If you don’t become the ocean you’ll be seasick everyday.
–Leonard Cohen
There are a lot of people who consider themselves to be liberal,
but who are actually conservative in this more fundamental sense
of pausing cautiously to check whether what they're about to say
or do is orthodox before doing it.
–Paul Graham
Technologies, neither good nor bad; nor is it in neutral.
–Melvin Kranzberg
They laughed at Columbus and
they laughed at the Wright
brothers. But they also laughed
at Bozo the Clown.
–Carl Sagan
We are all mid in the eyes of
God.
–@Willyintheworld
What you inherit is just your starting point -- whether that's a
legacy codebase, your sociocultural upbringing, or your genetic
material. And you do not have to constrain yourself to your
starting point. It's the beginning, not the end.
–Francois Chollet
Our biggest challenge is that the internet is still growing.
–Liu Zhengrong, The deputy director, Chinese Internet affairs
bureau
Old newspapers are archives of
missed opportunities.
–@lil_Internet
Extroverts are convinced the
Internet makes people more
lonely. Introverts are convinced
the Internet makes people less
lonely.
–Marc Andreessen
Your blessing in life is when
you find the torture you’re
comfortable with.
–Jerry Seinfeld
Being too mimetic of course can
make one an NPC. But being
reflexively contrarian is itself
a form of mimesis.
–@balajis
Unfortunately, when he fought
and won wars he had no time to
write, and after he was defeated
he was no longer in the mood.
–Qiao Liang & Wang Xiangsui on
Napoleon
The masculine appeal for
technological growth is about
increased efficiency, conquest,
more power etc.The feminine
appeal, which is less often
covered, is about increased
beauty and decreased suffering.
–@tszzl
Problems are a good thing. They
are an excellent indication that
you are alive. Only dead people
don't have problems.
–@punk6529
The main thing in life is to
know your own mind.
–Tove Jansson
Power doesn't corrupt, it
reveals.
–Robert Caro
My expectation from art is not
the proximate depiction of life,
but that it makes me glad to be
alive.
–@micsolana
So annoying that you only get
one life and the penalties for
path switching are high. So many
interesting jobs I would liked
to have tried doing.
–@anyam8_
If an explanation is long,
there’s a high chance that it’s
wrong.
–@ilyasut
The correct and appropriate
response to more great writing,
art, music, software, and
science in the world -- whether
from people, machines, or a
combination of the two -- is
"thank you".
–Marc Andreessen
Tradition is not the worship of
ashes, but the preservation of
fire.
–Gustav Mahler
So much of life is aligning the
world’s perception of who you
are with who you are. And the
world responding to your attempt
at alignment.
–@ks_kulk
It’s not that I’m smart. It’s
that I stay with problems
longer.
–Albert Einstein
Programming is a bridge between
humans and computers, that
bridge is getting shorter.
–@danychr5
Atheists be like “we probably
live in a computer simulation”
like bro you just believe in God
except you think he’s a nerd.
–@Xiidra
Some bridges deserve to be
burned.
–@foobar
I do not fear computers. I fear
the lack of them.
–Isaac Asimov
Very few people are actually
trying to do the thing that they
are nominally trying to do.
–@natfriedman
If you didn’t like the era of US
hegemony, globalization,
multilateralism & economic
interdependence, you’re going to
love the emerging multipolar
order that is defined by great
power rivalry, revisionist state
behavior, economic
protectionism, and resurgent
populist nationalism.
–@nils_gilman
Magic is just someone spending
more time on something than
anyone else might reasonably
expect.
–@MrTeller
Endless bad news you can’t look
away from amid slow compounding
improvements you barely notice.
–@morganhounsel
Inshallah is somewhere between
"Only God could stop me" and
"only God could make me".
–@atthatmatt
I think so much of growing up is
about blocking too much sensory
so we can focus and use our
intellects and so we pay less
attention to physical sense than
kids do.
–Michael Pollan
I do not know what truth is, nor
do mathematicians. I think only
deeply religious people know
what it is.
–Werner Herzog
A smile is the chosen vehicle of
all ambiguities.
–Herman Melville
All rich mfs just want to be
clouted. all clouted mfs just
want to be rich.
–@tszzl
If you want these crazy ideas
and this crazy music and this
crazy way of thinking, there’s a
chance it might come from a
crazy person.
–Kanye West
Don't be shocked when people who
think about the world in unique
ways you like also think about
the world in unique ways you
don’t like.
–@morganhounsel
You can begin to understand a
lot about human nature if
instead of criticizing someone’s
unreasonable behavior you begin
asking yourself “what story
might this person be telling
themselves about why their
behavior is alright?”
–@shreyas
The present is the past rolled
up for action, and the past is
the present unrolled for
understanding.
–Will Durant
Can’t go to the new place with
the old map.
–@jackbutcher
Another flaw in the human
character is that everybody
wants to build and nobody wants
to do maintenance.
–Kurt Vonnegut
Each one of us has, somewhere in
his heart, the dream to make a
living world, a universe.
–Chris Alexander
I have long thought of art
(including both literary art and
To me - and every other self-
identifying socialist I've met -
art art) as one mind reaching
out across the void and asking
one poignant question: do you
see it too? And the appreciation
of art is of the same character;
it is the mind of the viewer
seeking an expression that
validates or enhances what they
see in the world.
–Erik Hoel
it means the acceptance and
understanding that there are
"commons" (things belonging to
no individual) for which social
responsibility is required of
each individual.
–@Ben_deWaal on socialism
Art is how minds hold hands.
–Erik Hoel
There are no beliefs, there are
only actions.
–Marc Andreessen
It says something that the
prospect of maximal
collectivization of our own
intelligence is far more
threatening to us than
enslavement by competing alien
intelligences.
–Vankatesh Rao
The U.S. constitution is 7,591
words and Apple's iCloud terms
of service agreement is 8,783
words.
–@morganhousel
Every dead body on Mt. Everest
was once a highly motivated
person so maybe calm down.
–@dougboneparth
It is very difficult in France
to make reforms; we make
revolutions in France, not
reforms.
–Louis Napoleon
The ideal lifestyle is
alternating between hermit-like
living in the countryside, low
sensory stimulation, inner life;
and an electric city life,
buoyant, erratic, high sensory
stimulation, outer life.
Apollonian / Dionysian cycle.
–@lan_dao_
The beginner feels like
everything is difficult. The
expert knows that nothing is
easy.
–François Chollet
Everything feels unprecedented
when you haven’t engaged with
history.
–Kelly Hayes
building a company as a multi-
decade performance art piece
–@angeloffuture
This is the Great Theatre of
Life. Admission is free, but the
taxation is mortal. You come
when you can, and leave when you
must. The show is continuous.
Goodnight.
–Robertson Davies
The only reason the world seemed
like a better place during your
childhood is because you were a
child.
–Jon Stewart
In theory, being skeptic means
exercising one's critical
reasoning skills. In practice
many are "skeptics" because they
have no reasoning skills.
–Nassim Taleb
History tend to be more rational
than the now, which is why great
artists are eventually
recognized even when disregarded
(and maybe even ridiculed) in
the present.
–Amjad Masad
Nostalgia cannot function
properly if newcomers come for
the same reason as the Old
Comers.
–Paul Schneider
Boomer is state of mind.
–@Punk6529
Either you die a people watcher or live long enough to become
the weirdo other people watch.
–Brandon Rohrer
When you're accustomed to
privilege, equality feels like
oppression.
–Anon
A clear sign that you're wrong
about something is if you
display incuriosity. If you come
across information that seems to
contradict what you believe, the
logical move is to try to learn
more about it and get to the
bottom of it, not outright
reject it and plug your ears.
–Francois Chollet
Careers progress from excel to
powerpoint to email to calendar.
–Benedict Evans
Aging is the process whereby
time becomes more valuable than
money.
–David Sinclair
Appalling how adulthood is
commonly perceived & treated as
the end of play, when it could
be seen as an opportunity to
bring fun, joy, and curiosity to
ever bigger playgrounds.
–@orpheaskk
We underrate the
unpredictability of the future,
because we overrate the
inevitability of the past.
–Marc Andreessen
If you make fun of someone’s
accent, it’s probably because
you only speak one language.
–JessLozano.eth
The classic mistake of old:
thinking there are no new ideas.
The classic mistake of young:
thinking your ideas are new.
–Bryan Caplan
You can only control your
destiny if you control your P&L.
–Anon
Preventive war is like
committing suicide out of fear
of death.
–Bismarck
The best science fiction has no
guns.
@andecdotal
The best science fiction has
science.
@danwang
I can never be all the people I
want and live all the lives I
want. I can never train myself
in all the skills I want. And
why do I want? I want to live
and feel all the shades, tones,
and variations of mental and
physical experience possible in
my life.
–Sylvia Plath
Soho House is a product for poor
people to feel rich.
@nikitabier
you don’t get what you deserve;
you get what you negotiate.
–Anon
Pessimism is a psyop robbing you
of your personal power to nudge
the trim tab
–jongold.eth
Paradox of diversity: if every
organization within society must
fully reflect the diversity of
that society’s members, then
there can be diversity of
*between* organizations in that
society.
–Vitalik Buterin
You get rich by taking large
amounts of risk with small
amounts of money. You stay rich
by taking small amounts of risk
with large amounts of money
–@jackbutcher
Paradox of freedom: you can't be
consistent and too dogmatic
about freedom. Eventually you
see how in the real world, many
people often give up their
freedom for little in return. So
you either accept their
judgement, or decide you know
better than them what's good for
them...
–Vitalik Buterin
Art in restaurants is like food
in museums.
–Frasier Crane
Paradox of authority: you can't
be consistent and believe
authority too much, because
different authorities frequently
have low opinions of each other.
So either you end up half-
skeptical toward all, or you
(intentionally or not) make your
own choice of which authority to
follow.
Body positivity is just
conversion therapy for body
dysmorphia
–anon
If something is too early to
criticize it’s also too early to
evangelize.
–Kelsey Hightower
If you hit a wrong note, it’s
the next note that determines if
it’s good or bad.
–Miles Davis
The greatest lesson we can learn
from history is that those who
learn too much from it are
doomed to draw parallels where
none exist.
–Michael Batnick
Everything around me was
someone’s lifework.
–Gorden Brander
Anything above 14th street looks
like a weekday
–@hipcityreg
I write because I would like to
know what I think.
–Erica Robles-Andereson
pessimism is a psyop robbing you
of your personal power to nudge
the trim tab
–jongold.eth
Only the very richest people can
afford to be cynical about the
merits of technological
progress. The billions of people
who just got their first
smartphone have had their lives
dramatically improved as a
consequence, and are too
pragmatic to romanticize the
past.
–@balajis
The bearing of a child takes
nine months, no matter how many
women are assigned.
–Fred Brooks
No amount of sophistication is
going to alley the fact that all
your knowledge is about the past
and all your decisions are about
the future.
–Howard Marks
For reasons I have never
understood, people like to hear
that the world is going to hell.
–Deirdre McCloskey
He who will defend everything
defends nothing
–Frederick the freak
Many finance and investment
decisions are rooted in watching
what other people do and either
copying them or betting against
them. But when you don't know
why someone behaves like they do
you won't know how long they'll
continue continue acting that
way, what will make them change
their mind, or whether they'll
ever learn their lesson.
–Morgan Housel
The body is in control. The body
wants to live, and the body will
put up with anything. It has not
standards. We get bored. Our
bodies don't get bored. They
don't even feel pain. We feel
pain, but our bodies will never
throw themselves off a bridge
because they can't take it.
–Kay from Should we stay stay or
should we go
People think of education as
something they can finish.
–Isaac Asimov
Everything you want is on the
other side of hard.
–Monty Williams
The purpose of life is to be
defeated by greater and greater
things.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
Liberals claim to want to give a
hearing to other views, but then
are shocked and offended to
discover that there are other
views.
–William Buckley
Money is a formal token of
delayed reciprocal altruism
It's not about adding diversity
for the sake of diversity, it's
–Richard Dawkins
about subtracting homogeneity
for the sake of realism.
–Mary Robinette Kowal
All you have to do is take a
close look at yourself and you
will understand everyone else.
–Golan Trebizond, Foundation’s
Edge
I am very angry. And I've
realized during that having the
space to be angry is a privilege
because many people are too busy
being terrified.
–Yashar Ali
You can’t be anything you want.
You can be anything you’re good
at, as long as they’re hiring.
–Chris Rock
Losing things can sometimes gain
you a space in which to live.
–Edmund de waal
I beseech you, in the bowels of
Christ, this it possible you may
be mistaken.
–Oliver Cromwell
Someone who cannot change his
mind and will not change the
subject.
–Winston Churchill
Many people die at twenty five
and aren't buried until they are
seventy five.
–Benjamin Franklin
Even when one is no longer
attached to things, it’s still
something to have been attached
to them.
–Marcel Proust
I don't say "no" because I'm so
busy. I say "no" because I don't
want to be so busy.
–Courtney Carver
Your capacity to be offended is
not an argument.
–Sam Harris
If you're tired of starting
over, stop giving up.
–Shia
How much pain do you have to be
in to ruin the life of all the
people you love forever.
–Louise Doughty
I imagine one of the reasons
people cling to their hate so
stubbornly is because they
sense, once hate is gone, they
will be forced to deal with
pain.
–James Baldwin
Another flaw in the human
character is that everybody
wants to build and nobody wants
to do maintenance.
–Kurt Vonnegut
You are the only one responsible
for your own wants.
–Dr. Susan Calvin, from Isaac
Asimov’s I, Robot
Intellectual contempt does not
control personal envy.
–Nassim Taleb
Americans tend to be miserable
optimists and British people
tend to be cheerful pessimists.
–Andrew Keen
Uncertainty is a very confident
place to be.
–Neil Strauss
Culture is the accumulation of
decisions that have worked out.
–Ben Thompson
Herbert
How vain it is to sit down to
write when you have not stood up
to live.
–Henry David Thoreau
Not it’s recognition of
technical knowledge, but it’s
failure to recognize any other.
–Blaise Pascal, on the great
failure of rationalism
To be absolutely certain about
something, one must know
everything or nothing about it.
–Henry Kissinger
A national language is a dialect
with an army and a navy.
–anonymous (via Max Weinreich)
Ideas cannot digest reality.
–Jean-Paul Sartre
Most rules direct us to average
behaviors
–Ric
People buy pain pills more than
vitamins.
–Geoffrey Moore
A man is not really dead, said,
until the last man who knew him
has also died.
–Jorge Luis Borges
The ultimate fate of all
intelligent beings has always
been to become as grand as their
thoughts.
–Cheng Xin
No good deed goes untrolled.
–Paul Graham
To improve is to change, so to
be perfect is to have changed
often.
–Winston Churchil
What we call reality is, in
fact, nothing more than a
culturally sanctioned and
linguistically reinforced
hallucination.
–Terrance Mckenna
Dickens told Dostoevsky that two
people lived inside of him, a
good one and a bad one. “Only
two people?” Dostoevsky asked.
You’re never as good as everyone
tells you are when you win, and
you’re never as bad as they say
when you lose.
–Lou Holtz
It would be foolish, in forming
our expectations, to attach
great weight to matters which
are very uncertain.
–John Maynard Keynes
The biggest misconception about
presence is thinking about it.
–@cognitivelmnt
You can live with a person and
still feel like they feel in
Dubai.
–From Nashville
Chess has shaped how I think.
This idea that most chess moves
are mistakes, even when made by
very good players. Also, you
can’t blame other people for
your own problems, even though
some of your problems may be
their fault.
–Tyler Cowen
Keep your identity small.
–Paul Graham
You’re only making a mess by
trying to put things straight.
You’re trying to straighten out
a wiggly world and no wonder
you’re in trouble.
–Alan Watts
Victory awaits him who has
everything in order—luck, people
call it.
–Roald Amundsen, first explorer
to reach the South Pole.
El PhD is the internet.
–Achraf El Bahi
Facts do not cease to exist
because they are ignored.
–Aldous Huxley
Your ego is writing cheques your
body can’t cash.
–Lt. Davis, Top Gun
The person who fights for a
dying cause is admired,
supported and honored. The
person who fights for a new
cause struggling to be born is
misunderstood, reviled and
attacked. Nothing is more
difficult than taking the lead
in a new order of things.
I enjoy life but it’s an awful
lot of laundry.
–Paul Ford
A libertarian is someone who is
fiscally conservative but
socially awkward
–Meaghan Ybos
Suicide is not giving up, it is
not a selfish act. It is losing
a long awful battle with your
own mind. But please respect
that person fought every day.
–Mike Monteiro
A little smoothing removes
noise. Too much smoothing
removes signal.
–John D Cook
Midlife crisis is when you reach
the top of the ladder and find
out it was against the wrong
wall
–Mike Myers
Everyone thinks of changing the
world, but no one thinks of
changing himself.
–Tolstoy
I won’t insult your intelligence
by suggesting that you really
believe what you just said.
–William F Buckley Jr
Is there an idea more radical in
the history of the human race
Every individual has two rights
to multiply to continue himself
than turning your children over
to total strangers whom you know
nothing about, and having those
strangers work on your child’s
mind, out of your sight, for a
period of twelve years?
–John Taylor Gatto
and to express himself buy you
can’t do it forever.
–Mihkel Mutt
If you get tired, learn to rest,
not to quit.
–Banksy
What will undo any boundary is
the awareness that it is our
vision, and not what we are
viewing, that is limited.
–James P. Carse
Please abandon your delusions
and adopt mine.
–human beings everywhere
It’s easier to fool people than
it is to convince them they’ve
been fooled.
–Mark Twain
Probability is the intersection
of the most rigorous mathematics
and the messiest of life.
–Nassim Taleb
Though the world is slow to
forgive, it is quick to forget.
–C. S. Lewis
“We all clutched to ourselves
the fine sustaining illusion
that we were better writers than
most of the living and some of
the dead.” —Mary Lee Settle
A man who dares to waste an hour
of time has not discovered the
value of his life.
–Charles Darwin
Entropy is the price of
structure.
–Ilya Prigogine
I think the worst thing I’ve
done has been to accept lower
standards of evidence for things
I wanted to believe, than those
I didn’t.
–@salonium
There’s a lot there that will
never be here.
–Jessica Bland
It seems like an overnight
success because no one remembers
you when you weren’t successful.
–Michael Pryor
A good conference is a vacation
that you take with really smart
friends.
–Naval Ravikant
Perhaps somewhere, someplace
deep Inside your being, you have
undergone important changes
while you were sad.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
Success is not final, failure is
not fatal: it is the courage to
continue that counts.
–Winston Churchill
Outsiders at best do only what’s
asked. Insiders siders do what’s
needed.
–Michael Bloomberg
I’m a big fan of walks, they
breed honesty in a non
threatening way.
–Emilie Faure
Nothing happens to anyone that
he can’t endure. The same thing
happens to other people, and
they weather it unharmed–out of
sheer obliviousness or because
they want to display
“character.” Is wisdom really so
much weaker than ignorance and
vanity?
–Marcus Aurelius, book 5, #18
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and
When
And How and Where and Who.
–Rudyard Kipling
You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn what makes me
kind.
–Leonard Cohen
OH at Boston Book Festival
today: Why Is Your Library
Important to You? > Because it’s
a home for the curious!
I don’t like that man. I must
get to know him better.
–Abraham Lincoln
Why pass pain?
–Salem Al Marri
everyone is fighting a battle
you know nothing about - tim
ferris
I have a different attitude
towards the world, I can’t fit
in any one spot, except New
York.
–Wanda Jablonski
He’s a good teapot though he may
be bad pourer.
–Jackie Fisher
I have always found the word
‘Europe’ on the lips of those
statesmen who want something
from a foreign power which they
would never venture to ask for
in their own name.
–Bismarck
The European Union thus
represents an unusual
compromise: international
governance undertaken by
national governments.
‘European Union’ may be a
response to history, but it can
never be a substitute.
–Tony Judt
Superficially it was a highly
civilised and modern occasion.
Yet my overwhelming sensation
was of being a guest at a
medieval court.
It is not the people who make
war, but the leaders.
Angolan market trader, 1992
–Maragret Anstee on meeting Jonas Savimbi
Barring satellite problems, we
won’t be signing off until the
world ends. We’ll be on and
we’ll cover the end of the
world, live, and that will be
our last event.
–Ted Turner, 1990
The end of history will be a
very sad time.
–Francis Fukuyama
All efforts at negotiations
failed, mainly because Kabila
obstructed progress. Rather than
share power, he preferred to
share the country.
–Martin Meredith
Most of us only find our voices
after we’ve sounded like a lot
of other people.
–Neil Gaiman
‘Armaments’, he declared in
1987, ‘should be reduced to a
level necessary for strictly
defensive purposes. It is time
for the two military alliances
to amend their strategic
concepts to gear them more to
the aims of defense. Every
apartment in the ‘European home’
has the right to protect itself
against burglars, but it must do
so without destroying its
neighbors’ property.’
–Gorbachev
‘ideology’ was not an
appropriate basis for foreign
policy.
–Gorbachev
dialectics–as a veteran
Communist explained to the young
Jorge Semprún in Buchenwald–‘ is
What begins with centralized
planning ends with centralized
killing.
–Tony Judt
the art and technique of always
landing on your feet’.
It was, after all, one of the
attractions of ‘Europe’, as
imagined from the East, that it
held out the prospect of
affluence and security, liberty
and protection. You could have
your socialist cake and eat it
in freedom.
In markets as in gardens, the
French were suspicious of
unplanned growth.
–Tony Judt
Dans l’intervalle . . . ’ (‘ I
was born Christian and shall
doubtless die in that condition.
But meanwhile . . . ’).
–Francois Mitterrand
With everything from bus
companies to electric supply in
the hands of competing private
companies, the public space
became a market place.
–Tony Judt on Thatcherism
Private affluence was
accompanied, as so often, by
public squalor.
–Tony Judt on Thatcherism
“It’s not a very nice solution,”
Kennedy acknowledged, “but a
wall is a hell of a lot better
than a war.”
–JFK
“[ I] n the interests of our
common tasks, we must sometimes
overlook their stupidities,” one
Soviet official explained in
1973.
Drop into something.
–Eric Weinstein on dropping out
of college
I want my children to meet my
parents.
He not busy being born is busy
dying.
–Bob Dylan
children
If you only got one ass you
can’t sit in two horses.
–Hungarian proverb
In White House tapes, Nixon
called Pierre Trudeau an
“asshole.” Trudeau’s response:
“I’ve been called worse things
by better people.”
A zone of existence occupied by
the political elite, and a zone
of nonexistence, for the rest.
–Ilunga Kabongo, on Zaire
‘Some people try deliberately to
exploit the colonial hangover
for their own interest, to serve
some external force,’ he said in
1965. ‘To us, communism is as
bad as imperialism.’
–Kenyatta
Institutions will try to
preserve the problem to which
they are the solution.
–Clay Shirky
I have been a Baloch for several
centuries, I have been a Muslim
for 1,400 years. I have been a
Pakistani for just over fifty.
–Nawab Akbar Bugti Khan
We confuse long term
relationships with long
weekends.
–Mahmoud Salem
Professor Rabushka, a specialist
commentator on the Hong Kong
economy, would joke that the
Hong Kong entrepreneurs
represented ‘The pure form of
homo economicus. His given name
is Homo Hongkongus
Darwin himself was careful to
tiptoe around the implications
of his theory. He wanted to
spend his time thinking about
biology, not arguing with people
I don’t jump on the bandwagon
unless it’s going somewhere I
want to go.
–Berry Gordy
And the money bit is mainly to
be free enough to pursue further
knowledge.
–Neitzche
Write drunk, edit sober.
–Earnest Hemingway
Germany too small to be feared
and too big to be loved.
–German chancellor, Helmut
Schmidt
We tend to overestimate the
effect of a technology in the
short run and underestimate the
effect in the long run.
I’m easily satisfied with the
very best.
–Winston Churchill
Privacy is the practice zone for
public life.
–John Ralston Saul
Notebooks are inappropriate
because they interfere with the
necessary process of forgetting.
–Ian Foster
Intellectuals were both of this
urban world and suspecious of
it.
–Harold Tanner
Paris was where the twentieth
century was.
–Gertrude Stein
All you need is to meet
interesting people in a friend’s
kitchen.
–Shaz
Home is not a place, it is a
group of people.
–Cesare Hidalgo
The crisis consists precisely in
the fact that the old is dying
and the new cannot be born; in
this interregnum a great variety
of morbid symptoms appear.
–Antonio Gramsci
I don’t believe in apocalyptic–
until the apocalypse comes. I
think nothing is the end of the
world until the end of the
world.
نود تقولا امنيب ..تيقوتلا ءوس ةجحب
.ةياهن
يبرحلا فلخ
–Barack Obama
Although our intellect always
longs for clarity and certainty,
our nature often finds
uncertainty fascinating.
If you’re bored you’re boring.
–Camille Paglia
The easiest accusation to make
against your cousin is that he
is not really your cousin.
–Anonymous
It’s a balance. It’s a a balance
between everything matters and
nothing matters. If one can get
that right, then that’s kind of
the most wisdom one can get out
of life.
–Stephen Hough
My intelligence – whatever I
call my intelligence – was
assembled by that kid I was
between the ages of 26 and 36
who just did not stop reading.
Things that are really important
cannot be done alone.
–Cesar Hidalgo
That kid build the edifice which
I currently claim as my own.
–Junot Diaz
When they tell you there is one
life to live, say–nonsense!
There are many. The only choice
is whether to live them in
serial or in parallel.
–Neri Oxman
They’ve spent a decade being
berated for not making the right
sorts of paintings or novels or
music or politics. Turns out the
brightest 2.0 kids have been
doing something else
extraordinary. They’ve been
making a world.
–Zadie Smith, Generation Why?
Copyright your faults.
–Dan Carlin
There is no document of
civilisation which is not at the
same time a document of
barbarism.
–Walter Benjamin
Sovereignty is a term of power &
he who treats it as a legal term
will always arrive at
unsustainable results.
It is always harder to achieve
consensus about peace than about
war.
–Immanuel Wallerstein
We are growing proud of things
we should be ashamed of.
–anonymous
Nationalism therefore became
genuinely popular essentially
when it was drunk as a cocktail.
–Eric Hobsbawm
No human race is superior; no
religious faith is inferior. All
You can’t go home again.
–Thomas Wolfe
collective judgments are wrong.
Only racists make them.
–Elie Wiesel
They won’t give up the offices.
Were it believed that vacant
places could be had at the North
Pole, the road there would be
lined with dead Virginians.
–Abraham Lincoln
Hindsight, the historian’s chief
asset and his main liability.
–David Potter
OH: There is more Future than I
have Present for.
How we spend our days is, of
course, how we spend our lives.
–Annie Dillard
It may have been wrong to take
it; it is certainly dangerous to
let it go.
–Pericles, on an Athenian empire
A tyrant is a man “not having
control of himself [who]
attempts to rule others.
–Plato
To whom God doesn’t give
children the devil gives
nephews.
–Spanish Proverb
I have just enough talent to
recognise real talent.
–Stephen Fry
[Here we] draw on the teaching
of history to show the future as
a land of make-believe, a work
of the imagination, shaped by
the emotion of the present and
situated somewhere over the
rainbow of deconstructed past.
Religion is a defense against
the experience of God.
–Carl Jung
I cannot remember the books I’ve
read any more than the meals I
have eaten; even so, they have
made me.
The noise wants you to think
it’s the signal.
–@Rands
I would rather have a beer with
someone who’s searching for the
truth than with someone who’s
found it.
–Václav Havel
Writing a novel a very very slow
way of thinking. You’re thinking
so slowly you don’t realise
you’re thinking.
–Karl Ove Knausgaard
Ugliness is better then beauty
because it lasts longer.
–Serge Ginsbourg
When I meet a guy without stress
he gives me stress.
–Nicolas Sarkozy
The conscious mind is the
editor, and the subconscious
mind is the writer.
–Steve Martin
The problem with hegemony, as we
shall see, is that it is
passing.
–Immanuel Wellerstein
Societies are incapable of the
courage of cynicism.
–Henry Kissinger
if you speak three or more
languages, you are multilingual.
If you speak two languages, you
are bilingual. If you speak only
one language, you are American.
And if you speak only one
language, have never studied
geography, and do not have a
Those who do not remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.
–George Santayana
passport, you are probably a
member of Congress.
–Anonymous
Everything that needs to be said
has already been said. But,
since no one was listening,
everything must be said again.
–André Gide
I write everything many times
over. All my thoughts are second
thoughts.
–Aldous Huxley
Make things as simple as
possible, but not simpler.
–Albert Einstein
[If] [t]he purpose of theory is
to make nature stand still when
our backs are turned, [as]
Einstein reportedly said, [then]
nature often laughs and dances
around behind us
–Thad Brown
We are in Europe what the
Americans are in the world: the
unloved leading power.
–Angela Merkel
Philosophy is what you want to
keep in a good world, not what
you want to get rid of in a bad
one.
–Luciano Floridi
There are three ingredients to a
happy life: autonomy, purpose
and mastery.
–Dan Pink
Life changes at 40. Before 40,
life is about making decisions.
After 40, life is about living
with the decisions you made.
–Chilean Proverb
If you’re not at the table, then
you’re probably on the menu.
–@leedrutman, on corporate
lobbying in America.
It is not down on any map; true
places never are.
–Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Lots of companies don’t succeed
over time. What do they
fundamentally do wrong? They
usually miss the future
–Larry Page
Pessimism always sounds more
sophisticated than optimism.
–Marc Andreessen
Too much dividing and not enough
conquering.
–Beth Novak
At the end of the day, we’re
part of a long-runing story. We
just try to get our paragraph
right.
–Barack Obama
Everyone is condemned to be
free.
–Jean Paul Sartre
I am not what you think I am. I
am not what I think I am. I am
what I think you think I am.
–Mr. Alexander, college
professor, 1974
A man without a vision for his
future, always returns to his
past.
–Anonymous
You can’t turn a no to a yes
without a maybe in between.
–Frank Underwood
What is the face of a coward?
The back of his head.
–Frank Underwood
Your talent will take you places
your character can’t keep you.
–Eric Thomas
No one is as happy as they seem
on Facebook, as depressed as
they seem on Twitter, or as
employed as they seem on
LinkedIn.
–@Rayke
Nationalisms do not derive their
emotional and political force
I would rather be convinced than
defeated.
from subterranean wells of
ethnic or historical
authenticity. They have far
shorter memories, being made and
remade sometimes in the space of
a single generation.
–Elias Muhanna
Harsh reality is better than
false hope
–Dr Clarkson
The person who can quiet the
self can see the world clearly,
can learn the subject and master
the situation.
–David Brooks
You can't choose your sons but
you can choose yours sons in
law.
–Japanese Saying
The best life is a series of
daring excursions from a secure
and orderly base.
–David Brooks
Design makes what is hard,
easier. And makes what is easy,
memorable.
–@johnmaeda
The best way to complain is to
make things.
–James Murphy
It’s hard to do a really good
job on anything you don’t think
about in the shower.
–Paul Graham
The historical continents are
not necessarily geographic ones.
–Immanuel Wellerstein
Civilisation gave birth to
barbarism.
–Owen Lattimore
We can be knowledgeable with
other men’s knowledge, but we
can’t be wise with other men’s
wisdom.
–Montaigne
There’s a very simple answer to
the question, ‘How you go
bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually,
then suddenly.
–Hemingway
The epigraph to Green comes from
the first chapter of Genesis,
where green itself figures, in
some translations, as the only
color to be mentioned by name.
The epigraph to Black is drawn,
in contrast, from Wittgenstein,
who wrote: To answer the
question, “What do the words
red, blue, black, and white
mean?” we can, of course,
immediately point to things that
are those colors. But our
ability to explain the meaning
of these words goes no further.
We can only see a short distance
ahead, but we can see plenty
there that needs to be done.
–Alan Turing
If you can’t explain it simply,
you don’t understand it well
enough.
–Albert Einstein
In music, silence is more
important than sound.
–Miles Davis
We have to talk to keep our
voice boxes working so we’ll
have good voice boxes in case
there’s ever anything really
meaningful to say.
–Kurt Vonnegut
It’s much more important to be
interested than interesting.
–Jane Fonda
Strong back, soft front
–Joan Halifsc
Nothing is possible without
individuals. Nothing is lasting
without institutions.
I try to create films that help
children feel glad they have
been born.
–Jean Monnet
To see what is in front of one’s
nose needs a constant struggle.
–George Orwell
In the world through which I
travel, I am endlessly creating
myself
–Franz Fennon
Gentleman, we have run out of
money. Now we have to think.
–Winston Churchill.
Hard to see how workers are
“losing” today vs capital, when
they have unprecedented personal
brand capital.
–Jeff Jarvis
People often say that motivation
doesn’t last. Well, neither does
bathing - that’s why we
recommend it daily.
–Zig Ziglar
Those who are too smart to
engage in politics are punished
by being governed by those who
are dumber.
–Plato
Peace is not the absence of
conflict, but the presence of
justice.
–MLK Jr.
I don’t want to predict a future
that, in and of itself, becomes
an impediment to achieving it.
–Javad Zarif
Looking at art, we learn about
ourselves. Comparing views on
art, we learn about one another.
Disputing it, we shape culture.
Where there is no argument there
can be no consequentially
meaningful art. Today, what
passes for debate has occluded
the intellectual, emotional, and
spiritual stakes of aesthetic
experience, which assumes the
odor of a minor private vice.
How we cope with the
implications will affect what,
as parties to history, we
become.
–Peter Schjeldahl
We have to have a very strong
criticism of modes of
cooperation that entrench
inequality.
–Judith Butler
Dreams have consequences.
–Hisham Matar
It is an undeniable privilege of
every man to prove himself right
in the thesis that the world is
his enemy; for if he reiterates
it frequently enough and makes
it the background of his conduct
he is bound eventually to be
right.
–Sources of soviet conduct
This student is exceptionally
well-rounded. But the radius is
very narrow.
–John Kelleher
Saying that cultural objects
have value, is like saying that
telephones have conversations.
–Brian Eno
The shortest horror story: the
last man on earth sat alone in a
room. There was a knock on the
door.
–Fredrick Brown
People are not always maximising
profits.
–Andreas Lange
There is no such thing as a new
idea. It is impossible. We
simply take a lot of old ideas
and put them into a sort of
mental kaleidoscope. We give
them a turn and they make new
and curious combinations. We
keep on turning and making new
combinations indefinitely; but
they are the same old pieces of
coloured glass that have been in
use through all the ages.
–Mark Twain
Work finally begins, when the
fear of doing nothing exceeds
the fear of doing it badly.
–Alain de Botton
You can never solve a problem on
the level on which it was
created.
–Albert Einstein
I don’t need time, I need a
deadline.
–Duke Ellington
‘My culture is my identity’
means you’re not contributing
anything, it’s all inherited.
–Karl Sharro
If anyone wants to measure the
differential in power between
words and images, just look at
how more often images get
censored.
–Clayton Cubitt
All I want in life is to be your
easy silence.
–Salem Al Mansoori
A one-hit wonder is a legend who
stopped early.
–Seth Godin
The world of the farandula, of
show business. To me, it’s
enchanting to run around with
singers, actresses, staying up
all night, going to all sorts of
parties. I’d like to run around
with many beautiful women,
different every day. And never
work. But then I couldn’t write.
The fascism in us all, in our
heads and in our everyday
behaviour, the fascism that
causes us to love power, to
desire the very thing that
dominates and exploits us.
–Michel Foucault
And the only thing I ever wanted
to do in life was write.
–Gabriel García Márquez
Conformity in the global market
today [is] due to the internet –
everyone wants the same few
things.
–Anon
It is ridiculous, but because
people like it is not
ridiculous.
–Mourad Mazouz
I don’t care who writes a
nation’s laws, or crafts its
treatises, if I can write its
economics textbooks.
–Paul Samuelson
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
Journalism is printing what
someone else does not want
printed: everything else is
public relations
–George Orwell
One of the finest protections
against disappointment is to
have a lot going on.
Simplicity is about removing the
obvious and adding the
meaningful.
–Alain de Botton
The business of life is the
acquisition of memories. In the
end that’s all there is. And the
price of great love is great
misery when one of you dies.
–Carson, Downtown Abbey
Great architects continue to
think their entire life.
–Stefanos Polyzoides
The long run is a series of
short runs.
–Singapore ambassador at large
Never agree to a deal unless you
understand why the other guy
likes it.
–anonymous
When everything is furious and
extreme, nothing is furious and
extreme. Etc.
–Tom Gara
If you do anything regularly for
a while, sooner or later the
weirdos will show up.
–Jeff Buckley
Youth ages, immaturity is
outgrown, ignorance can be
educated, and drunkenness
sobered, but stupid lasts
forever.
–Aristophanes
An Intellectual is a person
who’s found one thing more
interesting than sex.
–Aldous Huxley
This world is a comedy to those
that think, a tragedy to those
that feel.
–Horace Walpole
Inspiration is for amateurs –
the rest of us just show up and
get to work.
–Chuck Close
Inspirations exists, but it has
to find you working.
–Pablo Picasso
Better to be a quiet gardener
than a landscape architect.
–Edward Luce
It’s not that I like it because
I’m good at it. I’m good at it
because I like it.
–Neil deGrasse Tyson
Only a few prefer liberty.
Majority seek nothing more than
fair masters.
–Sallust
I don’t believe the muse visits
you. I believe that you visit
the muse.
–Michael Lewis
The truth is always either
terrible or boring.
–Lady Sansa, Game of Thrones
Getting to the top has an
unfortunate tendency to persuade
people that the system is OK
after all.
–Alain de Botton
The past is a foreign country:
they do things differently there
–L.P. Hartley
A homeland is not the place or
soil on which one is born,
rather it is the place where one
has the capacity to move.
–Abdul Rahman Munif
I don’t need a friend who
changes when I change and who
nods when I nod; my shadow does
that much better.
–Plutarch
The problem with the world is
that the intelligent people are
There is something so common in
our differences…
–Yasin AlSalman
full of doubts while the stupid
ones are full of confidence.
–Charles Bukowski
Loneliness remembers what
happiness forgets.
–Burt Bacharach
You’re moving too much–just
stand still. I need to punch you
right.
–Ali AlKaff
It seems to be a natural human
instinct to look for the
weirdness in other people.
–Haleh Anvari
An honest question about
psychology: why are we surprised
about strange beliefs of public
when average IQ is 100?
–Steve Zara
We overgeneralize everything all
the time.
–Salem Al Mansoori
Literature is news that stays
news.
–Ezra Pound
Nobody has ever measured, not
even poets, how much the heart
can hold.
–Zelda Fitzgerald
Our mothers always remain the
strangest, craziest people we’ve
ever met.
–Marguerite Duras
Two or three things I know for
sure, and one of them is the way
you can both hate and love
something you are not sure you
understand.
–Dorothy Allison
The truly sincere person ends up
understanding that he is always
lying.
–Fredrich Nietzsche
Both absolutists and relativists
are problematic: ‘The first
asserts the quest for truth is
unnecessary, while the second
asserts that it is impossible.’
We always say in Singapore, size
is not destiny but geography is.
–Singaporean Diplomat
It was so fake for so long it
became genuine.
–Francis Matthew
The more clearly we can focus
our attention on the wonders and
realities of the universe about
us, the less taste we shall have
for destruction.
–Rachel Carson
Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive,
and go do it. Because what the
world needs is people who have
come alive.
–Howard Thurman
I’ve been all over the world and
I’ve never seen a statue of a
critic.
―Leonard Bernstein
Lasting change does not happen
by dictation from top or by
emergence from the bottom or by
push from outsiders. It only
happens when all three are
working simultaneously.
–Kristin Ehrgood
Nobody ever figures out what
life is all about, and it
doesn’t matter. Explore the
world. Nearly everything is
really interesting if you go
into it deeply enough.
–Richard P. Feynman
He’s the sort of man who needs
not millions but the resolution
of his idea.
–From The Brothers Karamazov
Paper, it is said, does not
blush.
–From The Brothers Karamazov
Karamazov
Watching visitors from Iran
ordering in McDonald’s … America
won
–Khalid Al Baih
After she interrupted my film, I
got upset, then told her it’s
only a film, she said yes, you
can make a million of them.
–Rami Farook
Please sleep softly. Leave me no
room for doubt.
–Layan Attari
The Exterior is not as important
as the Interior. The Fridge is a
great example of that.
–Talal Elreyes
There must be those among whom
we can sit down and weep and
still be counted as warriors.
–Adrienne Rich
Me, I live now. The future I
don’t know and the past smells
bad.
–Mourad Mazouz
A picture is worth a thousand
words … and yet it takes words
to say that.
–anonymous
We’re all a little weird. And
life is a little weird. And when
we find someone whose weirdness
is compatible with ours, we join
up with them and fall into
mutually satisfying weirdness–
and call it love–true love.
―Robert Fulghum
Once at war, to reason is
treason.
–James Hilton
Don’t try to make life a
mathematics problem with
yourself in the center and
everything coming out equal.
When you’re good, bad things can
still happen. And if you’re bad,
you can still be lucky.
–Barbara Kingsolver
The longer and more carefully we
look at a funny story, the
sadder it becomes.
–Nikolai Gogol
The angel is free because of his
knowledge, the beast because of
Your voice is a poker face.
–Abdullah Al Mestrih
his ignorance. Between the two
remains the son of man to
struggle.
–Rumi
Here’s the thing about equality,
everyone is equal when they’re
dead.
–Muath Al Wari
The further you are from this
chair, the more you believe in
absolute monarchy.
–Abdullah II
I’ve known people that the world
has thrown everything at to
discourage them…to break their
spirit. And yet something about
them retains a dignity. They
face life and don’t ask
quarters.
–Horton Foote
Erudition without bullshit,
intellect without cowardice,
courage without imprudence,
mathematics without nerdiness,
scholarship without academia,
intelligence without shrewdness,
religiosity without intolerance,
elegance without softness,
sociality without dependence,
enjoyment without addiction,
and, above all, nothing without
skin in the game.
(A letter of advice to a younger
person)
–Nassim Nicholas Taleb
You can be young without money
but you can’t be old without it.
–Tennessee Williams
I travel not to go anywhere, but
to go. I travel for travel’s
sake. The great affair is to
move.
–Robert Louis Stevenson
Perhaps all the dragons in our
lives are princesses who are
only waiting to see us act, just
once, with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that
frightens us is, in its deepest
essence, something helpless that
wants our love.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
Be reverent before the dawning
day. Do not think of what will
be in a year, or in ten years.
Think of to-day.
–Romain Rolland
This was another of our fears:
that Life wouldn’t turn out to
be like Literature.
–Julian Barnes
Together in our house, in the
firelight, we are the world made
small.
–Jennifer Donnelly
Whatever you’re meant to do, do
it now. The conditions are
always impossible.
–Doris Lessing
Sometimes I can hear my bones
straining under the weight of
all the lives I’m not living.
–Jonathan Safran Foer
It makes you wonder. All the
brilliant things we might have
done with our lives if only we
suspected we knew how.
–Ann Patchett
Love blurs your vision; but
after it recedes, you can see
more clearly than ever. It’s
like the tide going out,
revealing whatever’s been thrown
away and sunk: broken bottles,
old gloves, rusting pop cans,
nibbled fishbodies, bones. This
Oil friendships are very
slippery.
–Calouste Gulbenkian
is the kind of thing you see if
you sit in the darkness with
open eyes, not knowing the
future.
–Margaret Atwood
A trap is only a trap if you
don’t know about it. If you know
about it, it’s a challenge.
–China Miéville
Talking nonsense is the sole
privilege mankind possesses over
the other organisms. It’s by
talking nonsense that one gets
to the truth! I talk nonsense,
therefore I’m human.
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Moral indignation is jealousy
with a halo.
–H.G. Wells
Real generosity towards the
future lies in giving all to the
present.
–Albert Camus
Every luxury must be paid for,
and everything is a luxury,
starting with being in this
world.
–Cesare Pavese
Freeing yourself was one thing,
claiming ownership of that freed
self was another.
–Toni Morrison
I’m going to smile, and my smile
will sink down into your pupils,
and heaven knows what it will
become.
–Jean-Paul Sartre
Don’t gobblefunk around with
words.
–Roald Dahl
My library is an archive of
longings.
–Susan Sontag
One never notices what has been
done; one can only see what
remains to be done…
–Marie Curie
And then I asked him with my
eyes to ask again yes and then
he asked me would I yes and his
heart was going like mad and yes
I said yes I will yes.
–James Joyce
Everything has been said before,
but since nobody listens we have
to keep going back and beginning
all over again.
–Andre Gide
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own
mirror,
and each will smile at the
other’s welcome.
–Derek Walcott
If you can’t go back to your
mother’s womb, you’d better
learn to be a good fighter.
–Anchee Min
The fear of saying something
stupid (which stupid people
never have) has censored far
more good ideas than bad ones.
–Alain de Botton
The perfect can be the enemy of
the good.
–anonymous
If I were two-faced, would I be
wearing this one?
–Abraham Lincoln
I would hate to think that humor
is, in the long run, more
effective than reason, but it
certainly is more arresting than
reason.
–Adlai Stevenson
Writing letters is magical… Not
being able to correct yourself,
craving to send it immediately,
anxiety of waiting till it’s
delivered.
–Arie Amaya-Akkermans
An idealist is one who, on
noticing that roses smell better
than a cabbage, concludes that
it will also make better soup.
–HL Mencken
Be slow to fall into friendship;
but when thou art in, continue
firm & constant.
–Socrates
Imperfectionists
I don’t want to repeat my
innocence. I want the pleasure
of losing it again.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald
There is so much beauty in
nonsense.
–Pat
I have never listened to anyone
who criticized my taste in space
travel, sideshows or gorillas.
When this occurs, I pack up my
dinosaurs and leave the room.
–Ray Bradbury
I will only say that of late
years I have tried to write less
picturesquely and more exactly.
–George Orwell
I am not sure that I exist,
actually. I am all the writers
that I have read, all the people
that I have met, all the women
that I have loved; all the
cities I have visited.
–Jorge Luis Borges
No man is a liberal when it
comes to his daughters.
–Tony Parsons
Never promise to love, sue or
punch someone unless you truly
mean it.
–Tony Parsons
When you are young, you think
you are having a better life
than your father because he did
not have all those girls, all
those drugs, all that money and
the need to earn it. You are
growing up when you start
suspecting that your father had
a far happier life than you
because he did not have all
those girls, all those drugs,
all that money and the need to
earn it.
–Tony Parsons
You will never get the love you
deserve. It will always be more
or less than you warrant.
–Tony Parsons
I am a part of all that I have
met.
–Alfred Tennyson
Fish and guests stink after
three days.
–John Adams.
I would rather vote for God.
–Jean-Paul Sartre on the question of De Gaulle’s return
to power during the 1958 crisis
Actual repetition and imitation
are scarcely ever possible,
whether politically,
economically, socially, or
technologically, because the
universe is already too much
altered by the first cause one
is copying.
–Tom Nairn
A nation is born when a few
people decide that it should be.
–Paul Ignotus
You think your pain and your
heartbreak are unprecedented in
the history of the world, but
then you read.
–James Baldwin
A smile is the chosen vehicle of
all ambiguities.
–Herman Melville
If all else perished, and he
remained, I should still
continue to be; and if all else
remained, and he were
annihilated, the universe would
turn to a mighty stranger.
–Emily Brontë
The most exhausting thing in
life, I have discovered, is
being insincere.
–Anne Morrow Lindbergh
I have noticed even people who
claim everything is predestined,
and that we can do nothing to
change it, look before they
cross the road.
–Stephen Hawking
Reading a newspaper is like
reading a novel whose author has
abandoned any thought of a
coherent plot.
–Benedict Anderson
A mob is no less a mob because
they’re with you.
–John Adams
You never know what worse luck
your bad luck has saved you
from.
–Cormac McCarthy
A man who procrastinates in his
choosing will inevitably have
his choice made for him by
circumstance.
Culture flows from structure.
–The Economist
Morning is wonderful. Its only
drawback is that it comes at
such an inconvenient time of
day.
–Glen Cook
Open a book this minute and
start reading. Don’t move until
you’ve reached page fifty. Until
you’ve buried your thoughts in
print. Cover yourself with
words. Wash yourself away.
Dissolve.
–Carol Shields
One failure of colleges is their
apparent incompetence to select
and train a sufficient body of
intelligent teachers.
–HL Mencken
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
The fear of Khomeinis waiting to
happen has turned many into
Attaturks.
–Abdulrahman Arif
Charm is the neutralisation of
the powerful through their
vanity.
–Alain de Botton
Ideas are bulletproof.
–V for Vendetaa
There’s nothing as powerful as
an idea whose time has come.
–Victor Hugo
Calling for growth is like
advocating world peace:
everybody agrees that it is a
good thing, but nobody agrees
how to do it.
–The Economist
Happiness consists in getting
enough sleep. Just that, nothing
more.
–Robert A. Heinlein
It’s easier to do the right
thing a hundred per cent of the
time than ninety-eight per cent
of the time.
–Calyton Christensen
It is useless for the sheep to
pass resolutions in favor of
vegetarianism, while the wolf
remains of a different opinion.
–William Ralph Inge
There’s nothing so wrong as when
young people die.
–Victoria Grantham, Downton
Abbey
Don’t be defeatist, that’s so
middle class.
–Victoria Grantham, Downton
Abbey
If you don’t have good dreams,
Bagels, you got nightmares.
–Boogie from Diner
The human race is no longer
sufficently bored with life to
be distracted by an art form as
boring as the novel.
–Toby Litt
There are no good girls gone
wrong - just bad girls found
out.
–Mae West
The optimist proclaims that we
live in the best of all possible
worlds; and the pessimist fears
this is true.
–James Branch Cabell
The most courageous act is still
to think for yourself. Aloud.
–Coco Chanel
The opposite of love is not
hate, it’s indifference. The
opposite of art is not ugliness,
it’s indifference. The opposite
of faith is not heresy, it’s
indifference. And the opposite
of life is not death, it’s
indifference.
–Elie Wiesel
Beliefs are what divide people.
Doubt unites them.
–Peter Ustinov
Learning to ignore things is one
of the great paths to inner
peace.
–Robert J. Sawyer
There comes a time in a man’s
life when to get where he has to
go–if there are no doors or
windows–he walks through a wall.
–Bernard Malamud
Only by admitting what we are do
we get what we want.
–anonymous
To live alone one must be an
animal or a God - says
Aristotle. There is yet a third
case: one must be both - a
philosopher.
–Nietzsche
It’s worse than a shame, it’s a
complication.
It’s hard to argue with
documentation.
–anonymous
By taxing bad things more, we
could tax good things less.
–Greg Mankiw
Stable is between success and
failure.
–Peter Campbell, Mad Men
Whales evolve slower than fruit
flies.
–anonymous
In three words I can sum up
everything I’ve learned about
life: it goes on.
–Robert Frost
If our behaviour was driven by
group selection, then we’d be
robotic cooperators, like ants.
But, if individual-level
selection was the only thing
that mattered, then we’d be
entirely selfish. What makes us
human is that our history has
been shaped by both forces.
We’re stuck in between.
–E. O. Wilson
Selfishness beats altruism
within groups. Altruistic groups
beat selfish groups. Everything
else is commentary.
–E. O. Wilson
First, the truth is ridiculed.
Then it meets outrage. Then it
is said to have been obvious all
along.
–Schopenhauer
The Great Transformation??
Bullshit. Nobody with 4 Aces
Wants a New Deal!
–Occupy Davos
It is also tradition that times
must and always will change my
friend.
–Eddie Murphy, Coming to America
In the beginning the Universe
was created. This has made a lot
of people very angry and been
widely regarded as a bad move.
–Douglas Adams
Maybe debate is going to be less
pleasant, but it will always be
more productive.
–Charlan Nemeth
A lot of things in life are
worth dying for, but nothing is
worth killing for.
–Jasem Al Zarei
Worry does not empty tomorrow of
its sorrow, it empties today of
its strength.
–Corrie ten Boom
It’s enough for me to be sure
that you and I exist at this
moment.
―Gabriel García Márquez, One
Hundred Years of Solitude
It’s so hard to forget pain, but
it’s even harder to remember
sweetness. We have no scar to
show for happiness. We learn so
little from peace.
–Chuck Palahniuk
The problem with people who have
no vices is that generally you
can be pretty sure they’re going
to have some pretty annoying
virtues."
–Elizabeth Taylor
Kiss me, and you will see how
important I am.
Certainty about the next life is
simply incompatible with
tolerance in this one.
–Sylvia Plath
A reform happens when you change
the policy of the government; a
revolution happens when you
change the mind-set of a
country.
–Ron Dermer
She refused to be bored chiefly
because she wasn’t boring.
–Zelda Fitzgerald
His heart danced upon her
movements like a cork upon a
tide. He heard what her eyes
said to him from beneath their
cowl and knew that in some dim
past, whether in life or revery,
he had heard their tale before.
–James Joyce
A university is just a group of
buildings gathered around a
library.
–Shelby Foote
It is perfectly true, as
philosophers say, that life must
be understood backwards. But
they forget the other
proposition, that it must be
lived forwards.
–Søren Kierkegaard
That perfect tranquility of
life, which is nowhere to be
found but in retreat, a faithful
friend and a good library.
–Aphra Behn
There are some things you learn
best in calm, and some in storm.
–Willa Cather
Since the earth is a globe, they
cannot disperse over an infinite
area, but must necessarily
tolerate one another’s company.
–Emmanuel Kant
How glorious it is – and also
how painful – to be an
exception.
–Alfred De Musset
What is the opposite of two? A
lonely me, a lonely you.
–Richard Wilbur
Art’s role is to imagine the
emancipatory politics of our
impossibilities.
–Hamid Dabashi
Conservatives are afraid of
discrediting the past and
liberals are afraid of doing
future a disservice.
–Anonymous
The saddest aspect of life right
now is that science gathers
knowledge faster than society
gathers wisdom.
–Isaac Asimov
The intuitive mind is a sacred
gift and the rational mind is a
faithful servant. We have
created a society that honors
the servant and forgotten the
gift.
–Albert Einstein
The unexamined life is not worth
living.
–Socrates
Say not in grief ‘he is no more’
but live in thankfulness that he
was.
–Hebrew Proverb
Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable
from magic.
–Arthur C. Clarke
You have to know what you stand
for, not just what you stand
against.
–Laurie Halse Anderson
When the train of history hits a
curve the intellectuals fall
off.
–Karl Marx
It is our failure to become our
perceived ideal that ultimately
defines us and makes us unique.
–Conan O’Brien
Foreign policy is being made by
imperfect people who face
imperfect choices and have to
use an imperfect process to
reach decisions.
–Jake Sullivan
I do believe that wars should be
like abortion: rare and legal.
–Juan Cole
Censorship is the child of fear
and the father of ignorance.
–Laurie Halse Anderson
Definition of “democrats” –
those willing to support
democratic elections even when
ppl they really, really don’t
like will win
–Shadhi Hamid
To my wife, who is my mast in
the storms of life.
–Christian Bale.
I’m all yours for a good cause.
–anonymous
OH on Yousef Shahine: Globalised
before globalization.
–anon
Good taste isn’t half the
battle, it’s the whole war.
–anon
Take the bitter with the better. You must empty a box before you
fill it again.
–Irish proverb
You cannot jump into an empty
pool and hope it will rain.
–Naguib Sawiris
We all will need to re-invent
ourselves 4 or 5 times in a
lifetime.
–Charles Handy
Individuals don’t care about
statistics.
–Scrubs
All things excellent are as
difficult as they are rare.
–Spinoza
One cannot become a saint when
one works sixteen hours a day.
–Jean Paul Sartre
Wicked thoughts and worthless
efforts gradually set their mark
on the face, especially the
eyes.
–Schopenhauer
Pity for those who were not
young during those last years of
confidence.
–Stefan Zweig
In Europe we were Asiatics,
whereas in Asia we, too, are
Europeans.
–Fyodor Dostoevsky
There’s only one thing more
boring than listening to other
people’s dreams, and that’s
listening to their problems.
― Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary
of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
In the idea of the stranger
Judaism is born.
–Herman Cohen
Once you have enough for beans
and rice, money is a story.
–Seth Godin
Travel is a sensory assault.
Randomization combating status
quo bias.
–Tyler Cowen
Microdoses of anything are good.
–Aaron Heidari
The bad news is you’re falling
through the air, nothing to hang
on to, no parachute. The good
news is there’s no ground.
To be disillusioned, of course,
one has to have had illusions.
–Stephen Kotkin
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
–Kierkegaard
Anxiety is the dizziness of someone else’s freedom.
–Fareed Zakaria
The market determines how big a company can get and the founder determines how big the company will get.
–@gradypb
Japan loves entrepreneurs in the same fashion Catholicism loves saints, they all happened a while ago.
–@patio11
yesterday’s passion projects become today’s basic infrastructure repeated a million fold
–@jam3scampbell
One tradition becomes too flexible irony enters the voice
–Don DeLillo, white noise
Washington had all the charm of a northern city, and all the efficiency of a southern one.
–John Kennedy
The creative adult is the child who survived.
–Ursula Leguin
intent and outcome are so rarely coincident
–Neil Gaiman
True soldier doesn’t fight because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.
–G.K. Chesterton
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
–Jack London
If you can get to how the sausage is made and you’re not bored, it might be your thing.
–Kristina Saint
Save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist.
–Morgan Housel
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
–James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
a farmer 100 years ago would think like 90% of modern jobs are made-up play jobs
–McKay Wrigley
betting against human's ability to want more stuff, find new ways to play status games, ability to find new methods for creative expression, etc is always a bad bet
–Sam Altman
I killed a plant once because I gave
it too much water. Lord, I worry
that love is violence.
–José Olivarez
Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don't like and are not especially good at.
–David Gruber
If we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.
–Tim Krieder
“Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history.”
–Kelly Hayes
I think people like to discover you and keep you just as they found you.
–Gwyneth Paltrow
The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.
–EO Wilson
"I am the multitude within me, ever-renewing on the outside."
–Mahmoud Darwish
The internet lowered the cost of knowing. AI lowers the cost of doing.
–@abhiiavasthi
The ‘Instagram Generation’ now experiences the present as an anticipated memory.
–Daniel Kahneman
When you create desire, profits are a consequence.
–Bernard Arnault
I’d rather be a hypocrite than the same person forever.
–Ad-rock (beastie boys)
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
–Oscar Wilde
“An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company.”
–Ian McEwan
Sometimes our misfortunes are the sails to the shores we were meant to be on"
–Mother Superior Raquella, Dune Prophecy
History is the activity of a historical being recovering the past into a present which anticipates the future.
–Peter Preuss
Products are just calcified stories
–@hipcityreg
The real cost of distraction is the compounded future you never built.
–naval
All humane things are subject to decay, And, when Fate summons, Monarchs must obey.
–John Dryden
We have to make up for the brevity of life with the intensity of life.
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
–Howard Thurman
He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.
–Schopenhauer
Sometimes the truth is stupid.
–Lawrence
I can’t go back to being the person I was, but I can go home.
^^
Metamorphosis of prime intellect
–Caroline
If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.
–Leslie Lamport
"We must learn the fine arts of war and independence so that our children can learn architecture and engineering so that their children may learn the fine arts and painting" (John Quincy Adams).
"It is the genius in us who knows that the past is most definitely past, and therefore not forever sealed but forever open to creative reinterpretation."
Illness always has the smell of death about it: Either it may lead to death, or it leads to the death of a person as competitor. The dread of illness is the dread of losing.
Society is where we proved the parents qua audience that we are not what we thought they thought we were.
–James Carse
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.
–Steve Jobs
"Conflict is the test by which people learn how much they matter to each other"
–Shreeda Segan
I remember a psychiatrist once telling me that I gamble in order to escape the reality of life, and I told him that’s why everyone does everything.
–Norm Macdonald, 2016
Alfred Whitehead's observation that "civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them
Every church is orthodox to it self; to others Erroneous or Heretical.
–John Locke
culture is the long term memory of humanity
–@jasonyuandesign