Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group.
1934 - 1996
Cosmos (1980)
Entire Collection
[Science] that bright-eyed superstition known as infinite human progression.
Terry Eagleton born 1943
born 1943
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
Ronald Reagan 1911 - 2004
1911 - 2004
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard 1813 - 1855
1813 - 1855
The implicit confidence in the beneficence of progress that during the last two centuries marked the advanced thinker has come to be regarded as the sign of a shallow mind.
1899 - 1992
The Constitution of Liberty (1960), ch. 3 'The Common Sense of Progress'
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy?
1929 - 2018
The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.
John Maynard Keynes 1883 - 1946
1883 - 1946
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
Bill Nye born 1955
born 1955
You have not had thirty years’ experience...You have had one year’s experience 30 times.
J. L. Carr 1912 - 1994
1912 - 1994
I'm so bored with it all.
1874 - 1965
Spoken before slipping into a coma and dying nine days later.
The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!
Charles M. Schulz 1922 - 2000
1922 - 2000
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Laozi c. 500 BC
c. 500 BC
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on Earth.
1821 - 1881
Crime and Punishment (1866)
The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.
1932 - 2007
The Golden Apple
While we’re talking, envious time is fleeing: seize the day, put no trust in the future.
Horace 65 - 8 BC
65 - 8 BC
Oh, you should never, never doubt what nobody is sure about.
1916 - 1990
Dahl, R. (1964). Charlie and the chocolate factory. Puffin.
Astronomically, the U. S. S. R. and the United States are the same place.
1934 - 1996
Cosmos (1980)
The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
Herbert Spencer 1820 - 1903
1820 - 1903
I have seen something of the horrors of war, and much too much of the worse horrors of peace.
1880 - 1956
Newspaper Days, 1899-1906 : Volume 2 of Mencken's Autobiography
It may not be coincidental that you use phrases like ‘self-conscious’ when you really mean that you are conscious of others being conscious of you.
V. S. Ramachandran born 1951
born 1951
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
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)
We're trapped in linguistic constructs... all that is is metaphor.
Robert Anton Wilson 1932 - 2007
1932 - 2007
I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the eons of time – a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multi-coloured drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realise that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy, which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. At this level of existence, ‘I’ am immeasurably old; my forms are infinite and their comings and goings are simply the pulses or vibrations of a single and eternal flow of energy.
Alan Watts 1915 - 1973
Watts, A. (1966). The book; on the taboo against knowing who you are. New York: Pantheon Books.
1915 - 1973
Watts, A. (1966). The book; on the taboo against knowing who you are. New York: Pantheon Books.
In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
Edward Gibbon 1737 - 1794
1737 - 1794