It was a truism that all civilisations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.
Man and Superman (1903), 'Maxims for Revolutionists'
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
We can begin the restructuring of thought by declaring legitimate what we have denied for so long. Lets us declare nature to be legitimate. The notion of illegal plants is obnoxious and ridiculous in the first place.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘‘Fit the Fifth’’ (radio program) (1978)
You insist that there is something that a machine can't do. If you will tell me precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.
John von NeumannHungarian and American mathematician and physicist1903 - 1957
Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realise, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. MenckenAmerican journalist and writer1880 - 1956
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.
H. L. MenckenAmerican journalist and writer1880 - 1956
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.
Albert CamusFrench philosopher, author, and journalist1913 - 1960
Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realise that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark.