'In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.'

'All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.'

- "The Lord of the Rings" author JRR Tolkien (1892-1973)

'In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.'

- Isaac Asimov

'Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul—and sings the tunes without the words—and never stops at all.'

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

'The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd.'

- Poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.'

- Author Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

'When you're climbing Mount Everest, nothing is easy. You just take one step at a time, never look back and always keep your eyes glued to the top.'

- Author Jacqueline Susann (1918-1974)

'The true measure of all our actions is how long the good in them lasts.'

- Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

'Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.'

- "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)

'I've come to the conclusion that life is for the taking and just too short to dwell on the negative.'

- Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan (1971-2018)

'You only go around once, but if you play your cards right, once is enough.'

- Frank Sinatra (1915–1998)

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

A quote by Roger Federer

"There is no way around hard work. Embrace it."

'I don't know what you can say about a day when you see four beautiful sunsets.'

- Astronaut John Glenn (1921–2016)

'The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.'

- Boxing champion Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

'Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.'

- Rapper Tupac Shakur (1971-1996)

'The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.'

- Billy Joel (1949-present)

'When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.''

- Mister Rogers (1928-2003)

‘Leaves of Grass’ remains relevant to American identity 170 years later

Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” is over 170 years old, but many say its poems are as relevant as ever. This podcast unpacks how Whitman constructed a dynamic, original text that would transcend his time and inspire generations of poets.

Polish chemist and physicist Marie Curie (1867–1934) on learning

“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

'Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.'

Meyer Wolfsheim in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"

Author David Foster Wallace's 'This Is Water' speech provides guidance for adulthood

'I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.'

- Martha Washington (1731-1802)

'The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.'

- Mark Twain, from "Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales"

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Urushiol, the oily toxin in poison ivy, can remain allergenic on clothing for years.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.