terrorist threat.

I read every draft of every episode of every series produced at FX.

We've actually bought quite a number of historical pieces. We are doing a piece on the abolitionists, Harper's Ferry and the abolitionist John Brown with Paul Giamatti.

There are no characters in the limited series Fargo that are derived from the characters in the film Fargo. It's hard to describe how remarkably true to the film the show is.

It's easier to solve the problem more quickly with directors than with writers.

I believe really deeply in the pilot process because you learn things about tone and casting.

I think the possibility of continuing on a comedy is greater than a drama.

I think a shotgun or a handgun that has a six-round clip is a very good, perfectly adequate weapon for self-defense, in the home. You simply can't create that kind of mayhem, if you have to reload.

I don't think I ever had any relationship with any showrunner, over time, with whom I didn't have conflict.

One of the challenges of the movie is there are no apologies or excuses.

Rock 'n' roll started to make so much money and generated so much income for the record companies that suddenly it was no longer evil.

Universal rushed us. We started shooting without a script that was totally completed.