User:JustAnotherWebSurfer/quotes

Updates to this page will slow down or cease completely. My collection has been copied over to this location for longevity and is to be updated more often. Noli nothis permittere te terere. The brightest day has the darkest shadows. "Anima sana in corpore sano." - Juvenal "Veni, vidi, vici." - Julius Caesar "Be polite, be efficient; have a plan to kill everyone you meet." - Old U.S. Marine creed "It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." "There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven." — Isaac Asimov "Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do." - Voltaire "Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." - C. S. Lewis "Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." - Terry Pratchett "Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." - Elbert Hubard "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) "If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag." "I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring" - David Bowie “Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” - George Bernard Shaw "An idealist sees the world as it should be, a realist sees the world as it is, and a pessimist sees both." - ? "Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad. But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue." - David Hume "Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach." - Aristotle "The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." - Aristotle "Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind." - John Tillotson "Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace." - the Dalai Lama "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr. "The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions." - Thomas Hobbes "There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant" - Alan Greenspan "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil "The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, Foreword "Reason is the pace; increase of science, the way; and the benefit of man-kind, the end." - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan "To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." - Benjamin Disraeli "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books." - Sigmund Freud "When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "happy". They told me I didn't understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life." — John Lennon "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde "When the game is over, the king and pawn go into the same box" - Italian proverb “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - Andre Gide "Religion is like a penis. It's fine to have one; it's fine to be proud of it, but please, don't whip it out in public and start waving it around. Also, don't try to shove it down other people's throats." “Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies." - Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan “Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.” - Dr. Joyce Brothers “You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.” - Albert Camus "Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds." - Franklin D. Roosevelt “What is a rebel? A man who says no” - Albert Camus “We are all special cases.” - Albert Camus "What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal." - Albert Pine "The soldier of the future is an F-16 on legs" - Jean-Louis DeGay (US Army Natick Research Development and Engineering Center) “Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.” - Anton Chekhov “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” - Albert Camus "I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means." - Clarence Darrow "Whoever doesn't miss the Soviet Union has no heart, Whoever wants it back has no brain" - Vladimir Putin “The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.” - Arthur C. Clarke “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” - General George S. Patton “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” - Albert Camus "Reason is the pace; increase of science, the way; and the benefit of man-kind, the end." - Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” - Albert Camus “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” - Albert Einstein "Have no friends not equal to yourself." - Confucius “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” - Confucius "To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge." - Benjamin Disraeli “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” - Oscar Wilde “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” - Oscar Wilde “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.“ - Niccolo Machiavelli "Never do an enemy a small injury." - Niccolo Machiavelli “Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.” - Albert Camus “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.” - Albert Camus “A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing” - Albert Camus “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion” - Albert Camus Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many." - Mark 5:9 "Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color." - Don Hirschberg “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” - Socrates "No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding." - Plato "The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." - Socrates "Ignorance, the root and stem of every evil." - Plato "The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being." - Socrates “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.” — Aristophanes “Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.” — Robert A. Heinlein "The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination." - Voltaire “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” - Ernest Hemingway "Every man dies. Not every man lives." - William Wallace “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” - Terry Pratchett, Diggers "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." - Mark Twain "Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't." - Richard Bach "Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out." - Anton Chekhov "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.” - Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time “One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure its worth watching.” “On a large enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” - Chuck Palahniuk “I know of only one duty, and that is to love” - Albert Camus “Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.” ― Terry Pratchett, Jingo “One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything, except a good reputation.” - Oscar Wilde “Every man dies - Not every man really lives.” - William Ross Wallace “The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.” - Ernest Hemingway “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” - Oscar Wilde “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” - Tao Te Ching “Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.” - Henrik Tikkanen “The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations” - Andre Gide “Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used” - Carl Sagan "In lieu of technology and science, smartness can be thought of as the practical application of intelligence." - PX “The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason” - Marya Mannes “The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence” - ? “Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late” - Benjamin Franklin “Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change.” - Socrates “In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity.” - Konrad Adenauer “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” - James Garfield "7 DEADLY SINS Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice." — Mahatma Gandhi “It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.” - Albert Camus “To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.” - Albert Camus “Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret.” - Dr. Laurence J. Peter “Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.” - Buddha “Suffering and taking sin upon himself might have been right for that preacher of small people. But I rejoice in great sin as my great solace.” - Friedrich Nietzsche “He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend - provided, of course, that he really is dead.” - Voltaire “The tragedy of human life consists in our vain attempts to stretch the limits of things which can never become unlimited, to reach the infinite by absurdly adding to the rungs of the ladder of the finite.” - Rabindranath Tagore “Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one” - Benjamin Franklin "The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back." — Abigail Van Buren "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." — Abraham Lincoln "Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved." — Helen Keller “Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.” - Albert Camus “Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.” - Albert Camus "Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing." — Abraham Lincoln "Once a month, some women act like men act all the time." — Robert A. Heinlein "If there is beauty in character, there will be harmony in the home. If there is harmony in the home, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world." — Chinese Proverb “I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.” - Chuck Palahniuk "The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear." — Socrates “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.” - Albert Camus (I disapprove of such belief in veiled threats and hedge betting) "The President of the United States summons the nation to church on Thanksgiving Day to give thanks to "Almighty God" for the abundant harvest and all other blessings. But what has Almighty God -- I have no desire to appear irreverent -- what has Almighty God as a personal being to do with the harvests? If it is he who produces our crops, then being Almighty there should never be a failure of crops. But since crops frequently fail, it follows that there is no Almighty person in charge of them -- unless he brings failure purposely. Therefore, if God is to be thanked for large crops, he must be blamed when the crops are a failure. . . . If God sends the rain and the sunshine which develops and ripens our wheat, who sends the storms and the insects which destroy much of it? And if he sends both, then why not thank him for one and blame him for the other?" - John Dietrich "Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!" - Richard Dawkins "Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go." — T. S. Eliot ""I take it you know my companion?" "Oh,yes!" said Savage, his smile disappearing. "We know all about Ruby Journey. Please don't let her kill anyone important. Or set fire to anything." "Your reputation precedes you," Random said dryly to Ruby." — Simon R. Green (Deathstalker Honor) "Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "In all tests of character, when two viewpoints are pitted against one another, in the final analysis the thing that will strike you the most, is not who was right or wrong, strong or weak, wise or foolish.... but who would go to the greatest lengths in considering the other's perspective. " — Mike Dooley “Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.” - Albert Camus "Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the Universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a chair has wet paint on it, and he'll have to touch it to be sure." "The difference between humor and tragedy is that humor is when it happens to someone else." "You cry, I cry. You laugh, I laugh. You fall off a cliff, I laugh even harder." “The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.” - Albert Camus "My mind works like lightning...one brilliant flash and it's gone." "Manipulation of grammar is a freedom earned by the most eloquent lyricists." "As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out." - Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" “When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.” - Albert Camus “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” - Plato "You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word." - Al Capone "Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight." - Rossiter Worthington Raymond "While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil." - John Taylor “When we say ‘our rulers’, we mean those who are engaged in the manipulation of symbols. We must consider ourselves a symbolic, semantic class of life, and cannot cease from being so… those who control the symbols rule us. Bankers, priests, lawyers,… politicians, [and news media] constitute one class [of our rulers] and work together. They do not produce any values but manipulate the values produced by others, and often pass signs for no value at all. Scientists and teachers also comprise a ruling class. They produce the main values mankind has, but, at present, they do not realize this. They are, in the main, ruled by the cunning methods of the first class.” - Alfred Korzybski "Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember Nothing is true. Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember Everything is permitted. We work in the dark to serve the light. We are assassins. Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." — The eponymous Assassin's Creed Sensitive dependence on initial conditions; That is the Butterfly Effect. FEAR = Fuck Everything And Run Porsche Philosophy: Believe in beliefs. Believe in principles. Believe in values. Believe that form does not follow function, but is function. Believe that every line has it's purpose. And to painstakingly construct that purpose is beautiful. Believe that the form can always be better. That the search can be just as gratifying as the end result. And that the end result dictates who we are. Desiderata: [with a minor edit] Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.