I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
Blaise Pascal 1623 - 1662
1623 - 1662
Entire Collection
See this egg. It is with this that all the schools of theology and all the temples of the earth are to be overturned.
Denis Diderot 1713 - 1784
1713 - 1784
Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
René Descartes 1596 - 1650
1596 - 1650
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou 1928 - 2014
1928 - 2014
A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.
Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
1709 - 1784
A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.
Joseph Addison 1672 - 1719
1672 - 1719
One question at any rate was answered. Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase of pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm.
1903 - 1950
Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen eighty-four. London: Secker & Warburg.
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996
1934 - 1996
If one has really technically penetrated a subject, things that previously seemed in complete contrast, might be purely mathematical transformations of each other.
John von Neumann 1903 - 1957
1903 - 1957
Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.
Magnus Carlsen born 1990
born 1990
To me his prose is unreadable; like Jane Austin's. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
Mark Twain 1835 - 1910
1835 - 1910
The past, he reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory?
1903 - 1950
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), part 1, ch. 3: Winston Smith
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
1903 - 1950
Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen eighty-four. London: Secker & Warburg.
In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things that happen from time to time. Although the creation of a universe might seem very unlikely, I'll emphasise that no one has counted the failed attempts.
1940 - 2019
Paraphrase : A Short History of Nearly Everything
One evil rises out of another.
Terence c. 190 - c. 159 BC
c. 190 - c. 159 BC
None are less visible than those we decide not to see.
Lewis Stadler 1896 - 1954
1896 - 1954
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
1709 - 1784
I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature. To which I reply and say, ‘Well, it's funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the Almighty, always quote beautiful things. They always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses.’ But I always have to think too of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he's five years old. And I reply and say, ‘Well, presumably the God you speak about created the worm as well,’ and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful God with that action. And therefore it seems to me safer to show things that I know to be truth, truthful and factual, and allow people to make up their own minds about the moralities of this thing, or indeed the theology of this thing.
David Attenborough born 1926
born 1926
I owe a duty, where I cannot love.
Aphra Behn 1640 - 1689
1640 - 1689
The more one is aware of political bias the more one can be independent of it, and the more one claims to be impartial the more one is biased.
George Orwell 1903 - 1950
1903 - 1950
I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.
Clive Bell 1881 - 1964
1881 - 1964
If you say that getting money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is, to go on doing the thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.
Alan Watts 1915 - 1973
1915 - 1973
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
This vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe... has not been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially in no Western religions.
Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
1934 - 1996
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 - 1900
Used in 'Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy' (2017). With thanks to C-Lee
1844 - 1900
Used in 'Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy' (2017). With thanks to C-Lee