Random quotes

Quotes in
Sorted by
Author
Subject
Text
Show as list
2705 quotes    

While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any other area of our lives, faith in God still holds immense prestige in our society. Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about. It is telling that this aura of nobility extends only to those faiths that still have many subscribers. Anyone caught worshipping Poseidon, even at sea, will be thought insane.
 
Having a self, even a simple self, allows you to look into the world and put a mark over what is more important and less important. It's a way of classifying the world in terms of your own needs.
 
Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
 
Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.
 
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
 
The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more careworn he becomes.
 
What I say to myself - who says it? Who does he say it to?
 
A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
 
If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
 
POLITICS: War Without Bloodshed.
 
As a man believes, so he will act.
 
General system theory, therefore, is a general science of "wholeness...The meaning of the somewhat mystical expression, "The whole is more that the sum of its parts" is simply that constitutive characteristics are not explanable from the characteristics of the isolated parts. The characteristics of the complex, therefore, appear as "new" or "emergent.
 
I think therefore I seem to be.
 
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
 
What I have tried to show is that the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity - that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe.
 
if you want to do something incredible, something that makes you stand out above the rest, then you have to become comfortable being different from the rest. People will think you’re weird, crazy, selfish, arrogant, irresponsible, obnoxious, stupid, disrespectful, fat, insecure, ugly, shallow, etc. Those closest to you will often become the harshest. If you have weak boundaries or are not confident with your own ideas and desires, then you’re not going to make it very far.
 
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
 
Ultimately, fear of failure generates a vicious circle that creates what is most feared. To break this cycle, you need to make peace with failure. It isn't enough to merely tolerate it; you need to appreciate the failure and use it ...
 
This is a feminist bookstore. There is no humor section.
 
The artist . . . can leave a great many of the most fundamental aspects of culture to be picked up not from his actual words, but from his emphasis. [He can] group and stress [words] so that the reader almost unconsciously receives information which is not explicit in the sentences and which the artist would find it hard - almost impossible - to express in analytic terms. This impressionistic technique is utterly foreign to the methods of science.
 
2705 quotes