A Collection of my favorite Quotes:
"I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions." -- Robert Anton Wilson.
"Try not. Do or do not, there is no try." --Yoda.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes. (= Who Watches the Watchmen?)
"We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives." -- The Amazing Criswell.
“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”
-- John Donne.
“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.” -- Harlan Ellison.
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” -- Shelley.
"He who is unable to live in society, or has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god." --- Aristotle.
"To live alone one must be an animal or a god -- says Aristotle. There is yet a third case: one must be both -- a philosopher." --- Nietzsche.
“Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic for his own undoing.” -- Elbert Hubbard. [Via FB post; need to verify.]
"History is a race between education and catastrophe." -- William Irwin Thompson.
[I assume by Thompson; check: quote was headline on a customer book review on Amazon. In “Transforming History,” WIT worded it somewhat differently; something like substituting Future for History. I think he’s quoting someone else.]
"Don't believe fully in anyone else's BS (belief system)." --- Robert Anton Wilson.
[ From a website, need to Verify, but it sounds like RAW.]
"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility." --- Jacob Bronowski
"This is the single most important thing that we can ever attain: the knowledge of our own self." --- Alan Moore. [Brief A.M talk, "On The Self," Audio clip @: http://soundcloud.com/dreamsin8bit/alan-moore-the-self ]
"Are you aware of how much pain there is in the world?" --- Harlan Ellison. [From the introduction to his short story collection, "Paingod and Other Delusions." 1974.]
“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“The finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger. " --- Zen Saying [Partial version.]
"Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon's location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?" --- Zen Saying [Possibly the full version.]
“Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.” --- John Wheeler [Others may have said earlier.]
“Time is the moving image of eternity.” --- Plato, “Timaeus.”
“The IDEA of the God IS the God.” --- Alan Moore.
[Interview in "Arthur," issue May 2003.]
"When you piss off both sides, you probably have a reasonable position." --- Dr. Steven Novella, [from the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast of 03-03-12.]
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." --- Philip K. Dick.
[From his essay, actually an un-delivered speech, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later," 1978.]
“In the near future, we will see brain scan technology that can determine, without fail, if someone is telling the truth. Shortly thereafter, we will be able to buy mobile devices that perform the same task on the fly. In other words, we are on the verge of having all of our conversations constantly and instantly monitored for veracity. This would then spawn a counter-technology comprised of personal mind shields that keep oneself from being scanned (the use of which would, of course, imply that one is keeping secrets). The end result? Universal honesty, initially as a result of the duress of surveillance, will become the norm. Then, over time, this mode of thinking, communicating and behaving will become second nature. This will usher in the dawn of a new civilization. After thousands of years of human suffering, world peace and the long-fabled ‘good will towards all men’ will have finally arrived. The end of lying and cheating will also mark the end of scripted entertainment. So, you know, there’ll be a downside.” — CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS,
[The Big Bang Theory Vanity Card #326; Feb. 3, 2011 Source: chucklorre.com]
“Standing on a street corner waiting for no one is power.” ― Gregory Corso
[Corso became one of the leading poets of the Beat movement: in Allen Ginsberg's words, "an awakener of youth." Per Garrison Keillor Writer’s Almanac, March 26, 2013; Corso’s birthday.]
"32 years old and four hard real funny sad bad wonderful books of poetry — the world owes me a million dollars. I think I had a pretty weird 32 years. And it weren’t up to me, none of it. No choice of two roads; if there were, I don’t doubt I’d have chosen both." --- Gregory Corso
"There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells." --- Flannery O'Connor
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them." --- Philip K. Dick
"He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable -- a routine miracle." --- from "Dimension of Miracles," by Robert Sheckley. [The omniscient narrator describing The Everyman protagonist.]
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively." -- Dalai Lama
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit." -- Norman Mailer
"The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people." -- Norman Mailer
["Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.]
“I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.” -- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult -- once we truly understand and accept it -- then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. --- M. Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled. [As an explanation Buddha's philosophy.]
“Every devil was born in heaven.” --- A. A. Attanasio [From his website’s banner on meme page: http://www.aaattanasio.com/memes.htm 110313.]
"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." --- William Gibson
- - - - -
In the Marx Brothers' movie, Duck Soup, Chico is on trial for espionage, and we get this exchange:
Prosecutor: "Chicolini, when were you born?"
Chicolini: "I don't-a remember. I was just a little baby."
- - - - -
"Age ain't nothin' but a score, and I plan on getting the highest score in the game." --- Brian Brushwood. [I overheard him say this on TWiT, probably pre-show, I think it was Frame Rate, on 11-25-13.]
“Silence is so accurate.” ― Mark Rothko
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams, wandering by lone sea-breakers and sitting by desolate streams; world-losers and world-forsakers, on whom the pale moon gleams: yet we are the movers and shakers of the world for ever, it seems.” --- Arthur O'Shaughnessy [First part famously used in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."]
Sturgeon's Law: "Ninety percent of everything is crap." --- Theodore Sturgeon
([I seem to recall him sometimes adding, "But the 10 percent is very, very good.") "Nothing is always absolutely so." was an earlier version of Sturgeon's Law. [Wiki entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law ]
Shakespeare: "To be or not to be." -- Shakespeare
"Doo bee doo bee doo." -- Frank Sinatra[From Guy Bourbonnais on FaceBook he once saw on a bathroom wall.]
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from." --- Cormac McCarthy, "No Country for Old Men."
[On the subject of God:] "Typhoid and swans. It all comes from the same place." [Hannibal Lecter to Will Graham in an episode of "Hannibal." Aired 4-25-14, second season.]
Actor Hugh Laurie on his character, House: “He’s on the side of the angels, but without being an angel.”
[Source: PBS doc: America In Primetime, “The Crusader.”]
"We feel affinities not only with the past,
but also with the futures that didn't materialise,
and with the other variations of the present that we
suspect run parallel to the one we have agreed to live in."
---Brian Eno.
