Tonight's Guests
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What does it mean to live a good life?
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Socrates
c. 470 BC – 399 BC · Greek
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Plato
c. 428 BC – c. 348 BC · Greek
“Reality is merely a shadow on the cave wall.”
Aristotle
384 BC – 322 BC · Greek
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is a habit.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
1844 – 1900 · German
“God is dead, and we have killed him.”
Simone de Beauvoir
1908 – 1986 · French
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
Hannah Arendt
1906 – 1975 · German-American
“The banality of evil is the most terrifying thing of all.”
Bertrand Russell
1872 – 1970 · British
“The whole problem with the world is that fools are so certain and wise people so full of doubts.”
Simone Weil
1909 – 1943 · French
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Albert Camus
1913 – 1960 · French-Algerian
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Lao Tzu
c. 6th century BC – present · Chinese
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”
Confucius
551 BC – 479 BC · Chinese
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
1126 – 1198 · Andalusian
“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence.”
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759 – 1797 · British
“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.”
John Stuart Mill
1806 – 1873 · British
“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way.”
Immanuel Kant
1724 – 1804 · Prussian
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.”
Marie Curie
1867 – 1934 · Polish-French
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”
Richard Feynman
1918 – 1988 · American
“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”
Charles Darwin
1809 – 1882 · British
“There is grandeur in this view of life.”
Ada Lovelace
1815 – 1852 · British
“The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
Alan Turing
1912 – 1954 · British
“Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.”
Nikola Tesla
1856 – 1943 · Serbian-American
“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
Albert Einstein
1879 – 1955 · German-Swiss-American
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Carl Sagan
1934 – 1996 · American
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
Rachel Carson
1907 – 1964 · American
“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
Rosalind Franklin
1920 – 1958 · British
“Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
1958 – present · American
“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.”
Stephen Hawking
1942 – 2018 · British
“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”
William Shakespeare
1564 – 1616 · English
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Jane Austen
1775 – 1817 · British
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Mark Twain
1835 – 1910 · American
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Virginia Woolf
1882 – 1941 · British
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
James Baldwin
1924 – 1987 · American
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Toni Morrison
1931 – 2019 · American
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
Oscar Wilde
1854 – 1900 · Irish
“I can resist everything except temptation.”
George Orwell
1903 – 1950 · British
“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
David Foster Wallace
1962 – 2008 · American
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline.”
Zora Neale Hurston
1891 – 1960 · American
“I am not tragically colored. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood.”
Franz Kafka
1883 – 1924 · Czech
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
Jorge Luis Borges
1899 – 1986 · Argentine
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1821 – 1881 · Russian
“The soul is healed by being with children.”
Octavia Butler
1947 – 2006 · American
“All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you.”
Frederick Douglass
1817 – 1895 · American
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Harriet Tubman
c. 1822 – 1913 · American
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
1929 – 1968 · American
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Malcolm X
1925 – 1965 · American
“By any means necessary.”
Nelson Mandela
1918 – 2013 · South African
“It always seems impossible until it's done.”
Mahatma Gandhi
1869 – 1948 · Indian
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
1884 – 1962 · American
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Winston Churchill
1874 – 1965 · British
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall never surrender.”
Ida B. Wells
1862 – 1931 · American
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
Sojourner Truth
c. 1797 – 1883 · American
“Ain't I a woman?”
Angela Davis
1944 – present · American
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
George Carlin
1937 – 2008 · American
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Richard Pryor
1940 – 2005 · American
“I believe the ability to think is blessed. If you can think about a situation, you can deal with it.”
Robin Williams
1951 – 2014 · American
“You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.”
Joan Rivers
1933 – 2014 · American
“I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.”
Lenny Bruce
1925 – 1966 · American
“The only honest art form is laughter, comedy.”
Moms Mabley
1894 – 1975 · American
“Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young one.”
Bill Hicks
1961 – 1994 · American
“It's just a ride.”
Nora Ephron
1941 – 2012 · American
“Everything is copy.”
Phyllis Diller
1917 – 2012 · American
“A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
1756 – 1791 · Austrian
“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.”
Ludwig van Beethoven
1770 – 1827 · German
“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”
Louis Armstrong
1901 – 1971 · American
“What a wonderful world.”
Nina Simone
1933 – 2003 · American
“I'll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.”
Bob Dylan
1941 – present · American
“The times they are a-changin'.”
Billie Holiday
1915 – 1959 · American
“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.”
Miles Davis
1926 – 1991 · American
“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”
Freddie Mercury
1946 – 1991 · British
“I won't be a rock star. I will be a legend.”
Johnny Cash
1932 – 2003 · American
“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down.”
Aretha Franklin
1942 – 2018 · American
“Being the Queen is not all about singing. It's about being a voice for the voiceless.”
David Bowie
1947 – 2016 · British
“I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.”
Leonard Cohen
1934 – 2016 · Canadian
“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”
Patti Smith
1946 – present · American
“Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.”
Steve Jobs
1955 – 2011 · American
“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
Grace Hopper
1906 – 1992 · American
“The most dangerous phrase in the language is: We've always done it this way.”
Tim Berners-Lee
1955 – present · British
“The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet.”
Aaron Swartz
1986 – 2013 · American
“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.”
Buckminster Fuller
1895 – 1983 · American
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. Build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Christopher Hitchens
1949 – 2011 · British-American
“That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
Susan Sontag
1933 – 2004 · American
“The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.”
bell hooks
1952 – 2021 · American
“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination.”
Cornel West
1953 – present · American
“Justice is what love looks like in public.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates
1975 – present · American
“The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions.”
Roxane Gay
1974 – present · American
“I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”
Malcolm Gladwell
1963 – present · Canadian-American
“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”
Yuval Noah Harari
1976 – present · Israeli
“Fiction is the most powerful force on earth.”
Brené Brown
1965 – present · American
“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up.”
Frida Kahlo
1907 – 1954 · Mexican
“I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”
Leonardo da Vinci
1452 – 1519 · Italian
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
Maya Angelou
1928 – 2014 · American
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Adam Smith
1723 – 1790 · Scottish
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher that we expect our dinner, but from his regard to his own interest.”
Karl Marx
1818 – 1883 · German
“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
Jalal ad-Din Rumi
1207 – 1273 · Persian
“What you seek is seeking you.”
Amelia Earhart
1897 – 1937 · American
“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”
Cleopatra VII
c. 69 BC – 30 BC · Egyptian
“I will not be triumphed over.”
Abraham Lincoln
1809 – 1865 · American
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.”
Sigmund Freud
1856 – 1939 · Austrian
“The mind is like an iceberg; it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.”
Noam Chomsky
1928 – present · American
“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
Isaac Newton
1643 – 1727 · English
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Emily Dickinson
1830 – 1886 · American
“I dwell in Possibility — A fairer House than Prose.”
Mary Shelley
1797 – 1851 · British
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
Barack Obama
1961 – present · American
“The audacity of hope itself.”
Jerry Seinfeld
1954 – present · American
“What's the deal with humanity?”
Steve Martin
1945 – present · American
“A wild and crazy philosopher.”
Martin Short
1950 – present · Canadian
“Uncontainable energy in human form.”
Michelle Obama
1964 – present · American
“When they go low, we go high.”
Jack Black
1969 – present · American
“The power of rock compels you.”
Dolly Parton
1946 – present · American
“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
Anthony Bourdain
1956 – 2018 · American
“Your body is not a temple. It's an amusement park.”
Oprah Winfrey
1954 – present · American
“Live your best life.”
Conan O'Brien
1963 – present · American
“Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.”
Keanu Reeves
1964 – present · Canadian
“Be excellent to each other.”
Roald Dahl
1916 – 1990 · British
“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”
Dr. Seuss
1904 – 1991 · American
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
1867 – 1957 · American
“Home is the nicest word there is.”
Jon Stewart
1962 – present · American
“Bullshit is everywhere.”