In time and with water, everything changes
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519
Entire Collection
The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it.
Sam Harris born 1967
Harris, S. (2014). Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Bantam Press.
born 1967
Harris, S. (2014). Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Bantam Press.
That tomorrow should come and that I should be there.
1899 - 1961
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Never confuse movement with action.
1899 - 1961
Papa Hemingway (1966)
Cities are no more artificial than the hives of bees. The internet is as natural as a spider's web.
born 1948
Straw Dogs
Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor immoral. It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the natural world, in spite the fact that we are part of this world. We are products of nature, but nature has made us together with our power of altering the world, of foreseeing and of planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet, responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us.
Karl Popper 1902 - 1994
1902 - 1994
If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.
Alan Turing 1912 - 1954
1912 - 1954
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde 1854 - 1900
1854 - 1900
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996
1934 - 1996
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
1903 - 1950
Animal Farm (1945)
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defence of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions, and just as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God.
1880 - 1956
Minority Report
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
Endurance is patience concentrated.
Thomas Carlyle 1795 - 1881
1795 - 1881
We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
Thomas Browne 1605 - 1682
1605 - 1682
Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time.
Hippocrates c. 460 - c. 370 BC
c. 460 - c. 370 BC
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
Douglas Adams 1952 - 2001
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘‘Fit the Fifth’’ (radio program) (1978)
1952 - 2001
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘‘Fit the Fifth’’ (radio program) (1978)
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
John Holmes 1904 - 1962
1904 - 1962
This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the ‘ability’ to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable.
1915 - 1973
Watts, A. (1968). The Wisdom of Insecurity. Vintage.
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996
1934 - 1996
It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
Alan Watts 1915 - 1973
1915 - 1973
Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.
Pythagoras c. 570 - c. 495 BC
c. 570 - c. 495 BC
Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me ‘How good, how good does it feel to be free?’ And I answer them most mysteriously ‘Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?’
born 1941
Lyric : Ballad In Plain D
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
George Orwell 1903 - 1950
1903 - 1950
Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?
born 1965
Albus Dumbledore : Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by ‘thou shalt not’, the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by ‘love’ or ‘reason’, he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.
George Orwell 1903 - 1950
1903 - 1950