Robert Fulghum Quotes

84 Sourced Quotes

If we could just figure out how to have more fun at it, maybe more of us would join the ranks of those who seek after justice and mercy.

Robert Fulghum
Weddings seem to be magnets for mishap and for whatever craziness lurks in family closets. In more ways than one, weddings bring out the ding-dong on everybody involved.

Robert Fulghum
We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it's because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be.

Robert Fulghum
Too much high-content information, and I get the existential willies. I keep sputtering out at intersections where life choices must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined life is no picnic.

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

Robert Fulghum
My own movement of thought is not meant to be a straight point-to-point, linear line of march, but horizontal exploration from one area of interest to another. There is no ultimate destination - no finish line to cross, no final conclusion to be reached. It's the way I feel about dancing - you move around a lot, not to get somewhere, but to be somewhere in time.

Robert Fulghum
Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Robert Fulghum
All of these are names given me by other people, but not names I would have given myself. My name is not mine, it's theirs. It's a series of costumes put on my life by other people.

Robert Fulghum
Only now have I finally realized that my life has been an unending field trip. And I have tried hard not to be a tourist. But to be an adventurer, a traveler, an explorer, a learner, and a pilgrim.

Robert Fulghum
I often say that I don't worry about the meaning of life-I can't handle that big stuff. What concerns me is the meaning in life-day by day, hour by hour, while I'm doing whatever it is I do. What counts is not what I do, but how I think about myself while I'm doing it.

Robert Fulghum
Life is. I am. Anything might happen. And I believe I may invest my life with meaning. The uncertainty is a blessing in disguise. If I were absolutely certain about all things, I would spend my life in anxious misery, fearful of losing my way. But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby and wonders shall never, ever cease.

Robert Fulghum
To insist on one's place in the scheme of things and to live up to that place.
To empower others in their reaching for some place in the scheme of things.
To do these things is to make fairy tales come true.

Robert Fulghum
Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Robert Fulghum
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.

Robert Fulghum
I tend to keep books of art more than anything else now. I'm interested in visual things. And astronomy books. Things you can look at over and over and over again and see something new. … My notions of God and the universe have always been too small. And limited by language. So now I'm looking at picture books. My children say I'm just beginning to enter my dotage: can't read, just looks at picture books.

Robert Fulghum
There are places we all come from — deep-rooty-common places — that make us who they are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again — and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.

Robert Fulghum
Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.

Robert Fulghum
Speed and efficiency do not always increase the quality of life.

Robert Fulghum
Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don't forget.

Robert Fulghum
Is it always to be a winners-losers world, or can we keep everyone in the game? Do we still have what it takes to find a better way?

Robert Fulghum
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge - that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts - that hope always triumphs over experience - that laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.

Robert Fulghum
Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air — explode softly — and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap either — not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination instead of death. A child who touched one wouldn't have his hand blown off.

Robert Fulghum
Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It's what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn't count it. Nothing counts without it.

Robert Fulghum
To look this way is to see. To see is to have vision. To have vision is to understand. To understand is to know. To know is to become. To become is to live fully. To live fully is to matter. And to matter is to become light. And to become light is to be loved. And to be loved is to burn. And to burn is to exist. Off and on.

Robert Fulghum
It doesn't matter what you say you believe — it only matters what you do.

Robert Fulghum
The older I get, the more I realize the importance of exercising the various dimensions of my body, soul, mind and heart. Taken together, these aspects give me a sense of wholeness. I want to be a whole human being rather than one who limps on one leg because I don't know how to use all of my parts. Intellectual, emotional, and physical activity are not separate entities. Rather, they are dimensions of the same human being.

Robert Fulghum
I recall an old Sufi story of a good man who was granted one wish by God. The man said he would like to go about doing good without knowing about it. God granted his wish. And then God decided that it was such a good idea, he would grant that wish to all human beings.
And so it has been to this day.

Robert Fulghum
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?

Robert Fulghum
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.

Robert Fulghum
Never, ever regret or apologize for believing that when one man or one woman decides to risk addressing the world with truth, the world may stop what it is doing and hear. There is too much evidence to the contrary.

Robert Fulghum