Random quotes

Quotes in
Sorted by
Author
Subject
Text
2488 quotes     Show as list

A great rock is not disturbed by the wind; the mind of a wise man is not disturbed by either honor or abuse.
The first step toward wisdom is the realization that the laws of the universe don't care about you.
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
There are times to let things happen, and times to make things happen. Now is that time. You will either make things happen, watch what happens, or wonder what happened.
Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.
The world hates change yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!
The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour; more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
The shadows: some hide, others reveal.
Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
What a man says drunk he has thought sober. -- Flemish proverb
Half of the people in the world are below average.
I don't have a drinking problem 'cept when I can't get a drink.
The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
Lofty questions about the mind are fascinating to ask, philosophers have been asking them for three millennia both in India where I am from and here in the West - but it is only in the brain that we can eventually hope to find the answers.
Information is a difference that makes a difference.
Our mind is our main limitation.
Religion is just mind control.
Wisdom is the strength of the weak.
Schizophrenia --its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win." It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.
Oh I don't mind going to weddings, just as long as it's not my own...
Students have no class
We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
Each part of the brain knows a little bit about what’s happening in some other [parts], but there’s no single place that knows everything. ... It’s like a big corporation.
Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving.
Peace can come only when there is love.
CELEBRITY: One who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.
The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.
Another peculiar characteristic of the human organism when it is dominated by a certain need is that the whole philosophy of the future tends also to change. For our chronically and extremely hungry man, Utopia can be defined very simply as a place where there is plenty of food.
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
However much we might deplore the profit motive, or consumerist values, if everyone just wants i-Pods we would probably be better off than if they wanted class revolution.
Irrespective of whether we are believers or agnostics, whether we believe in God or karma, moral ethics is a code which everyone is able to pursue.
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something, and it is only such love that can know freedom.
The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Some of us, for better or worse, develop very stable, consistent, and largely predictable machineries of self. But in others, the self machinery is more flexible and more open to unexpected turns.
The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.
We are, in the twenty-first century, as we’ve always been: great apes hunting connection and status inside shared hallucinations.
The real danger, I think, is not that machines more intelligent than we are will usurp our role as captains of our destinies, but that we will over-estimate the comprehension of our latest thinking tools, prematurely ceding authority to them far beyond their competence.
Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.
Don't find fault, find a remedy.
Agnostics are people who, like myself, confess themselves to be hopelessly ignorant concerning a variety of matters, about which metaphysicians and theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, dogmatize with the utmost confidence.
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually.
It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.
It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.
A decent government with an effective, but not gratuitously violent, police force and a fair court system are essential. This deters and incapacitates psychopaths, bullies and hotheads - and if it earns the confidence of the people, they don't have to become violent in self-defence.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?
Freedom is not free.
If you face just one opponent, and you doubt yourself, you're out-numbered.
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
A human being in relation with another has very limited control over what happens in that relationship. He is a part of a two-person unit, and the control which any part can have over any whole is strictly limited.
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things.
I don’t know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness.
CRIMINAL: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.
Neither Darwin nor Nietzsche was politically correct, fortunately for us.
The old man, especially if he is in society, in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
Laughter is an instant vacation.
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
People only see what they are prepared to see.
The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web.
Let us repeat the two crucial negative premises as established firmly by all human experience: (1) Words are not the things we are speaking about; and (2) There is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.
Moderation? It's mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It's the devil's dilemma. It's neither doing nor not doing. It's the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence-sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It's for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation...is lukewarm tea, the devil's own brew.
A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.
The chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken.
We find things that do not fit into familiar frameworks hard to understand – such things seem meaningless.
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
There is no such thing as truth. People who really know what happened aren't talking. And the people who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up.
The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self.
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world.
It is not too much to say that in the extreme development the chance to reason of most men is destroyed, as rationality increases and its locus, its control, is moved from the individual to the big-scale organization.
Do illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
Emotion consists of a very well orchestrated set of alterations in the body that has, as a general purpose, making life more survivable by taking care of a danger, of taking care of an opportunity, either/or, or something in between.
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
The more you are motivated by Love, The more Fearless & Free your action will be.
The secret of getting things done is to act!
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
When a group of people make something sacred, they lose the ability to think clearly about it.
People will remember not what you said but how you made them feel.
Lord save me from your followers
Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is feeling the fear, the doubt, the insecurity, and deciding that something else is more important.
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
I am chained to the earth to pay for the freedom of my eyes.
So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or conceptions, the best educated mind being the mind which has the largest stock of them, ready to meet the largest possible variety of the emergencies of life. The lack of education means only the failure to have acquired them, and the consequent liability to be 'floored' and 'rattled' in the vicissitudes of experience.
2488 quotes     Show as list