Thrivenotes

Thrive Quotes, now over 400!

In my heart, there are two wolves: a wolf of love and a wolf of hate. It all depends on which one I feed each day.

Somebody: “I tell you, he’s so well dressed that when he walks down the street people turn around to look at him.”
Beau Brummell: “Then he is not well dressed.”

Nature abhors a vacuum. When a head lacks brains, nature fills it with conceit.

Some minds are like concrete, all mixed up and permanently set.

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

If an ass goes traveling it will not come home a horse.

Live well. It is the best revenge.

The universe is an island, surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds universes.

Networking just means a) meeting people who at some point can do things for you (or vice versa) and b) making a favorable impression on them.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it. — Abraham Lincoln

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. — Adam Smith

Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to. — Alan Keightley

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. — Alan Watts

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. — Albert Camus

But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself. — Albert Camus

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. — Albert Camus

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. — Albert Camus

I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. — Albert Camus

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. — Albert Camus

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. — Albert Camus

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? — Albert Camus

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. — Albert Camus

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion. — Albert Camus

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. — Albert Camus

Integrity has no need of rules. — Albert Camus

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

The significant problems we face in life can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. — Albert Ienstein

Look with complete innocence at the infinitely improbable thing before you. — Aldous Huxley

Science fiction is the sovereign prophylactic against future shock. — Alvin Toffler

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. — Ambrose Redmoon

The problem with close-minded people is that they usually have their mouths open. — Amy O. (of 364quotes.blogspot.com)

One man with courage is a majority. — Andrew Jackson

Really, it’s the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world who are the ones that do. — Anonymous

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. — Anonymous

Stoic: A member of a Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BC, holding that all things, properties, relations, etc. are governed by unvarying natural laws, and that the wise man should follow virtue alone, obtained through reason, remaining indifferent to the external world and to passion or emotion. — Anonymous

In the popular imagination, *asceticism* may be considered obsessive or even masochistic in nature. However, the askēsis enjoined by religion functions in order to bring about greater freedom in various areas of one’s life (such as freedom from compulsions and temptations) and greater peacefulness of mind (with a concomitant increase in clarity and power of thought). — Anonymous

What makes the desert beautiful, is that somewhere, it hides a well. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth. — Archimedes

There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves.
This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work. — Aristotle

The distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by… the pollution of the language. — Arne Tiselius

Abraham Lincoln reportedly said that, given eight hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend six sharpening his axe. — Art Evans

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. — Arthur Schopenhauer

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. — Ayn Rand

Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves – or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth. — Ayn Rand

God… a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive. — Ayn Rand

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. — Ayn Rand

It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. — Ayn Rand

Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one’s rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property. — Ayn Rand

Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason. — Ayn Rand

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. — Ayn Rand

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don’t sit looking at it – walk. — Ayn Rand

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. — Ayn Rand

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money? — Ayn Rand

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody had decided not to see. — Ayn Rand

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. — Ayn Rand

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. — Ayn Rand

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it. — Ayn Rand

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt. — Ayn Rand

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. — Ayn Rand

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. — Ayn Rand

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person’s sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they’re taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment – just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! – an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience – or to fake – a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values – and can be nothing else. — Ayn Rand

It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven–that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain–and wasted pain…why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world–to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. — Ayn Rand

Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them. — Ayn Rand

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. — Ayn Rand

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. — Ayn Rand

I worship individuals for their highest possibilities as individuals and I loathe humanity for its failure to live up to these possibilities. — Ayn Rand

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. — Ayn Rand

That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt, and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it – the total passion for the total height – you’re incapable of anything less. — Ayn Rand

When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit. — Ayn Rand

But why should you care what people will say? All you have to do is please yourself. — Ayn Rand

What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can’t stand still. It must grow or perish. — Ayn Rand

If one’s actions are honest, one does not need the predated confidence of others. — Ayn Rand

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. — Ayn Rand

The most depraved type of human being is the man without a purpose. — Ayn Rand

My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose. — Ayn Rand, Anthem

The word “We” is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters? What is my life, if I am but to bow, to agree and to obey? But I am done with this creed of corruption. I am done with the monster of “We,” the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: ‘I.’ — Ayn Rand, Anthem

I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of all things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. Neither am I the means to any end others may wish to accomplish. I am not a tool for their use. I am not a servant of their needs. I am not a sacrifice on their alters. — Ayn Rand, Anthem

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture. — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life. — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another’s personality, marking vulnerable points. — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

When I die I hope to go to heaven–whatever that is–and I want to be able to afford the price of admission. — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven’t even got a word for the quality I mean–for the self-sufficiency of man’s spirit. It’s difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they’ve come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I’ve always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I’ve always recognized it at once–and it’s the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters. — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing. — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

But you see,’ said Roark quietly, ‘I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.’ — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You’ve wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he’s ever held a truly personal desire, he’d find the answer. He’d see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He’s not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander’s delusion – prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can’t say about a single thing: ‘This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me’. Then he wonders why he’s unhappy. — Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

If I’m ever upset, I know I can just fill a cup with water and throw it up in the air. — Barnaby_Wunch

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worthy reading, or do things worth the writing. — Benjamin Franklin

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move. — Benjamin Franklin

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them. — Benjamin Franklin

Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others. — Benjamin Franklin

He that can have patience can have what he will. — Benjamin Franklin

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book. — Benjamin Franklin

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade? — Benjamin Franklin

I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up. — Benjamin Franklin

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man. — Benjamin Franklin

I am a strong believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. — Benjamin Franklin

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. — Benjamin Franklin

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather. — Bill Hicks

Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for. — Bob Marley

The problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them. — Brian Eno

It’s not the daily increase but decrease – hack away at the unessential. — Bruce Lee

To hell with circumstances. I create opportunities. — Bruce Lee

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become. — Buddha

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker. — Buddha

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely. — Buddha

Things are not what they seem. Nor are they otherwise. Deeds exist, but no doer can be found. — Buddha

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act. — Buddha

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent. — Buddha

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him. — Buddha

Every human being is the author of his own health or disease. — Buddha

When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky. — Buddha

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world. — Buddha

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. — Buddha

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed. — Buddha

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart. — Buddha

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without. — Buddha

We are a way of the universe knowing itself. — Carl Sagan

It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. — Carl Sagan

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. — Carl Sagan

It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri, and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us – but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses. — Carl Sagan

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. — Carl Sagan

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depths of our answers. — Carl Sagan

I’ve never known any trouble that an hour’s reading didn’t assuage. — Charles de Secondat

Minds, like bodies, will fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort. — Charles Dickens

If you stand straight, do not fear a crooked shadow. — Chinese proverb

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. — Chuck Palahniuk

When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? — Chuck Palahniuk

Reality means you live until you die…the real truth is nobody wants reality. — Chuck Palahniuk

What you don’t understand you can make mean anything. — Chuck Palahniuk

You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real. — Chuck Palahniuk

The first step — especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money — the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. — Chuck Palahniuk

People have to really suffer before they can risk doing what they love. — Chuck Palahniuk

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. — Chuck Palahniuk

I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing. — Chuck Palahniuk

Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity. — Colin Powell

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. — Confucius

It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop. — Confucius

When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves. — Confucius (BC 551-BC 479)

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. — Diane Ackerman

The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people. — Dr. Cornel West

He who learns death unlearns slavery. — Dr. Cornel West

The country is in deep trouble. We’ve forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that’s the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word. — Dr. Cornel West

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. — E.E. Cummings

Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it — not against it. — Eckhart Tolle

What a liberation to realize that the voice in my head is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that. — Eckhart Tolle

Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person’s own life. — Epictetus

I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know? — Ernest Hemingway

A living organism feeds upon negative entropy. Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (i.e., a fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment. — Erwin Schrödinger

Question: Who governs the governors? Answer: Entropy — Frank Herbert

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

The total disorder in the universe, as measured by the quantity that physicists call entropy, increases steadily over time. Also, the total order in the universe, as measured by the complexity and permanence of organized structures, also increases steadily over time. — Freeman Dyson

Life without music would be a mistake. — Friedrich Nietzsche

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the way in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The future influences the present just as much as the past. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, is what makes someone a friend. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets. — Friedrich Nietzsche

All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What is the mark of liberation? No longer being ashamed in front of oneself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Batô: ‘Chief, you ever question the ethics of the neurosurgeons who monkey around inside your brain?’
Section 9 Department Chief Aramaki: ‘They undergo psychiatric evaluations, especially those in security. They’re subjected to a stringent screening of their personal lives. Of course, the ones who check are only human.’
Batô: ‘I guess once you start doubting, there’s no end to it.’ — Ghost in the Shell (movie)

It was not easy for a person brought up in the ways of classical thermodynamics to come around to the idea that gain of entropy eventually is nothing more nor less than loss of information. — Gilbert Newton Lewis

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. — Goethe

There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings. — Goethe

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe. — Goethe

We are taking the sand, the inert silicon at our feet, and we are breathing a level of complexity into it that rivals life itself and may even surpass it. — Gregory Stock

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. — H. Albright

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a moment longer, never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they were slaves. — Harriet Tubman

Whether we are destined to be dust or deity will be determined by how well we learn to cope with the challenges of being intelligent. Intelligence is, ultimately, the most destructive force in the universe. It has the capacity, also, to be the most creative. That knife edge we now live on. — Harry Stottle

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings. — Helen Keller

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye. — Helen Keller

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. — Henri Bergson

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. — Henry David Thoreau, in Walden

Remember, when life’s path is steep, to keep your mind even. — Horace (BC 65-8)

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose. — Indira Gandhi

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition. — Indira Gandhi

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them. — Isaac Asimov

And above all things, never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning. — Isaac Asimov

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. — Isaac Asimov

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today – but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all. — Isaac Asimov

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. — Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. — Isaac Asimov

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere. — Isaac Asimov

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. — Isaac Asimov

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. — James A. Froude

The best way to think about life, intelligence, and the universe is that they are not separate things, but are different aspects of a single phenomenon. To take liberties with a popular ballad, “We are the world, we are the people, and we are the universe.” To state this proposition from the opposite perspective, the universe is coming to life and waking up through the processes of our lives and thoughts, and, very probably, through the lives and thoughts of countless other beings scattered throughout the cosmos. — James N. Gardner

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not. — Jean de la Bruyère

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s. — Jean Paul

At times inactivity is preferable to mindless functioning. — Jenny Holzer

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. — Jesus

Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. — Jesus

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. — Jesus Christ (Matthew 10:16)

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you. — Jim Rohn

We hold steady, we join hands with those walking with us on our spiritual paths, learning that the genius of others will also guide us. Others will be there to lift us up. With them, our full genius takes us to the place where we can overcome digressions and transgressions. There is a super genius at work, that of we as people. — Joe Landsberger, Practice of Genius

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. — John F. Kennedy

Five hundred years ago a person in error was a person searching for the truth. — John Leinhard

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. — John Steinbeck

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you. — Joseph Campbell

We’re in a free fall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast. And always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. But all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective … Joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world and everything changes. — Joseph Campbell, Sukhavati

In the South we don’t hide our crazy people or keep them locked up in the attic, we bring them right down to the front porch and show them off. — Julia, Designing Women

The human being is an open possibility, incomplete and incompletable. Hence it is always more and other than what he has brought to realisation in himself. — Karl Jaspers

The Earth is the Cradle of the Mind — but one cannot eternally live in a cradle. — Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Men are weak now, and yet they transform the Earth’s surface. In millions of years their might will increase to the extent that they will change the surface of the Earth, its oceans, the atmosphere and themselves. They will control the climate and the solar system just as they control the Earth. They will travel beyond the limits of our planetary system; they will reach other Suns and use their fresh energy instead of the energy of their dying luminary. — Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Man must at all costs overcome the Earth’s gravity and have, in reserve, the space at least of the Solar System. — Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Without going out of your door, you can know the ways of the world. Without peeping through your window, you can see the Way of Heaven. The farther you go, the less you know. Thus, the Sage knows without traveling, sees without looking, And achieves without struggle. — Lao Tse

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind; Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily; Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness; Sometimes one is up and sometimes down. Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency. — Lao Tzu

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. — Lao Tzu

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you. — Lao Tzu

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. — Lao Tzu

A person who seeks knowledge knows more and more, a person who seeks enlightenment knows less and less until things are just what they are. — Lao Tzu

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. — Lao Tzu

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase. — Leo Tolstoy

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. — Lin Yutang

Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don’t believe in the good old words because we don’t believe in good old values anymore. And that’s why the world is sick. — Lin Yutang

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. — Lin Yutang

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks. — Lin Yutang

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones. — Lord Chesterfield

How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life — Marcus Aurelius

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. — Marcus Aurelius

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday. — Marcus Aurelius

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay. — Mark Twain

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. — Mark Twain

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. — Mark Twain

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. — Mark Twain

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. — Mark Twain

A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent. — Martin Luther King Jr.

An insect is more complex than a star..and is a far greater challenge to understand. — Martin Rees

Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as ‘railroads’ … As you may well know, Mr. President, ‘railroad’ carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by ‘engines’ which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed. — Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1830

To say that humans are composed of machines is not to say that we are merely machines. Humans are dignified machines. We are (so far) the most extropic, most complex product of billions of years of evolution. — Max More

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. — Maya Angelou

Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill… I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together… — Meditations: Marcus Aurelius

Every time I go and shave, I assume there’s someone else on the planet shaving. So I say, ‘I’m gonna go shave, too. — Mitch Hedberg

Character is victory organized. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. — Nathaniel Branden

Today, modernity requires that each of us navigate a blizzard of information. How this maelstrom of data is interpreted and synthesized constructs an individual’s paradigm. However, the qualities of the data are subject to a Catch-22: while the data works to describe an individual’s paradigm, an individual’s paradigm likewise works to describe the data… With so much accessible information, yet so little certainty, are our interpretations more complex or confused, more varied or more refined? Is the course of progress more accessible, or more elusive? — Nick Lepard

It is not what you do, but what you stop doing that matters. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune. — Noam Chomsky

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion. — Noam Chomsky

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. — Octavio Paz

Always let your reach exceed your grasp. — Og Mandino

Apply all of your efforts to become the highest mountain of all and strain
your potential until it cries for mercy. — Og Mandino

Green grass grows where dry desert ends. — Og Mandino

Practice the art of patience for nature never acts in haste. — Og Mandino

So long as I can laugh, never will I be poor. — Og Mandino

Laugh at yourself for man is most comical when he takes himself too
seriously. — Og Mandino

If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work. — Ogden Nash

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. — Oscar Wilde

Anyone who lives within their means, suffers from a serious lack of imagination. — Oscar Wilde

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. — Oscar Wilde

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it. — Oscar Wilde

Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. — Oscar Wilde

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn’t the slightest intention of putting it into practice. — Otto Von Bismark

That which can be destroyed by the truth should be. — P.C. Hodgell

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. — Pearl Buck

Enlightenment is a direct experience with reality. — Pema Chodron

The best way to predict the future is to create it. — Peter F. Drucker

The supreme arrogance of religious thinking: that a carbon-based bag of mostly water on a speck of iron-silicate dust around a boring dwarf star in a minor galaxy in an underpopulated local group of galaxies in an unfashionable suburb of a supercluster would look up at the sky and declare, ‘It was all made so that I could exist! — Peter Walker

The beginning is the most important part of the work. — Plato

It is only the dead who have seen the end of war. — Plato

Life must be lived as play. — Plato

Know thyself. — Plato

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with. — Plato

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. — Plato

Courage is a kind of salvation. — Plato

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile. — Plato

Man – a being in search of meaning. — Plato

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety. — Plato

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince. — Plato

Democracy passes into despotism. — Plato

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike. — Plato

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. — Plato

Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. — Plato

Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails. — Plato

Philosophy is the highest music. — Plato

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. — Plato

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles. — Plato

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderation, the man of manly character and of wisdom. — Plato

The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so. — Plato

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot. — Plato

We ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like him is to become holy, just, and wise. — Plato

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. — Plato

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences. — Plato

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. — Plato

The greatest penalty of evildoing – namely, to grow into the likeness of bad men. — Plato

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters. — Plato

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. — Plato

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. — Plato

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them. — Plato

Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. — `Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do what you know and perception is converted into character. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years. — Ray Kurzweil

By the 2030s, the nonbiological portion of our intelligence will predominate. — Ray Kurzweil

Your mind is your instrument. Learn to be its master and not its slave. — Remez Sasson

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. — Robert A. Heinlein

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous – if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them. — Rudolf Arnheim

It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone and come back, I’ll find it at home. — Rumi

Why am I seeking? I am the same as he. His essence speaks through me. I have been looking for myself. — Rumi

Where lowland is, that’s where water goes. All medicine wants is pain to cure. — Rumi

There are thousands of wines / that can take over our minds. / Don’t think all ecstasies / are the same! / Jesus was lost in his love for God. / His donkey was drunk with barley. — Rumi

The world’s flattery and hypocrisy is a sweet morsel: / eat less of it, for it is full of fire. / Its fire is hidden while its taste is manifest, / but its smoke becomes visible in the end. — Rumi

Look at Love… How it tangles with the one fallen in love. — Rumi

Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation. — Rumi

Keep your intelligence white hot and your grief glistening / so your life will stay fresh. — Rumi

Each moment from all sides rushes to us the call to love. / We are running to contemplate its vast green field. / Do you want to come with us? — Rumi

Pull the thorn of existence out of the heart! Fast! / For when you do, you will see thousands of rose gardens in yourself. — Rumi

When someone is counting out / gold for you, don’t look at your hands, / or the gold. Look at the giver. — Rumi

The morning wind spreads its fresh smell. We must get up and take that in, that wind that lets us live. Breathe before it’s gone. — Rumi

If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens. — Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing / and rightdoing there is a field. / I’ll meet you there. / When the soul lies down in that grass / the world is too full to talk about. — Rumi

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along. — Rumi

What you seek is seeking you. — Rumi

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. — Rumi

The hurt you embrace becomes joy. — Rumi

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence. — Rumi

Sit, be still, and listen, / because you’re drunk / and we’re at / the edge of the roof. — Rumi

Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. — Rumi

I have lived on the lip / of insanity, wanting to know reasons, / knocking on a door. It opens. / I’ve been knocking from the inside. — Rumi

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself. — Rumi

Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun. — Rumi

Heartsick, heartbroken – to know love is to know pain. What could be more common? Even so, each broken heart is so singular that with it we probe the divine. — Rumi

And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself? — Rumi

Travel brings power and love back into your life. — Rumi

Look at your heart and tongue, one feels deaf and dumb, the other speaks in words and signs. — Rumi

Be like melting snow — wash yourself of yourself. — Rumi

Take someone who doesn’t keep score, / who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, / who has not the slightest interest even / in his own personality: he’s free. — Rumi

Remember. The way you make love is the way God will be with you. — Rumi

The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you / Don’t go back to sleep! / You must ask for what you really want. / Don’t go back to sleep! / People are going back and forth / across the doorsill where the two worlds touch, / The door is round and open / Don’t go back to sleep! — Rumi

All people on the planet are children, except for a very few. No one is grown up except those free of desire. — Rumi

Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere? — Rumi

Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy. — Rumi

Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given the door will open. — Rumi

The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore. — Rumi

A shadow cannot ignore the sun that all day creates and moves it. — Rumi

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. — Rumi

Every tree and plant in the meadow seemed to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still. — Rumi

All that you think is rain is not. Behind the veil angels sometimes weep. — Rumi

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. — Rumi (El Masnavi)

A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home. — Rumi (Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi)

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful. — Samuel Johnson

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live. — Seneca the Younger

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open? — Seneca the Younger

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find. — Seneca the Younger

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one. — Seneca the Younger

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong. — Seneca the Younger

We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly, and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers. — Seneca the Younger

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more. — Seneca the Younger

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself. — Seneca the Younger

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary. — Seneca the Younger

Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars. — Serbian proverb

You must look inward with as much wonder as you look outward, and then the two worlds merge. — Seth, oceanofmind.tumblr

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few. — Shunryu Suzuki

True knowledge originates in direct experience. — Siddhartha Gautama

So far as physics is concerned, time’s arrow is a property of entropy alone. — Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

My instinct as a philosopher is that we are effectively approaching a multicentric world, which means we need to ask new, and for the traditional left, unpleasant questions. — Slavoj Žižek

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed. — Slavoj Žižek

We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. — Slavoj Žižek

This readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game’s outcome. — Slavoj Žižek

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance. — Slavoj Žižek

True universalists are not those who preach global tolerance of differences and all-encompassing unity, but those who engage in a passionate struggle for the assertion of the Truth which compels them. — Slavoj Žižek

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance. — Socrates

The nearest way to glory is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be. — Socrates

People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something. — Soren Kierkegaard

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. — Soren Kierkegaard

People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me. — Soren Kierkegaard

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own. — Soren Kierkegaard

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo. — Soren Kierkegaard

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you. — Soren Kierkegaard

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming. — Soren Kierkegaard

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. — Soren Kierkegaard

Art should startle the viewer into thinking about the meaning of life. — Spanish painter Antoni Tapies

It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun that you can have out of bed . . . to learn that the smart man finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that “leisure” time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that is its subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse newer, better work. — Spider Robinson

Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy. — Spider Robinson

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death… our existence can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. — Stanley Kubrick

I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars. — Stephen Hawking

It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing. — Steve Jobs, on success

Follow where reason leads. — Stoic Ethics

To achieve deep focus nowadays is also to have struck a blow against the dissipation of self; it is to have strengthened one’s essential position [in life]. — Sven Birkerts, on the importance of reading real books.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are. — Søren Kierkegaard

Arch-Anarchy: The view that we should seek to void all limits on our freedom, including those imposed by the laws of nature. — T.O. Morrow

Insurance companies commonly assume that death rates will decline 1 percent a year. — technologyreview.com/business/26799

Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, will never die out. — The Anthropic Principle

The farther one travels, the less one knows. — The Beatles

Time is elastic. — The People of Jamaica

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though chequered by failure, than to take rank with those poor souls who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. — Thomas Edison

Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and the angels know of us. — Thomas Paine

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. — Thucydides

It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men. — Thucydides

It is not the appearance that binds you, it’s the attachment to appearance that binds you. — Tilopa

The commonsense rules of the ‘real world’ are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions. — Tim Ferriss

How many times have you heard someone ask, “What causes poverty?” That’s a simple question. I can create poverty in a few days. I’ll just stop working. That’s no great mystery. Poverty is the default for the human race. We’ve got, oh, thirty thousand years’ experience creating it. The challenge–the miracle of the past two hundred years–is creating wealth and *escaping* poverty. Like escaping poverty, escaping a state of misery is a challenge for all human beings. The default case is not Eden. We cannot go back to paradise, and should not assume that taking out an eraser (or a pill) to wipe away our stress and competitive urges will somehow deliver us back to a natural, happy state. We must fight for our happiness, and while we may come out bloodied and bruised, we usually come out as better people. — Todd G. Buchholz, from his book “Rush”

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy. — Vaclav Havel

I’ll do what must be done, that only I can do. — Valentine Wiggin

I not only think that we will tamper with Mother Nature, I think Mother wants us to. — Willard Gaylin

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. — William Faulkner

The future’s here already. It’s just unevenly distributed. — William Gibson

To live content with small means: to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion: to be worthy, not respectable: and wealthy, not rich: to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… To listen to stars and buds. To babes and sages. With open heart: await occasions, hurry never… This is my symphony. — William Henry Channing

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. — William Morris

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound. — William Shakespeare

When going through hell, keep going. — Winston Churchill