There are two things that kill a genius — a fatal disease and contentment.
Clarence Darrow 1857 - 1938
1857 - 1938
Entire Collection
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
Eric Hoffer 1902 - 1983
1902 - 1983
To err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer.
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
Jean Giraudoux 1882 - 1944
1882 - 1944
..when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases.
1932 - 2007
Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati
In democracy everyone has the right to be represented, even the jerks.
Chris Patten born 1944
born 1944
The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom—that is the idea, more or less.
1903 - 1950
As I Please (1943–1947)
Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognise this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 - 1926
1875 - 1926
It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that lies in others.
Maurice Maeterlinck 1862 - 1949
1862 - 1949
The children won’t leave without me; I shan’t leave without the king; and the king will never leave.
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother 1900 - 2002
Reply to a suggestion that the royal family should be evacuated during the Blitz : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1900 - 2002
Reply to a suggestion that the royal family should be evacuated during the Blitz : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Every act of courage is the work of an unbalanced man. Animals, normal by definition, are always cowardly except when they know themselves to be stronger, which is cowardice itself.
1911 - 1995
Drawn and Quartered (1983)
All history is myth.
Nikolai Berdyaev 1874 - 1948
1874 - 1948
If you imagine the 4,500-bilion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow. Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Mansion-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummelled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long.
born 1951
A Short History of Nearly Everything
As to the Adjective: When in doubt, strike it out.
Mark Twain 1835 - 1910
1835 - 1910
I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!
Charles M. Schulz 1922 - 2000
1922 - 2000
Consciousness looks like an insoluble mystery when you have an inflated vision of what consciousness is, and our introspective lives tend to give us that inflated vision. We tend to think we're conscious of a lot more than we are; we tend to think that consciousness has properties that it just doesn't have.
Daniel Dennett 1942 - 2024
1942 - 2024
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
Thomas Hardy 1840 - 1928
1840 - 1928
I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996
1934 - 1996
People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament.
A. P. Herbert 1890 - 1971
1890 - 1971
A guilty system recognises no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody’s either for it or against it, we’re against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you among its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximise that effect, and some try to minimise it. You come from one of the latter and you’re being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it.
1954 - 2013
The player of games
Science is the murderer of mystery.
Osho 1931 - 1990
1931 - 1990
With friends like that, who needs enemies?
Joey Adams 1911 - 1999
As Quoted In: Shapiro, F. (2006). The Yale book of quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press.
1911 - 1999
As Quoted In: Shapiro, F. (2006). The Yale book of quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Subdue your passion or it will subdue you.
Horace 65 - 8 BC
65 - 8 BC
God is a lie, we made him up for money!
Spoken my a crazed priest Television show 'Rick and Morty' S3 E6 (2017)
Spoken my a crazed priest Television show 'Rick and Morty' S3 E6 (2017)