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Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf.
Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mass murder in the name of an idea, a doctrine, a theory, a religion — that is all our doing, our invention: the invention of the intellectuals. If only we would stop setting man against man — often with the best intentions — much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.
We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
I do not envy God.
The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you
Well done is better than well said.
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
The more we think of others, the happier we are. The more we think of ourselves, the more suffering we feel.
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.
We are beginning to play with ideas of ecology, and although we immediately trivialize these into commerce or politics, there is at least an impulse still in the human breast to unify and thereby sanctify the total natural world, of which we are.... There have been, and still are, in the world many different and even contrasting epistemologies which have been alike in stressing an ultimate unity, and, although this is less sure, which have also stressed the notion that ultimate unity is aesthetic. The uniformity of these views gives hope that perhaps the great authority of quantitative science may be insufficient to deny an ultimate unifying beauty. I hold to the presupposition that our loss of the sense of aesthetic unity was, quite simply, an epistemological mistake.
Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living.
When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.
I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them.
Laughter is an instant vacation.
The only gift is giving to the poor; all else is exchange.
He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
All experience is subjective.
Our rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own infantilism on our instituitions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn, they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic limitations. The vicious circle is completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our instituitions. And so it goes, on and on.
WEDDING: A necessary formality before securing a divorce.
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.
I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.
Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated, period, because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals.
Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.
There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. … It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.
The wise legislator will only rarely initiate a new rule of behaviour; more usually he will confine himself to affirming in law what has already become the custom of the people.
It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
If I am only happy for myself, many fewer chances for happiness. If I am happy when good things happen to other people, billions more chances to be happy!
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
Consistency is the playground of dull minds.
There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our
character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.
Keep your words sweet-you may have to eat them.
If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Economy is the art of making the most of life.
Those who have little interest in spirituality shouldn’t think that human inner values don’t apply to you. The inner peace of an alert and calm mind are the source of real happiness and good health. Our human intelligence tells us which of our emotions are positive and helpful and which are damaging and to be restrained or avoided.
I don't trust anyone who doesn't laugh.
In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not DNA.
Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. 
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
the question is not how to get rid of fear, but how to awaken the intelligence with which to face and to understand and go beyond fear.
I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. 
Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.
The minute you succumb to outside pressure, you cease to be creative.
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
We discover our character through decisions under pressure.
Don't ever mistake my silence for ignorance, my calmness for acceptance or my kindness for weakness. Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.
The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called “the generalized other.” The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community. Thus, for example, in the case of such a social group as a ball team, the team is the generalized other in so far as it enters—as an organized process or social activity—into the experience of any one of the individual members of it.
The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.
We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade.
Believe nothing you hear, and only half of what you see.
We smile, because no answer is conceivable, because the answer would be even more meaningless than the question.
The individual has to awaken his intelligence, not through any form of discipline, resistance, compulsion, coercion, but through freedom.
The more we are concerned for the well being of others, the closer we will feel to each other.
Not what man knows but what man feels, concerns art. All else is science.
The root of happiness is altruism - the wish to be of service to others.
Nessuno vi può dare la libertà. Nessuno vi può dare l'uguaglianza o la giustizia. Se siete uomini, prendetevela.
Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.
Without darkness there are no dreams. 
The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body.
We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ‘delusional’...
Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money.
It's likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.
I do look for openings where I can overturn popular misconceptions, but unlike Christopher Hitchens, I am neither a contrarian nor a lone heretic. I like to have a significant number of academics watching my back.
Man is the only animal that is to be dreaded.
Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
I will act as if what i do makes a difference.
Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.
The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.
I'm not a complete idiot, some parts are missing.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action
Only what you hide is profound, is true.
You can't say civilization isn't advancing, in every war they kill you in a new way.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
Never argue with idiots... They bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.
Conventional physics deals only with closed systems, i.e. systems which are considered to be isolated from their environment... However, we find systems which by their very nature and definition are not closed systems. Every living organism is essentially an open system. It maintains itself in a continuous inflow and outflow, a building up and breaking down of components, never being, so long as it is alive, in a state of chemical and thermodynamic equilibrium but maintained in a so-called steady state which is distinct from the latter.
Freedom is not free.
We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity--- romantic love and gunpowder.
Religion is just mind control.
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely.
Concern yourselves more with the needs of others, with the needs of all humanity, and you'll have peace of mind.
Allow rather than resist what arises in the present moment-inside or out. Let it be interesting rather than good or bad.
Thirty years ago, we used to ask: Can a computer simulate all processes of logic? The answer was yes, but the question was surely wrong. We should have asked: Can logic simulate all sequences of cause and effect? And the answer would have been no.
It is not too much to say that in the extreme development the chance to reason of most men is destroyed, as rationality increases and its locus, its control, is moved from the individual to the big-scale organization.
I was involved in an extremely good example of oral contraception two weeks ago. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said 'no'.
The fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable, and so far from the criteria otherwise applied in 'hard' science has become a dogma can only be explained on sociological grounds.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
2367 quotes