The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.
1934 - 1996
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update)
Entire Collection
I owe my solitude to other people.
Alan Watts 1915 - 1973
1915 - 1973
Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.
J. K. Rowling born 1965
born 1965
You can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you.
Mark Twain 1835 - 1910
1835 - 1910
Beware the fury of a patient man.
John Dryden 1631 - 1700
1631 - 1700
Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.
1915 - 1973
Watts, A. (1977). The essential Alan Watts. Berkeley, Calif.: Celestial Arts.
A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.
Guy Fawkes 1570 - 1606
1570 - 1606
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
Thomas Carlyle 1795 - 1881
1795 - 1881
Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
John Maynard Keynes 1883 - 1946
1883 - 1946
Our great weariness comes from work not done.
Eric Hoffer 1902 - 1983
1902 - 1983
If a question is absurd in itself and calls for unnecessary answers, it not only brings disgrace to the person raising it, but may prompt an incautious listener to give absurd answers, thus presenting, as the ancients said, the laughable spectacle of one person milking a he-goat and another holding the sieve underneath.
Immanuel Kant 1724 - 1804
1724 - 1804
Off goes the head of the king, and tyranny gives way to freedom. The change seems abysmal. Then, bit by bit, the face of freedom hardens, and by and by it is the old face of tyranny. Then another cycle, and another. But under the play of all these opposites there is something fundamental and permanent — the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free.
H. L. Mencken 1880 - 1956
The American Credo: A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind
1880 - 1956
The American Credo: A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 - 1882
1803 - 1882
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
Kurt Vonnegut 1922 - 2007
1922 - 2007
The snozberries taste like snozberries!
1916 - 1990
Charlie and the chocolate factory
And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but The truth in masquerade.
Lord Byron 1788 - 1824
1788 - 1824
My objection to supernatural beliefs is precisely that they miserably fail to do justice to the sublime grandeur of the real world. They represent a narrowing-down from reality, an impoverishment of what the real world has to offer.
born 1941
The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution
What you're thinking is what you're becoming.
Muhammad Ali 1942 - 2016
1942 - 2016
Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.
Lyman Abbott 1835 - 1922
1835 - 1922
The knowledge of all things is possible.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519
The imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realise our collective dreams.
Terence McKenna 1946 - 2000
1946 - 2000
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
William James 1842 - 1910
1842 - 1910
There is no reason to believe that a definition necessarily determines the ontological status of the term defined.
Karl Popper 1902 - 1994
1902 - 1994
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H. L. Mencken 1880 - 1956
1880 - 1956
An economist is a man who, when he finds something works in practice, wonders if it works in theory.
An old joke: The Youth's Companion (1911). Credited to the economist Walter W. Heller from 1979. Quote Investigator, That Works Very Well in Practice, But How Does It Work In Theory? (2015)
An old joke: The Youth's Companion (1911). Credited to the economist Walter W. Heller from 1979.
Quote Investigator, That Works Very Well in Practice, But How Does It Work In Theory? (2015)