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Quotes

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experienced, but that’s not where I live.

—Marilyn Monroe, 1962

Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted.

—Sammy Davis Jr., 1965

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

—Cato the Elder, c. 184 BC

How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”

—Persius, c. 60

We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.

—Clark Gable, 1935

He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.

—E. R. Dodds, 1951

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

—Voltaire, 1723

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790

Most authors seek fame, but I seek for justice—a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

—Davy Crockett, 1834

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 59 BC

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

—Epictetus, c. 100

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

When I do a show, the whole show revolves around me, and if I don’t show up, they can just forget it.

—Ethel Merman, c. 1955