4,428 quotes about nothing follow in order of popularity. Be sure to bookmark and share your favorites!

A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

Nothing ever is done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

George Bernard Shaw

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

George Bernard Shaw

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

George Bernard Shaw

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

George Bernard Shaw

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

Scott Adams

Nature does nothing uselessly.

Aristotle

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Carl Jung

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Socrates

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Socrates

And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.

Socrates

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.

Socrates

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Socrates

Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.

Socrates

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.

Rene Descartes

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

Horace Mann

Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee; all things are passing; God never changeth.

Saint Teresa Of Avila

However far man may extend himself with his knowledge, however objective he may appear to himself- -ultimately he reaps nothing but his own biography.

Friedrich Nietzsche

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows us that faith proves nothing.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

Friedrich Nietzsche

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Oscar Wilde

This world is the will to power - and nothing besides!

Friedrich Nietzsche

Brothers? Oh, I hate brothers. My older brother just doesn't know when to die, and my younger brothers seem to do nothing but.

Oscar Wilde

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

Friedrich Nietzsche

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Oscar Wilde

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.

Oscar Wilde

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Oscar Wilde

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well worth remembering from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Oscar Wilde

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

Oscar Wilde

I have nothing to declare but my genius.

Oscar Wilde

A grand passion is the privelege of people who have nothing to do.

Oscar Wilde

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

Oscar Wilde

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

Oscar Wilde

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

Oscar Wilde

Which is worse: Hell or nothing?

Chuck Palahniuk

If you could be God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

Chuck Palahniuk

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known.

Chuck Palahniuk

One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.

Benjamin Disraeli

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

Napoleon Bonaparte

If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.

Napoleon Bonaparte

I must see her and press her to my heart. I love her to the point of madness, and I cannot continue to be separated from her. If she no longer loved me, I would have nothing left to do on earth.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.

Sidney J. Harris

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.

Henry Ford

Life is the greatest bargain - we get it for nothing.

Yiddish proverb

There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people.

Thomas Jefferson

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Thomas Jefferson

I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.

Thomas Jefferson

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Thomas Jefferson

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

Soren Kierkegaard

A diplomat must always think twice before he says nothing.

Irish Proverb

Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do; nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace.

John Lennon

Before Elvis, there was nothing.

John Lennon

There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.

Scott Adams

There's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people.

Robert Frost

Half the world is composed of those who have something to say but can't; the other half is of those who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Robert Frost

Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Lao tzu

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is.

Victor Cousin

There is nothing that gives a man consequence, and renders him fit for command, like a support that renders him independent of everybody but the State he serves.

George Washington

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities.

Edgar Allan Poe

Money: There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.

Sophocles

What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.

Wendell Phillips

In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

Edgar Allan Poe

There's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The trouble with some women is they get all excited about nothing -- and then they marry him.

M. C. Escher

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.

Rene Descartes

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.

William Shakespeare

Nothing will come of nothing.

William Shakespeare

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

William Shakespeare

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

William Shakespeare

Life is a tale told by an idiot - full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

William Shakespeare

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with 't.

William Shakespeare

For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.

Saint Teresa Of Avila

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility.

William Shakespeare

There is nothing permanent except change.

Heraclitus Of Ephesus

All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

Aldous Huxley

If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase.

Epictetus

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

Mahatma Gandhi

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

Ernest Hemingway

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

Vincent van Gogh

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Vincent van Gogh

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Seneca

Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.

Seneca

To see a man fearless in dangers. untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.

Seneca

Nothing deters a good man from doing what is honourable.

Seneca

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

Seneca

Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.

Seneca

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

Charles Dickens

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this, to know so much and to have control over nothing.

Herodotus

If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered.

Stephen Hawking

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

Michel de Montaigne

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.

Michel de Montaigne

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

Michel de Montaigne

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

Michel de Montaigne

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

Michel de Montaigne

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

Michel de Montaigne

But in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke

He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.

Benjamin Franklin

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises; for never intending to go beyond promises; it costs nothing.

Edmund Burke

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.

Edmund Burke

All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke

No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Edmund Burke

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.

Alfred North Whitehead

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

Dale Carnegie

Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.

Booker T. Washington

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.

Will Durant

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

Will Durant

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Will Durant

Nothing more detestable does the earth produce than an ungrateful man.

Ausonius

Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.

Ausonius

Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find - nothing.

Aesop

Nothing feeds upon itself as liberality does.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

Epicurus

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Epicurus

There's nothing wrong with anger provided you use it constructively.

Wayne Dyer

Nothing lasts forever--not even your troubles.

Arnold H. Glasgow

There's nothing so contagious in a boat as rivets going.

Rudyard Kipling

It is better to play than do nothing.

Confucius

I have not seen a person who loved virtue, or one who hated what was not virtuous. He who loved virtue would esteem nothing above it.

Confucius

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.

Leonardo da Vinci

Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.

J. K. Rowling

It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.

J. K. Rowling

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.

J. K. Rowling

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

Steve Jobs

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

Sir Francis Bacon

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find how you yourself have altered.

Nelson Mandela

Nothing is more useful than silence.

Menander

Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.

Kin Hubbard

Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he's overcharging you.

Kin Hubbard

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

Bill Clinton

Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.

William Cobbett

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

Albert Camus

A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to bet better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.

Albert Camus

He who knows nothing, doubts nothing.

Spanish Proverb

Drink nothing without seeing it; sign nothing without reading it.

Spanish Proverb

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Henri Bergson

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally stopping before it gets there.

Agnes Repplier

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Albert Camus

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their pedestals.

Agnes Repplier

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

Albert Camus

How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward.

Spanish Proverb

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.

Lord Chesterfield

Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.

Thomas H. Huxley

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

William Faulkner

There's nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team.

Jason Fried

Every time we remember to say 'thank you,' we experience nothing less than heaven on earth.

Sarah Ban Breathnach

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion... or you shall learn nothing.

Thomas H. Huxley

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.

Lawana Blackwell

If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.

William Faulkner

Remember, nothing that's good works by itself, just to please you. You have to make the damn thing work.

Thomas A. Edison

He was guilty of nothing, except that he earned his own fortune and never forgot that it was his.

Ayn Rand

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 buy rational actions.

Ayn Rand

When a Cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except put up with it until the wind changes.

T.s. Eliot

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.

Ayn Rand

(1) Never give anything away for nothing. (2) Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait). (3) Always take everything back if you possibly can.

William S. Burroughs

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

Gore Vidal

Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it.

Ayn Rand

Why am I fighting to live, if I'm just living to fightWhy am I trying to see, when there aint nothing in sightWhy am I trying to give, when no one gives me a tryWhy am I dying to live, if I'm just living to die?someone tell me y.

Tupac Shakur

A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; A government individual may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

Ayn Rand

Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.

Hermann Hesse

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

Alexander Hamilton

Nothing adventured, nothing attained.

Peter McWilliams

I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.

Margaret Cho

The only thing America respects is power and power concedes nothing. After the LA Riots, they tried to calm us down and nothing changed since.

Tupac Shakur

You argue with the umpire because there is nothing else you can do about it.

Leo Durocher

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

Woody Allen

Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.

Germaine Greer

Your people, sir, is nothing but a great beast.

Alexander Hamilton

In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.

William S. Burroughs

Nothing is beautiful except the abnormal; and nothing is abnormal until we have grasped the norm.

C. S. Lewis

Homer is new this morning, and perhaps nothing is as old as today's newspaper.

Charles Peguy

If God only used perfect people, nothing would get done, ... God will use anybody if you're available.

Frederick Warren

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

Woody Allen

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get--only with what you are expecting to give--which is everything.

Katharine Hepburn

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

Blaise Pascal

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconsistancy.

Jonathan Swift

Let us weigh the gain and the loss, in wagering that God is. Consider these alternatives: if you win, you win all, if you lose you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then, to wager that he is.

Blaise Pascal

All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals that know nothing.

Maurice Maeterlinck

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Helen Keller

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

Helen Keller

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Helen Keller

Nothing can be done at once hastily and prudently.

Publilius Syrus

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Milton Friedman

We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.

Publilius Syrus

In matters of the heart, nothing is true except the improbable.

Madame de Stael

They believe that nothing will happen because they have closed their doors.

Maurice Maeterlinck

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

Jules Renard

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is worth more than this day.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is worse than active ignorance.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe