Robert Fulghum Quotes

Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found.

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.

Do you ever go off with a long grocery list and come home from the store with a bunch of different stuff? And somebody in the family unsacks the groceries and wants to know why you got this and didn't get that and just where is the whatever? And you want to say, 'Well, just be glad I came back, okay?' And the unpacker says, 'Well, next time bring what's on the list.'

Sometimes, when asked the what-do-you-do question, it occurs to me to say that I work for the government. I have a government job, essential to national security. I AM A CITIZEN. Like the Supreme Court judges, my job is for life, and the well-being of my country depends on me. It seems fair to think that I should be held accountable for my record in the same way I expect accountability from those who seek elected office. I would like to be able to say that I can stand on my record and am proud of it.

But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby, and wonders shall never, ever cease.

Manuals have their uses ... but they are not to be confused with living.

The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, "Well, what're you waiting for? Let's DANCE.

Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

And I’m not confused about the lack of, or the need for, imagination in low or high places. We could do better we must do better. There are far worse things to drop on people than crayolas.

Instructions For Wayfarers They will declare: Every journey has been taken. You shall respond: I have not been to see myself. They will insist: Everything has been spoken. You shall reply: I have not had my say. They will tell you: Everything has been done. You shall reply: My way is not complete. You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard. Fear not. You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper. And you shall go through and on . . . —Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis, THIRD WISH

But it does no good--solves nothing--to distance myself from the front lines of human need by using the mail as a safe shelter. I believe that serving the best ends of humanity means getting out in the middle of it just as it is, not staying home writing checks and thinking hopeful thoughts. The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are. And you're damned right that's idealistic. No apology. When idealism goes into the trash as junk mail, we're finished.

It wasn’t in books. It wasn’t in a church. What I needed to know was out there in the world.

You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago.

I do not want to know what you will hope for. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to a long, hard hill: ‘Them that’s going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain’t, get out of the way’.

When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my "natural" talent for driving, not knowing that I had already been secretly driving my mother's car around the neighborhood. When I took the test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret.

The heart will turn to a prune if love is always by the numbers. How will you know if someone really loves you if they only meet your expectations and not your needs?

Even if your watch is full of diamonds the hour is still 60 minutes

But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn.

If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.

Share everything. Don't take things that aren't yours. Put things back where you found them.

This is an exercise in power - the power of mind over matter. If you don't mind being inadequate, it doesn't matter.

Imagination is more important than information. Einstein said that, and he should know. And they come. And they look. And we push. And they fly. We to stay and die on our beds. They to go and die howsoever, yet inspiring those who come after them to find their own edge. And fly.

If someone were to ask me whether I believed in God, or saw God, or had a particular relationship with God, I would reply that I don't separate God from my world in my thinking. I feel that God is everywhere. That's why I never feel separated from God or feel I must seek God, any more than a fish in the ocean feels it must seek water. In a sense, God is the "ocean" in which we live.

It's not that I'm not grateful for all this attention. It's just that fame and fortune ought to add up to more than fame and fortune.

To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'

The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.

Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.... My grandfather would say we're part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don't lose our place in it.

Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.

Public lives are lived out on the job and in the marketplace, where certain rules, conventions, laws, and social customs keep most of us in line. Private lives are lived out in the presence of family, friends, and neighbors who must be considered and respected even though the rules and proscriptions are looser than what's allowed in public. But in our secret lives, inside our own heads, almost anything goes.

I've always made a clear distinction between making a life and making a living.

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

I'd like to speak a foreign language well enough to get the jokes. I'd like to talk with Socrates, and watch Michelangelo sculpt David. I'd like to see the world as it was a million years ago and a million years hence.

Infinite possibility in all things is a certainty. That pretty much covers theology and philosophy for me.

The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. The grass is greenest where it is watered.

If you can't find the exact quote you want, make it up.

Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don't like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here's to the eternal tandem.

Living things have been doing just that for a long, long time. Through every kind of disaster and setback and catastrophe. We are survivors.

Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

Even the finest workman needs to inspect his work critically.

I don't think there is a hidden purpose to the universe that you have to puzzle out.

Clean up your own mess.

You may never have proof of your importance but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who.

The name is not important anymore - it's the tone that counts. I feel like an old dog I know. He will come to any name you call him, just so long as your demeanor carries with it the promise of affection and food

Now everybody has some secret goals in life.

Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day.

Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.

Dreams are more powerful than facts.

We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.