quotes.cat-v.orgQuotes Archive

quotes | docs | repo | golang | sam | man | acme | Glenda | 9times | harmful | 9P | cat-v.org Related sites: | site updates | site map | › art › business › economics › education › friends and enemies › liberty › politics › programming/ › science › war and violence See also: - Fortunes Files - The Doc Archive The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it. — George Bernard Shaw It’s possible that I understand better what’s going on, or it’s equally possible that I just think I do. — Russ Cox A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all. — Friedrich Nietzsche Only the mediocre are always at their best. — Jean Giraudoux Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. — Friedrich Nietzsche The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. — Friedrich Nietzsche Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working. — Pablo Picasso There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear. — Daniel Dennett Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words [and] a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. — Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr. - 1918 Information is not knowledge Knowledge is not wisdom Wisdom is not truth Truth is not beauty Beauty is not love Love is not music Music is the best. — Frank Zappa If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on TV telling you how to do your shit, then YOU DESERVE IT. — Frank Zappa Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. — Catherine O’Hara Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. — Philip K. Dick Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what’s right. — Isaac Asimov Alles Grosse und Gescheite existiert in der Minoritaet. Es ist nie daran zu denken, dass die Vernunft populaer werde. Leidenschaft und Gefuehle moegen populaer werden, aber die Vernunft wird immer nur im Besitze einzelner Vorzueglicher sein. [Every big and clever exists in the minority. You will never think of getting it majority. Passion and feelings can get popular, but sanity will only be the proper of some people.] — Johnann Wolfgang von Goethe [Quoted by 20h in reference to Utah2000 ] The Great Man … is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without respect and without the fear of opinion”; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and respectability”, and altogether everything that is the virtue of the herd”. If he cannot lead, he goes alone. … He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar. … When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame. — Friedrich Nietzche, The Will to Power Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, [he] is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. — Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefor an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. — Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere. — Henry Kissinger Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. — Alan Perlis, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html Him that I love, I wish to be free – even from me. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Distrust those in whom the desire to punish is strong — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Similar statements have been made by Nietzsche, and attributed to Dostoevsky) There is nothing worse than imagination without taste. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature. — Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr. - 1918 Mas vale solo que mal acompa~ado Quien dice mas vale solo ke mal acompa~ado” es porke nunca a estado solo Si estas mal acompa~ado estas mas solo ke nunca – Lanas Committees do harm merely by existing. — Freeman Dyson Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n’y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n’y a plus rien à retrancher. Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. — Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them. — George Orwell To keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who sought to keep out crows by shutting his park gate. — John Milton Some people have very sensitive corns, and the only way to live with them is to step on those corns until they are used to it. — Wolfgang Pauli It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance. — Thomas Sowell If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. — Thomas Jefferson The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man. — George Bernard Shaw I try not to think with my gut. If I’m serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. — Carl Sagan [When asked a question to which he didn’t know the answer and after he firmly said so and the questioner persisted: ‘But what is your gut feeling?’] The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think. — Horace Walpope How do you have a just society when genetics is unjust? — James Watson The chief cause of problems is solutions. — Eric Sevareid...