21 Thought-Provoking Quotes to Accompany Us into the New Year

Those who know me know that I enjoy pithy or insightful quotes. As Voltaire once observed, “A good quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit.” Samuel Johnson adds this qualifier: “A quotation is useful in proportion to its truth.”

Good quotes work because they compress insight, lending borrowed clarity to thoughts we haven’t yet shaped cleanly ourselves. I keep a file of favorite quotes so I'm able to revisit them from time to time. Also, they can be useful as intros to stories, articles, essays and blog posts. They are frequently handy.

Here are 19 quotes for pondering as we reflect on the past year and prepare for the year ahead.

"These are the times that try men's souls."
—Thomas Paine

“War does not determine who is right—only who is left.”
— Bertrand Russell

"Optimism is the opium of the people."

—Milan Kundera

"That we live in strange times has, I believe, been established beyond the shadow of a doubt."
—Irina Slav

“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious,
 it seems, takes longer.”
—Edward R. Murrow

"I learned to have pleasure in reading simply because I love stories."
—Abdulrazak Gurnah

“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”

 -– Helen Keller.

“If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.”

—Peter Handke

“Nothing great, nothing of value and nothing that will last
can be got without effort.”
—Andre Gide

"If voting changed anything, they would make it illegal."
— Joni Mitchell

“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
-– John Wooden

"What we anticipate seldom occurs;
what we least expected generally happens."

--Benjamin Disraeli

"Read and meditate upon the wars of the great captains. This is the only means of learning the art of war."

—Napoleon Bonaparte

"What matters in life is not what happens to you, but what you remember and how you remember it."

--Gabriel García Márquez

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."
—Gustave Le Bon

"The more the state interferes in the life of a nation, the less free the people will be."
—Friedrich Hayek

Sooner or later...one has to take sides – if one is to remain human.

—Graham Greene

“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
-– Robert Louis Stevenson

"Sincerity is not truth. Being earnest
does not necessarily make one right."
--E. Newman