| Quote | Author | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
Despite the beauty of our world and the scope of human accomplishment, it is hard not to worry that the forces of chaos will triumph, not merely in the end but in every moment. |
Sam Harris | born 1967 | Harris, S. (2014). Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Bantam Press. |
I don’t know whether I’m misanthropic. It seems to me I’m constantly disappointed. I’m very easily disappointed. Disappointed in the things that people do; disappointed in the things that people construct. I want things to be better all the time. |
Bill Bryson | born 1951 | |
Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. |
Thomas Carlyle | 1795 – 1881 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. |
Alan W. Watts | 1915 – 1973 | |
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. |
Leonardo da Vinci | 1452 – 1519 | |
Dark-heaving;—boundless, endless, and sublime— The image of eternity. |
Lord Byron | 1788 – 1824 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings. |
W. H. Auden | 1907 – 1973 | |
Grace under pressure. |
Ernest Hemingway | 1899 – 1961 | |
The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict, and laziness. |
Jon Stewart | born 1962 | |
Man, if you gotta ask, you’re never going to know |
Louis Armstrong | 1901 – 1971 | False account of Louis’ response when asked to define ‘Jazz’ : |
When Alexander of Macedon was thirty-three, he cried salt tears that there were no more worlds to conquer… [Eric] Bristow is only twenty-seven! |
Sid Waddell | 1940 – 2012 | Commentary after Eric Bristow won the Darts world championship |
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. |
H. L. Mencken | 1880 – 1956 | |
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. |
Martin Rees | born 1942 | |
In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains, |
Bhagavad Gita | ||
All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost. |
J. R. R. Tolkien | 1892 – 1973 | The Fellowship of the Ring |
Boredom is the root of all evil – the despairing refusal to be oneself. |
Soren Kierkegaard | 1813 – 1855 | |
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. |
Albert Camus | 1913 – 1960 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | Contact (1985) |
You can only predict things after they have happened. |
Eugéne Ionesco | 1909 – 1994 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Art is only Nature operating with the aid of the instruments she has made. |
Paul Henri | 1899 – 1972 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. |
Pablo Picasso | 1881 – 1973 | |
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. |
Kahlil Gibran | 1883 – 1931 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. |
Joseph Conrad | 1857 – 1924 | ‘Under Western Eyes’ Oxford dictionary of quotations |
No one I met at this time — doctors, nurses, practitioners, or fellow-patients — failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all. |
George Orwell | 1903 – 1950 | |
I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do. |
Joe Walsh | born 1947 |