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To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

— Anatole France

Pour accomplir de grandes choses il ne suffit pas d'agir, il faut rêver; il ne suffit pas de calculer, il faut croire.

Original text (French)

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Variants

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

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More quotes by Anatole France

The gods conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have reasons for so doing.

The White Stone (1905)

Archangel Michael, and you, Powers, Thrones, and Dominations, swear all of you to be faithful to your God.

The Revolt of the Angels (1914)

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

It is by acts, and not by ideas that people live.

All Anatole France quotes →

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Anatole France (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.