Quotes
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319
“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.” — Albert Camus (1913–1960) Continue reading
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318
“Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people, cleanse the air.” — Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Continue reading
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317
“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” — Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), “The Prince” Continue reading
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316
“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.” — Samuel Butler (1835–1902) Continue reading
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315
“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, Continue reading
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314
“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by Continue reading
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313
“Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.” — Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), “The Conquest of Happiness” Continue reading
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312
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), “Major Barbara” Continue reading
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311
“The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from Continue reading
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310
“The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it. The streets of London have their map; but our passions are uncharted. What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?” Continue reading
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309
“Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone—all I want to do Continue reading
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308
“Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.” -Denis Diderot (1713-1784) Continue reading
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307
“How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have; they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.” -Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Either/Or Continue reading
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306
“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” –Rene Descartes Continue reading
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305
“Don’t fight the darkness. Don’t even worry about the darkness. Turn on the light and the darkness goes. Turn up that light of pure consciousness: Negativity goes.” -David Lynch (1946-2025) Continue reading
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304
“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.” -Simone de Beauvoir Continue reading
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303
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” –Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), “A case of Voluntary Ignorance” Continue reading
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301
“The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.” –Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Continue reading
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300
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” –Marie Curie (1867-1934) Continue reading
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288
“A wise man distrusts his neighbor. A wiser nan both distrusts his neighbor and himself. The wisest man of all distrusts his government.” — Taylor Caldwell (1900-1985), “The Devil’s Advocate” Continue reading
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286
“Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.” ~ Thomas Pynchon Continue reading
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285
“If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers … becomes a source of unbelievable Continue reading
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284
“A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you’re weak.” ~ Tom Wolfe Continue reading
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283
“Ninety-five percent of people who walk the earth are simply inert. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are people who do what they say they can do.” ~ Stephen King Continue reading
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280
“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much to easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. Continue reading
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279
“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.” ~ P. D. James Continue reading
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278
“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and a thousand other things as well.” – Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), “Reading An Essay” Continue reading
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277
“I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don’t care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a Continue reading
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275
“The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.” ~ Claude Levi-Strauss Continue reading
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274
“The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.” ~ Claude Levi-Strauss Continue reading
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272
“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.” ~ Gertrude Stein Continue reading
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271
“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop” ~ Gertrude Stein Continue reading
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270
“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” ~ Gertrude Stein Continue reading
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268
“Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.” ~ Clarice Lispector Continue reading
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267
“Perhaps that’s what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, I’m neither one side nor the other, I’m in Continue reading
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265
“History is the most dangerous product which the chemistry of the mind has concocted. Its properties are well known. It produces dreams and drunkenness. It fills people with false memories, exaggerates their reactions, exacerbates old grievances, torments them in their repose, and encourages either a delirium of grandeur or a delusion of persecution. It makes Continue reading
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264
“War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other.” ~ Paul Valery Poet Continue reading
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263
“What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I’m a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I’m empty and awake, that I know I’m empty and awake, and that there’s Continue reading
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262
“I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.” ~ Jack Kerouac Continue reading
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260
“Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading.” ~ Paul Theroux Continue reading
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258
“My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being…When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups…I want to speak to their souls.” ~ John Coltrane Continue reading
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257
“It is my experience that most claims of national security are part of a campaign to avoid telling the truth.” ~ Ben Bradlee Continue reading
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256
“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?” ~ Satchel Paige Continue reading
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254
“When I was a young student, I thought grow-ups would come and make things work. Now I realize that grown-ups are just kids with wrinkles.” ~ Esther Dyson – Journalist Continue reading
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253
“Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression ‘I have to say’, what follows usually needn’t be said?” ~ Richard Russo Continue reading
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252
“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.” ~ Iris Murdoch Continue reading
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251
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” ~ Henry David Thoreau Continue reading
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250
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate Continue reading
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249
“It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau Continue reading
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248
“I think life is really hard sometimes. It’s not easy to wake up every day and go through what you go through. But the beautiful moments that you share with people that you love, or even experience alone, are worth all of the pain and sorrow. Those moments should be cherished, and I think that’s Continue reading
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247
“Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past, but you can’t erase it.” ~ E. B. White Continue reading
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238
“No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint.” — Leo Strauss (1899-1973), “The City and Man” Continue reading
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237
“Liberalism – it is well to recall this today–it is the supreme form of generosity, it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share the existence with the enemy more than that, with an Continue reading
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235
“Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.” — Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014), “Writing and Being” Continue reading
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234
“We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain.” — Roberto Bolano (1953-2003), “Last Evenings on Earth” Continue reading
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231
“Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.” – Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) Continue reading
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230
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.” -Carl Rogers (1902-1987) Continue reading
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229
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” -Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), “Man’s Search for Meaning” Continue reading
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222
“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.” -James Branch Cabell Continue reading
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221
“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” – Marting Heidegger Continue reading
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219
“An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes.” – Sun Tzu Continue reading
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216
“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.” – Haruki Murakami Continue reading
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215
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” – Orson Welles Continue reading
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214
“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” – Leo Tolstoy Continue reading
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210
“Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” – John F. Kennedy Continue reading
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205
“You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That’s the goal.” – James Baldwin Continue reading
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204
‘Love, friendship, and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred of something.” – Anton Chekhov Continue reading
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202
“The reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries-in fact like a prepared conversation, in which they reveal only the best of their thoughts.” – Rene Descartes Continue reading
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201
“There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.” – G. K. Chesterton Continue reading
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200
“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau Continue reading
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199
“If your in trouble and hurt or need, go to poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help, the only ones.” – John Steinbeck Continue reading
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198
“Leave me alone at night with my books. Don’t complicate the world for me. I want it uncomplicated. And above all, leave me alone with my books at night.” – Jack Kerouac Continue reading
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197
“There’s always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.” – Charles Bukowski Continue reading
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196
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” Friedrich Nietzche Continue reading
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195
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil.” – Marcus Aurelius Continue reading
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194
“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.” – Virginia Woolf Continue reading
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193
In a world increasingly defined by complexity and noise, how can we cultivate an appreciation for :”bare things” and simple moments without losing sight of the broader dynamics that shape our lives? – Virginia Woolf Continue reading
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192
“How much better is silence, the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, things in themselves, myself being myself.” – Virginia Woolf Continue reading
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191
“It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder.” – Aldous Huxley Continue reading
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190
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” – Isaac Asimov Continue reading
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189
“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.” – Buddha Continue reading
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187
“Truth is the ultimate end of the whole universe.” – Thomas Aquinas Continue reading
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186
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” – Leo Tolstoy Continue reading
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184
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust Continue reading
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183
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.” – Bertrand Russell Continue reading
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182
“Man is a rational – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, nut so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it.” – Bertrand Russell Continue reading
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181
“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.” – Samuel Butler Continue reading
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180
“I must learn to love the fool in me, the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I Continue reading
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179
“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.” – Margaret Atwood Continue reading
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178
“There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.” – John Steinbeck Continue reading
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177
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal between a dog and a man.” – Mark Twain Continue reading
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176
“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning they distract themselves with pleasure.” – Viktor Frankl Continue reading
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175
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” – Aldous Huxley Continue reading
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174
“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.” – Margaret Atwood Continue reading
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173
“I may not have been sure about what did really interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.” – Albert Camus Continue reading
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172
“The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.” – James Madison Continue reading
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171
“The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimize that action.” – Zadie Smith Continue reading
A Pondering Mind 
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