'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.'

A quote by Alex Haley

"Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you."

'Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.'

- Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968)

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

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

'What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through.'

- First African American Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)

'Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.'

- Harper Lee from "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Writer James Baldwin once criticized Langston Hughes for squandering his talent

In 1959, Baldwin, the author of renowned works like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Giovanni’s Room,” reviewed Hughes’ “Selected Poems” for the New York Times. Baldwin panned the book, writing, “Every time I read Langston Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts—and depressed that he has done so little with them.” (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

'A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.'

- Jackie Robinson, the first Black MLB player (1919-1972)

'At every moment, we always have a choice, even if it feels as if we don’t. Sometimes that choice may simply be to think a more positive thought.'

- Singer Tina Turner (1993–2023)

'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)

'No big challenge has ever been solved, and no lasting improvement has ever been achieved, unless people dare to try something different.'

- Apple CEO Tim Cook (1960 - present)

'You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.'

- Hollywood legend Bette Davis (1908 - 1989)

'Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.'

-Author Arthur Miller (1915-2005) in "Death of a Salesman"

'Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.'

- US President James Madison (1751-1836)

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.'

- Pablo Picasso

'If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'

- Activist Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

'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)

'When you come to a fork in the road, take it.'

- Baseball great Yogi Berra (1925-2015)

'All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate … I choose love.'

-Johnny Cash (1932-2003)

'We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.'

- President Jimmy Carter (1924-2024)

'Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.'

- Author Philip Roth (1933-2018)

'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'

- Playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Existentialism inspired Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr.

The Danish philosopher, sometimes called “the father of existentialism,” believed that individuals needed to resist the temptation of conformity and instead discover their authentic selves. His work became remarkably influential in the 20th century. In 1944, Roosevelt said that reading Kierkegaard made him understand how the Nazis could’ve enacted so much violence. In 1959, King wrote that existentialism was “especially meaningful for our time.”

'Fear of life closes off more opportunities for us than fear of death ever does.'

- Actress Agnes Moorehead (1900–1974)

'I can’t go back to yesterday–because I was a different person then.'

- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" author Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)

'Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.'

- Artist Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

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

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

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.'

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

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

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

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

In recent years a child anxiety expert has created and tested a novel phobia and anxiety treatment approach for children, focused on changing how parents respond to the fears.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

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.

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

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

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

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.

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

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

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

Poison ivy will likely become both larger and more resilient due to climate change.

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.