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Get random famous quotes on love, life, courage, success and more, and know exactly where each one comes from. All 103 quotes are checked against the original book, speech or letter, so you won't post a line Einstein never said. Not sure about a quote you've seen? Paste it into Check a quote.
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Last updated: October 5, 2026 · Published: 2026-03-29 · Updated: 2026-10-05
103 matching quotes
Quotes
“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
“Is it not pleasant to have friends coming from distant quarters?”
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A quote generator picks famous quotations at random, usually by theme, so you can find the right line for a caption, card, toast, speech or slide. This one draws from 103 quotes by 52 writers, thinkers and public figures, from Lao Tzu and Shakespeare to Maya Angelou and Steve Jobs, and every quote comes with its source and year.
That matters because many of the most shared quotes online are credited to the wrong person or have been reworded. Quotes here use the original wording, note when a line is translated or reported second-hand, and leave out lines that can’t be traced to the person they’re credited to.
Pick a theme
Choose from 9 themes such as love, courage or humor, or leave it on All. You can also filter by a word or an author's name.
Choose how many and click New quotes
Show 1, 3, 5 or 10 quotes at a time. Each one lists its author, source and year, with a note for translations.
Copy one quote or all of them
Copy a single quote or the whole numbered list, as quote and author, with the source and year, or as Markdown.
How many quotes each theme holds, with its shortest quote as an example. Many quotes fit more than one theme.
| Theme | Quotes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Inspiration | 17 | “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” — Steve Jobs |
| Wisdom | 28 | “To err is human, to forgive divine.” — Alexander Pope |
| Life | 21 | “Lost time is never found again.” — Benjamin Franklin |
| Love | 18 | “A friend loveth at all times.” — Proverbs |
| Friendship | 8 | “A friend loveth at all times.” — Proverbs |
| Courage | 22 | “It ain't over till it's over.” — Yogi Berra |
| Creativity | 15 | “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” — Steve Jobs |
| Success | 18 | “Lost time is never found again.” — Benjamin Franklin |
| Humor | 22 | “Brevity is the soul of wit.” — William Shakespeare |
These 12 quotes are shared millions of times under famous names, but researchers have traced them to someone else. None of them are in the generator.
| Quote | Usually credited to | Earliest known source | What the record shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” | Oscar Wilde | Anonymous, 1999 | The earliest known use is an unsigned Usenet post from December 1999. No one has found it in Wilde's plays, essays, letters or reported conversation. |
| “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” | Mahatma Gandhi | Arleen Lorrance, 1974 | Gandhi wrote something related in 1913: "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change." The short version is credited to the teacher Arleen Lorrance. |
| “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” | Winston Churchill | A Budweiser advertisement, 1938 | The International Churchill Society finds it nowhere in his writings or speeches. The closest early match is a 1938 Budweiser beer ad. |
| “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” | Albert Einstein | Twelve-step recovery groups, 1981 | First printed in 1981, in a newspaper report on an Al-Anon meeting and in a Narcotics Anonymous text. Einstein's name was attached from about 1990. |
| “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” | Maya Angelou | Carl W. Buehner, 1971 | "They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel" appears in Richard Evans' Quote Book in 1971, credited to Buehner. Angelou's name was attached decades later. |
| “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” | Aristotle | Will Durant, 1926 | Durant wrote it in The Story of Philosophy as his own summary of Aristotle's ideas on habit and virtue. |
| “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Henry Stanley Haskins, 1940 | From Meditations in Wall Street, published anonymously in 1940. The New York Times named Haskins, a stock trader, as the author in 1947. |
| “If you can dream it, you can do it.” | Walt Disney | Disney Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald, 1983 | Fitzgerald wrote "If we can dream it, we can do it" for Epcot's Horizons ride, years after Walt Disney's death. A General Electric copywriter says she wrote the "you" version in 1981. |
| “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” | John Lennon | Allen Saunders, 1957 | The cartoonist Allen Saunders was quoted in Reader's Digest in January 1957. Lennon sang it in "Beautiful Boy" in 1980. |
| “Do one thing every day that scares you.” | Eleanor Roosevelt | Mary Schmich, 1997 | From Schmich's 1997 Chicago Tribune column, the one later known as Wear Sunscreen. Roosevelt did write "You must do the thing you think you cannot do." |
| “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” | Charles Darwin | Leon C. Megginson, 1963 | A management professor's paraphrase of Darwin in a 1963 speech, later reworded and credited to Darwin himself. It isn't in his books or letters. |
| “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” | Albert Einstein | George Scialabba, 1983 | Scialabba wrote "Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun" in Harvard Magazine. It is not in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein. |
Sources: Quote Investigator, the International Churchill Society, the Darwin Correspondence Project, The Ultimate Quotable Einstein and the Yale Book of Quotations. “Earliest known” means earliest found so far; an older printing could still turn up.
Right person, wrong words. These lines are real, but the popular version has been changed, tidied or shortened.
| Popular version | What was actually said or written | Who and where |
|---|---|---|
| “Elementary, my dear Watson.” | "Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he. (The Crooked Man, 1893) | Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle's stories |
| “Play it again, Sam.” | Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake. … Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By." | Ilsa, in Casablanca (1942) |
| “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” | The report of my death was an exaggeration. | Mark Twain, New York Journal (1897) |
| “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” | If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. | Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854) |
| “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” | Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. | Helen Keller, Let Us Have Faith (1940) |
| “If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.” | What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain. | Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) |
Check a quote in the tool covers the most common fakes. For anything else, watch for these warning signs.
| Warning sign | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| No specific source | A real quote can be traced to a book, speech, letter or article with a date. "As Einstein said" with nothing else is a warning sign. |
| Credited to several famous people | When the same line is attributed to Twain, Lincoln and Churchill, usually none of them said it. |
| The wording sounds too modern | Phrases like "comfort zone" or "best version of yourself" in the mouth of an ancient philosopher are a giveaway. |
| It's suspiciously neat | Real speech and writing is wordier. Polished one-liners are often later paraphrases, as with Thoreau and Helen Keller. |
| Only on quote sites and images | Quote websites copy each other. Look for the original text, or a researcher such as Quote Investigator who has. |
| It's a translation | Lines from Greek, Latin, French or German vary by translator. Cite the translation you used. |
The generator copies quotes in three formats. Adding the source and year shows readers the quote is genuine and lets them find it.
| Format | Example |
|---|---|
| Quote and author | “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau |
| With source and year | “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854) |
| Markdown | > If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. > > — Henry David Thoreau, *Walden* (1854) |
All 103 quotes in the generator, roughly oldest first, with the work they come from and the year.
| Quote | Author | Source | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| “A friend loveth at all times.” | Proverbs | Proverbs 17:17, King James VersionFrom the Hebrew Bible; the King James wording dates from 1611. | 1611 translation |
| “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” | Lao Tzu | Tao Te Ching, chapter 64Common English rendering. Literally, it begins beneath one's feet. | c. 4th century BC |
| “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 | Analects 2.17, translated by James Legge | c. 5th century BC |
| “Is it not pleasant to have friends coming from distant quarters?” | Confucius | Analects 1.1, translated by James Legge | c. 5th century BC |
| “The unexamined life is not worth living.” | Socrates | Plato, Apology 38aSocrates wrote nothing; Plato records him saying it at his trial. | c. 399 BC |
| “One swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day.” | Aristotle | Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1Translated from Greek; the full sentence goes on to say one day doesn't make a person happy. | c. 340 BC |
| “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” | Aristotle | Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book 5Attributed to Aristotle by Diogenes Laertius, writing about 500 years later. | c. 3rd century AD |
| “While we are postponing, life speeds by.” | Seneca | Letters to Lucilius, Letter 1, translated by Richard Gummere | c. AD 65 |
| “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations, Book 10Modern translation; wording varies between editions. | c. AD 170–180 |
| “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations, Book 7Modern translation; wording varies between editions. | c. AD 170–180 |
| “Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.” | Marcus Aurelius | Meditations, Book 5, translated by George Long | c. AD 170–180 |
| “This above all: to thine own self be true.” | William Shakespeare | Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 | c. 1600 |
| “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” | William Shakespeare | Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3 | c. 1600 |
| “Brevity is the soul of wit.” | William Shakespeare | Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2 | c. 1600 |
| “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” | William Shakespeare | Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5 | c. 1600 |
| “The course of true love never did run smooth.” | William Shakespeare | A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1 | c. 1595 |
| “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” | William Shakespeare | A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1 | c. 1595 |
| “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” | William Shakespeare | As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7 | c. 1599 |
| “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.” | William Shakespeare | Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5 | c. 1601 |
| “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” | William Shakespeare | Measure for Measure, Act 1, Scene 4 | c. 1604 |
| “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” | William Shakespeare | All's Well That Ends Well, Act 1, Scene 1 | c. 1605 |
| “To err is human, to forgive divine.” | Alexander Pope | An Essay on Criticism | 1711 |
| “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” | Alexander Pope | An Essay on Criticism | 1711 |
| “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” | Benjamin Franklin | Poor Richard's Almanack | 1735 |
| “Fish and visitors stink in three days.” | Benjamin Franklin | Poor Richard's Almanack | 1736 |
| “Well done is better than well said.” | Benjamin Franklin | Poor Richard's Almanack | 1737 |
| “Lost time is never found again.” | Benjamin Franklin | Poor Richard's Almanack | 1748 |
| “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” | Benjamin Franklin | Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy | 1789 |
| “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” | Jane Austen | Pride and Prejudice | 1813 |
| “There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.” | Jane Austen | Emma | 1815 |
| “To be great is to be misunderstood.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Self-Reliance | 1841 |
| “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Self-Reliance | 1841 |
| “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Self-Reliance | 1841 |
| “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Circles | 1841 |
| “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Friendship | 1841 |
| “A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Friendship | 1841 |
| “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” | Ralph Waldo Emerson | Society and Solitude, "Works and Days" | 1870 |
| “It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.” | Søren Kierkegaard | JournalsTranslated from Danish. Often shortened to: Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. | 1843 |
| “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” | Emily Brontë | Wuthering Heights | 1847 |
| “'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” | Alfred, Lord Tennyson | In Memoriam A.H.H. | 1850 |
| “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” | Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Sonnets from the Portuguese, 43 | 1850 |
| “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” | Henry David Thoreau | Walden | 1854 |
| “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” | Henry David Thoreau | Walden | 1854 |
| “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” | Henry David Thoreau | Walden | 1854 |
| “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” | Henry David Thoreau | Walden | 1854 |
| “The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.” | Victor Hugo | Les MisérablesTranslated from French. | 1862 |
| “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” | Lewis Carroll | Through the Looking-Glass | 1871 |
| “If you hear a voice within you saying, 'You are not a painter,' then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working.” | Vincent van Gogh | Letter to his brother Theo, 28 October 1883Translated from Dutch by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. | 1883 |
| “I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” | Oscar Wilde | The Remarkable Rocket | 1888 |
| “Without music, life would be a mistake.” | Friedrich Nietzsche | Twilight of the IdolsTranslated from German; Walter Kaufmann renders it "life would be an error". | 1889 |
| “What does not destroy me makes me stronger.” | Friedrich Nietzsche | Twilight of the IdolsTranslated from German by Walter Kaufmann. | 1889 |
| “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” | Oscar Wilde | The Picture of Dorian Gray | 1890 |
| “I can resist everything except temptation.” | Oscar Wilde | Lady Windermere's Fan | 1892 |
| “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” | Oscar Wilde | Lady Windermere's Fan | 1892 |
| “Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.” | Oscar Wilde | Lady Windermere's Fan | 1892 |
| “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” | Oscar Wilde | An Ideal Husband | 1895 |
| “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” | Oscar Wilde | The Importance of Being Earnest | 1895 |
| “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” | Mark Twain | Pudd'nhead Wilson | 1894 |
| “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” | Mark Twain | Pudd'nhead Wilson | 1894 |
| “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” | Mark Twain | New York Journal, 2 June 1897His actual words. Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated is a later misquote. | 1897 |
| “Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.” | Mark Twain | Following the Equator | 1897 |
| “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” | Mark Twain | Card to the Young People's Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn | 1901 |
| “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” | Booker T. Washington | Up from Slavery | 1901 |
| “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” | George Bernard Shaw | Man and Superman, "Maxims for Revolutionists" | 1903 |
| “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” | Theodore Roosevelt | Theodore Roosevelt: An AutobiographyRoosevelt credited the line to Squire Bill Widener of Virginia. | 1913 |
| “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” | Albert Einstein | Interview in The Saturday Evening Post | 1929 |
| “It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance.” | Albert Einstein | Letter to his son Eduard, 5 February 1930Literal translation from the Einstein Archives. Usually smoothed to: Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. | 1930 |
| “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” | Thomas Edison | Harper's MonthlyCredited to Edison in print by 1901; he confirmed it in a 1927 letter. | 1932 |
| “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” | Franklin D. Roosevelt | First inaugural address | 1933 |
| “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | Wind, Sand and StarsTranslated from French. | 1939 |
| “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” | Helen Keller | Let Us Have FaithOften extended to "or nothing at all", which she didn't write. | 1940 |
| “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.” | Anaïs Nin | The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume 3 (entry of June 1941) | 1941 |
| “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 honour and good sense.” | Winston Churchill | Speech at Harrow School | 1941 |
| “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” | Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | The Little Prince, translated by Katherine Woods | 1943 |
| “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” | Anne Frank | "Give!", an essay written in hiding, 26 March 1944Translated from Dutch; from her stories, not her diary. | 1944 |
| “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” | Viktor Frankl | Man's Search for Meaning | 1946 |
| “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” | eden ahbez | "Nature Boy" (song) | 1947 |
| “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” | J. R. R. Tolkien | The Fellowship of the Ring | 1954 |
| “Not all those who wander are lost.” | J. R. R. Tolkien | The Fellowship of the Ring | 1954 |
| “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.” | Albert Einstein | LIFE magazine, reported by William Miller | 1955 |
| “Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.” | Albert Einstein | LIFE magazine, reported by William Miller | 1955 |
| “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” | Eleanor Roosevelt | You Learn by Living | 1960 |
| “Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ."” | C. S. Lewis | The Four Loves | 1960 |
| “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” | John F. Kennedy | Inaugural address | 1961 |
| “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” | Martin Luther King Jr. | Strength to Love | 1963 |
| “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” | Martin Luther King Jr. | "Where Do We Go from Here?" speech | 1967 |
| “It ain't over till it's over.” | Yogi Berra | Said during the 1973 National League pennant race | 1973 |
| “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.” | Douglas Adams | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | 1979 |
| “You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” | Maya Angelou | Interview in Bell Telephone Magazine | 1982 |
| “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” | Wayne Gretzky | Interview with The Hockey NewsAs reported by the interviewer, Bob McKenzie; the line was also in use elsewhere in 1983. | 1983 |
| “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” | Mary Oliver | "The Summer Day" (poem) | 1990 |
| “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” | Dr. Seuss | Oh, the Places You'll Go! | 1990 |
| “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” | Ray Bradbury | Zen in the Art of Writing | 1990 |
| “What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.” | Maya Angelou | Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey NowHer actual wording. The popular "change your attitude" version is a paraphrase. | 1993 |
| “I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear.” | Rosa Parks | Quiet Strength | 1994 |
| “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” | Nelson Mandela | Long Walk to Freedom | 1994 |
| “For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” | Nelson Mandela | Long Walk to Freedom | 1994 |
| “I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” | Michael Jordan | Nike "Failure" commercial | 1997 |
| “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” | Yogi Berra | The Yogi Book | 1998 |
| “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” | Douglas Adams | The Salmon of Doubt | 2002 |
| “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.” | Steve Jobs | Stanford University commencement address | 2005 |
| “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” | Steve Jobs | Stanford University commencement address | 2005 |
| “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” | Steve Jobs | Stanford University commencement addressJobs was quoting the farewell message on the back of the last Whole Earth Catalog. | 2005 |
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