om's Quote Archives

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Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. -Ludwig Witgenstein

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all. -Elbert Hubbard

We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry. -John Webster

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

You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time. -Charles F. Kettering

To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe... -Carl Sagan

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life. -Sandra Carey

So Jesus didn't save us, so science didn't save us... When will humanity realize that it's savior is the person who stares back in the mirror every morning? -David Joseph Hennessy

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. -G. H. Hardy

We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone. -Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place. -Mohandas K. Gandhi

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy. -Fred Hoyle

It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive. -C.W. Leadbeater

Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped. -last words of Groucho Marx

I stand alone on the edge of tommorow to extend the limits of the possible. -Unknown

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog, it's too dark to read. -Groucho Marx

...inspiration is in the one who reads not that which is read. -Joan Elmo-Storey

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. -Albert Einstein

As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope. -Ursula LeGuin

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. -Henry David Thoreau

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, who can't are those in cemeteries. -Everett Dirksen

Faith in the supernatural begins as faith in the superiority of others. -John Galt Atlas Shrugged (Rand)

Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed - thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes - because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself - and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud. -John Fowles [The Magus, 1965]

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress. -Thomas A. Edison

All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals. -Peter Singer [Animal Liberation]

"Natura inest in mentibus nostris insatiabilis quaedam cupiditas veri videndi," "Nature has planted in our minds the insatiable longing to see the truth." -Cicero, 106 - 43 BC

"On resiste a l'invasion des armees; on ne resiste pas a l'invasion des idees," "One resists the invasion of armies, but not the invasion of ideas." -Hugo

It's easy to tell the difference [between a cult and an established religion] - a cult is someone else's religion. -Jim Heldberg
Corollary: A fanatic is someone who believes something more strongly than you do.

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

Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation.

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them. -Joseph Joubert

... to read good books is like holding a conversation with the most eminent minds of past centuries and, moreover, a studied conversation in which these authors reveal to us only the best of their thoughts. -Descartes Discourse on Method

The impossible is often the untried. -Jim Goodwin

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. -Jorge Luis Borges

If I listen, I have the advantage. If I speak, the others have it.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. -Albert Einstein

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however -Richard Bach

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. -G.B. Shaw

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent. -Marilyn vos Savant

The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well. -H.T. Leslie

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned. -Heinrich Heine Almansor

I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life. -Mohandas Gandhi

There are many hypotheses in physics of almost comparable brillance and elegance that have been rejected because they did not survive such a confrontation with experiment. In my view, the human condition would be greatly improved if such confrontations and willingness to reject hypotheses were a regular part of our social, political, economic, religious and cultural lives. -Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. -Paulo Freire

There is one thing stronger that all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come.

Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes. (Per contra, scientia est potentia.)

Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life. -Comedian John Rogers (who holds a graduate degree in physics)

When I get a little money, I buy books; And, if any is left, I buy food and clothes. -Erasmus

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow. -Charles Brower

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field. -Niels Bohr

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy. -Florence Scovel Shinn

Silence is the voice of complicity.

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. -G.M. Trevelyan

Adonna, when he play-acted as God, implanted a very inadequate and corrupt notion of sin in human minds. He said sin was a violation of god's law. That is the philosophy of a tyrant, not a creator. He wished to keep all humans subjugated and ignorant. Human growth was an anathema to him. He wished to keep us in ignorance and darkness. There is no god's law. Why should a god impose arbitrary limits? There is only growth and understanding. Through growth and understanding, there is love. Where there is no understanding and no growth, only ignorance, there is no love. That is sin. But to grow is to commit mistakes. To learn sometimes requires trial and error. It should be apparent to you now that all sins are youthful transgressions. All evil is youthful. After a few thousand years, thoughts of evil become ineffably boring, like the posturing of ill-mannered children. -Greg Bear, The Serpent Mage

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers. -William Penn

It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. -T.H. Huxley

A radioactive cat has 18 half lives

Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, there you long to return. -Da Vinci

"Those who do not have history are doomed to retype it!" -Santayana, if he'd been a Unix Geek.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. -Robert M. Pirsig

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust

There are no facts, only interpretations. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it. -John D. Rockefeller

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. -Walter Gagehot

If you want truly to understand something, try to change it. -Kurt Lewin

Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. -A. Einstein

Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.

#1: "What is it that makes the humans so special? What is it that draws you to them?"
#2: "They fight. They argue. They are ruled by passions and fears."
D: "Yes, and that is their strength. They do not seek conformity. They do not surrender. Out of their differences comes symmetry, their unique capacity to fight against impossible odds. Hurt them and they only come back stronger. The passions we deplore have taken them to their place in their stars and will propel them to a great destiny. Their only weakness is that they do not recognize their own greatness. They forget that they have come to this place through two million years of evolution, struggle and blood and they are better than they think and nobler than they know. They carry within them the capacity to walk amongst the stars like giants. They are the future and we have much to learn from them."
-Grey Council #1 & #2 and Delenn, "Babylon Squared", Babylon 5

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you hardly catch it going. -Tennessee Williams

There is no greater sorrow than to recall a time of happiness in misery. -Dante

Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time. -Hebrew proverb

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf. -American Indian Proverb

I never give them hell.I just tell the truth and they think it's hell. -Harry S. Truman

Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that what he did was human nature -A.A. Milne

I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserved them? So, now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe. -Marcus, "A Late Delivery From Avalon", Babylon 5

Two step formula for handling stress: 1. Don't sweat the small stuff. 2. Remember that it's all small stuff. -Anthony Robbins

Nothing contributes more to peace of soul than having no opinion at all. -George Christopher Lichtenberg

program (pro'-gram) [n] A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate. -Elbert Hubbard

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. -Thomas Jefferson
(Unless of course you are doing a long research paper)

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. -Helen Keller

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. -Albert Camus

The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness. -Annie Savoy 'Bull Durham'
(Tell me what YOU think.)

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist. -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own. -Disraeli

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception. -Plato

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything. -Friedrich Nietzsche

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. -Anatole France

The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. -Thomas Paine

Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. -David Lloyd George

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -Albert Einstein

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Be ashamed die until you have won some victory for humanity. -Epitaph, "Changing of the Guard", Twilight Zone

One cannot always be a hero, but one can always be a human. -Goethe

A professor is someone who talks in someone else's sleep.

Every man has one thing he can do better than anyone else - and usually it's reading his own handwriting. -G. Norman Collie

Thesaurus: n. ancient reptile with large vocabulary.

Last updated: 1998 Dec 17