Dostoevsky
"Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn."—Nietzsche...
Quotations and Aphorisms Parent | Quotations and Aphorisms: 2003 »
"Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn."—Nietzsche...
"Propaganda is that branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies."— F.M. Cornford...
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.. General Douglas McArthur 1957...
There has never been a perfect government, because men have passions; and if they did not have passions,there would be no need for government-- VOLTAIRE...
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928...
It is a mistake to suppose that no man understands his own character. Most persons know even their failings very well, only they persist in giving them names different from those usually assigned by the rest of the world. SIR ARTHUR HELPS, Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd, 1835...
Who whom? As Lenin said. Who rules whom? Who hands out the soup to whom? Who is a better person than whom? Who is more democratic than whom? Who say "Who whom" to whom? MICHAEL FRAYN, Constructions, 1974...
Consciousness may be set down as one of the most mendacious witnesses that ever was questioned. But it is the only witness there is; and all we can do is to put in a sweat-box and torture the truth out of it, with such judgment as we can command. C. S. PEIRCE,Collected Papers I, late 19th-early 20th century...
"The most savage controversies are those about matters to which there is no good evidence either way." [BERTRAND RUSSELL, Unpopular Essays, 1950...
"If you're so smart, how come I'm president and you're not?" --George Bush Senior the First. "I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." --George Bush Junior the Second Nicked from This Modern World...
"Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day. [ALBURT CAMUS, Jean-Baptiste Clamance in The Fall, 1956]...
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." — Benito Mussolini....
What was silent in the father speaks in the son; and often I found the son the unveiled in the father. [NIETZSCHE Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883-85]...
"A man's maturity--consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child" [Nietzsche]...
There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. [OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist, 1891]...
The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about. The condemned murderer who is allowed to see the account of his trial in the Press is indignant if he finds a newspaper which has reported it inadequately. And the more he finds about himself in other newspapers, the more indignant he will be with the one whose reports are meagre. Politicians and literary men are in the same case. BERTRAND RUSSELL, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954...
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern. BLAKE, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-3...
"The only reason that I am not an evangelical atheist — going around and shaking the God out of people — is that I recognize belief in God is quite a good emotional and personal strategy, it delivers a decent cultural morality if that's what you want." --Jim Crace...
How comes it that our memories are good enough to retain even the minutest details of what has befallen us, but not to recollect how many times we have recounted them to the same person? -- La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665...
When one has once given Evil a lodging, it no longer demands that one believes it. --Kafka 'Aphorisms 1917-19', The Great Wall of China How many crimes are committed merely because their authors could not endure being wrong! -- Albert Camus, Jean-Baptiste Clamance in The Fall, 1956...
Everything which could possibly enter into the most disordered of imaginations might well be said of the history of the world. The Formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions. Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, 1864...
Somebody has to have the last word. Otherwise, every reason can be met with another one and there would never be an end to it. -- Albert Camus Jean Baptiste Clamance in The Fall, 1956...
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies --Nietzsche Human All to Human, 1878-86 It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books - what other men do not say in whole books. --Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols, 1888...
"You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty." [Tim O'Brien, "How to Tell a True War Story," from The Things They Carried with thanks to Reading and Writing...
"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few." --Hume (Essays, 1742) "I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of them; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first." --Robert Louis Stevenson (Kidnapped, 1886) both submitted by the mysterious dende blogger "Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger" Abbie Hoffman from the one and only Burningbird, Shelley Powers John, Viscount Morley (1838-1923) "Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other. " attributed to Rousseau. from Vinny at Insignificant Thoughts Thanks to all who participated it was fun. To the winners please contact me via email and let me know if you want the certificates from Amazon or the delightful Tim Tams - Autralia's most irresistible chocolate biscuits. Original, Double Coat, Chewy Caramel, Classic Dark, Mocha coffee If you choose the Tim Tams (three packages) I'll need a delivery address and your choice of flavors or I'd be happy to choose for you. My favorites are Mocha coffee, Chewy Carmel, and more Mocha coffee. If you choose the...
The contest for quotations and aphorism's that reflect the content of this site is over. I'll have the winners up soon. In the meantime another favorite quotation of mine. "Many people would sooner die than think, In fact they do." --Bertrand Russell...
Only a couple of days left to enter the contest and win a prize....
"What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer." - Douglas Adams...
"More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly." - Woody Allen In the mean time I have some questions for which I've been seeking answers, if you know spill the beans. Is it true that George Bush is replacing the Federal Meals on Wheels Program with Share a Meal ? When Dick Cheney goes missing where does he go? Is it true The Ugly American authors William J. Lederer & Eugene Burdick are rewriting their book "The Ugly American" and that the title of the new work is "The Stupid Ugly American", are they even still alive? Does Atlas really Shrug when George opens his mouth. Do the rumors that City Bank has raised Saddam's credit limit on his Visa mean he's up to no good? Do we need more proof than that? Do you think George Bush considered Pearl Harbor a preemptive strike? Finally, is it true that Waltzing Matilda is the favored ring tone on cell phones in both Austrailia and the United Kingdom?...
"The decision to go to war is not yours, its the decision of the state in which you live and if the state decides to go to war you are not responsible for that decision." Any guesses, any comments? The Answer...
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."--Thomas De Quincey, "On Murder" Slippery Slope...
"The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity" - Glenn Gould. Today has turned out to be a delightful day. When I checked the mail a few hours ago there were not one but two packages. The English Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach performed by Glenn Gould compliments of the Leftbanker and a package from Amazon which contains "The Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 and 1981. Everytime I listen to them I'm without words. In comments at Leftbankers El Generalisimo writes "I am very partial to the later Goldberg recording by Gould. I wrote a post ages ago in which I admitted that this CD has never left the 5 CD rotation on my player. I said that I was an atheist and I only hoped that religion made others feel as I do when I listen to this piece." I have little to add to that except perhaps to say WOW!!!...
"One of the things that appeals to me about competitive chess (I mean over-the-board chess, though presumably the same goes for correspondence chess if there is not too much collusion) is that it is, as games go, very fair. There is quite a lot of luck in chess over the short term. But on the whole it tends to cancel out. Certainly chess compares very favourably with all the things that go under the designation 'real life' ,with all the stacked decks, silver spoons, nepotism, favouritism and disastrous misfortunes that attend. In comparison with the crazy unpredictability and uncontrollability of most of human existence, playing chess (even in a time-scramble!) is like a paradise of rationality. I really do mean that..." -George Botterill International Master personal note: George Botterill was my son Chris's academic advisor at the University of Sheffield this past year....
" 'Real' is what plays an important role in the kind of life one wants to live" --Paul Feyerabend...
"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." "Let us therefore reject all superstition in order to become more human; but in speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once." Voltaire...
What a great quotation by Jeremy Bentham explaining why the prevalence of fallacies is a sign of a free press and and a strong democracy. Quite the paradox isn't it? "Without a popular assembly taking an effective part in the government and publishing its debates, and without free discussion through the medium of the press, there is no demand for fallacies. Fallacy is fraud; and fraud is useless when everything is done by force." Bentham's Handbook of Political Fallacies (Apollo Editions, 1971), p. 246. via Fallacy Files Weblog a site that is one of the best of its kind anywhere....
Dubya quote from that beloved Economic Forum via Liberal Oasis The thing about the death tax, the death tax is punitive on small business owners...It's hard to be able to keep your farm and your family if you've got a big appraisal value when a loved one dies. I firmly believe the death tax is good for people from all walks of life all throughout our society....
"...it is certain that for man's well-being, indeed for his whole mode of existence, the main thing is obviously what exists or occurs WITHIN HIMSELF. For here is to be found immediately his inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction which is primarily the result of his FEELING, HIS WILLING, and HIS THINKING. On the other hand, everything situated outside him has on him only an indirect influence; and so the same external events and circumstances affect each of us quite differently; and indeed with the same environment each lives in a world of his own."-Arthur Schopenhauer emphasis mine or a shorter version from Epicurus: "The cause of happiness which lies within us is greater than the cause that comes from things."--Epicurus I like that "the external events and circumstances affect each of us quite differently" for example when I think about Dubya and his cohorts I'm reminded of a circus, nothing but clowns, animals, and manure....
"Don't Touch!—There are terrible people who, instead of solving a problem, bungle it and make it more difficult for all who come after. Whoever can't hit the nail on the head should, please, not hit it at all" Nietzsche...
Continue reading "Nietzsche Gives George Bush Some Advice" »
"People don't seem to realize that it takes time and effort and preparation to think. Statesmen are far too busy making speeches to think."--Bertrand Russell The following two quotations are attributed to Bertrand Russell: "Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed." "Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country."...
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" --Voltaire...
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. Albert Einstein...
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.--T.S. Eliot...
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.-- Bertrand Russell...
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time. -- George Bernard Shaw...
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say that there is plenty more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe" --Frank Zappa...
We are beginning to realize that emotions and imagination are more potent in shaping public sentiment and opinion than information and reason.-- John Dewey, The Problem of Freedom...
In practice, an atheist is a person who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor, Baal, or the Golden Calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in--some of us just go one god further. -- Richard Dawkins...
"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." --Albert Camus...
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt...
"Logic is not everything. But it is something--something which can be taught, something which can be learned, something which can help us in some degree to think more sensibly about the dangerous world in which we live."--David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, Harper & Row, 1970, p. 306....
"There are no knowns," Mr Rumsfeld. "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know," Mr Rumsfeld said. "So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. "And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns." United States Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld audio mp3 130K) of Rumsfeld's remarks. source ABC News via Interesting Monstah Link to unknown unknowns mp3 This is the Stuffed Penguin version of his remarks original audio mp3 130K) of Rumsfeld's remarks....
Historians begin by looking backward. They often end by thinking backward. -- Nietzsche...
Quotations for today by Emile Cioran check the link for biographical information Emile Cioran (1911 - 1995) Aphorist, Essayist From the site A Romanian writer who spent most his life in Paris writing 'a philosophical romance on modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as a agony, reason as disease. "I have always lived with the awareness of the impossibility of living. And what has made existence endurable to me is my curiosity as to how I would get from one minute, one day, to the next." "The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth" "To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten."...
"Sensations and feelings are real, but the rest of human knowledge consists of pragmatically justified 'fictions'. The laws of logic are fictions that have proved their indispensable worth in experience and are thus held to be undeniably true. Of a religious or metaphysical doctrine, we should ask not whether it is true in some non-pragmatist sense (we cannot discover this), but whether it is useful to act as if it were true."-- Vaihinger, Hans (1852 - 1933)...
"Do you really believe that the sciences would ever have originated and grown if the way had not been prepared by magicians, alchemists, astrologers and witches whose promises and pretensions first had to create a thirst, a hunger, a taste for hidden and forbidden powers? Indeed, infinitely more had to be promised than could ever be fulfilled in order that anything at all might be fulfilled in the realms of knowledge."-- Nietzsche...
"We are here talking about the fact of evolution itself, a fact that is proved utterly beyond reasonable doubt. To claim equal time for creation science in biology classes is about as sensible as to claim equal time for the flat-earth theory in astronomy classes. Or, as someone has pointed out, you might as well claim equal time in sex education classes for the stork theory. It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." Richard Dawkins And the debate rages on now called Intelligent Design the topic was "debated" last night on Cross-Fire. No, I have no idea why I was watching, and as expected the standard arguments were trotted out. "Yes, but it is only a theory", says Tucker Carlson, a wicked young man with the bow tie. Didn't this bozo ever take a science class, if he did was he listening, is he that fucking stupid, does he have a degree in anything but arrogance? The problem of course is with the definition of theory. The average person applies a definition something like...
"In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of the first importance." --- Thomas Jefferson "Civilized life depends upon the success of reason in social intercourse, the prevalence of logic over violence in interpersonal conflict." ---Juliana Geran Pilon...
"Are we to be disgusted with science because it has not fulfilled our hopes or redeemed its promises? And are we, for this reason, to announce the "bankruptcy" of science, as is so often and so flippantly done? But this is rash and foolish; for we can hardly balme science just becuase we have not asked the right questions." - Ernst Cassirer...
"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey This quotation serves as an introduction to this interesting article....
"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd: indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." - Bertrand Russell , Marriage and Morals, (New York: Liveright, 1929)...
This poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. The quotes have been arranged for aesthetic purposes by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.” MAKE THE PIE HIGHER By George W. Bush I think we all agree, the past is over. This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses. Rarely is the question asked Is our children learning? Will the highways of the Internet become more few? How many hands have I shaked? They misunderestimate me. I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity. I know that the human being and the fish can coexist. Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream. Put food on your family! Knock down the tollbooth! Vulcanize Society! Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher! via Michael O'Connor Clarke...
Today's quotation is from a member of Generation X "The baby boomers took the ideas of the beat genration and turned them into a tye-dyed nightmare" - Chris Jenson...
"There are no facts, only interpretations." Nietzsche Men are so necessarily made, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness" Pascal....
"Hell is other people" Sartre "Hell is oneself" Eliot "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" Stephen in Ulysses...
The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on." Beckett...
"The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred "Yes." For the game of creation a sacred "Yes" is need: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world" Nietzsche...
"When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets" Joyce...
While chatting with Aaron, a chess playing friend on ICC. I asked him if he had any favorite quotations. This is one of them. "When one first plays chess, he is like a man who has already caught a dose of microbes. Such a man walks along the street, and he does not yet know that he is ill. He is healthy, he feels fine, but the virus is doing its work." - Mikhail Tal...
"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.... the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace....They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches." --Eugene V. Debs...
Chris took a week off from his studies at Sheffield to vacation in Rome. Upon his return he was looking at Ovid's Metamorphoses because lots of the art work in Rome was based on stories from it. Here is the epigraph at the beginning of that book. I like it alot. "The elation of comedy is saying hooray for life in its own terms, however incongruous and absurd."...
We all have a right to free speech, and those that disagree have a right to ignore you or try and refute your claims. Hubert Humphrey once said, "The right to free speech does not imply the right to be taken seriously. That depends on what is said." Our constitution does not guarantee anyone the right to be free from criticisim....
"I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true." (From "Introduction: On the Value of Scepticism", Sceptical Essays [London: Allen & Unwin, 1928]) and "Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, `The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance.' You would say, `Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment'; and that is really what a scientific person would say about the universe." (From Why I Am Not a Christian [London: Watts, 1927]) finally "The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible...."...
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell...
"Chess is a foolish expedient for making IDLE PEOPLE believe they are doing something clever when all they are doing is wasting their time" George Bernard Shaw Is it possible that Mr. Shaw lost his last game?...
"Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift" - Noam Chomsky via Jak's View from Vancouver...
Here is a site with some nice quotations about censorship and an example. "Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they have, or the views they express, or the words they speak or write." Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1963...
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Friedrich Nietzsche...
I found a nice collection of quotations here. A few examples: "Any idiot can face a crisis - it's the day to day living that wears you out." - Anton Chekhov "When I sit down in front of a Windows machine, I can't write; when I sit down in front of my Mac, I can write. So I only use Macs." -Michael Crichton The secret of survival is: Always expect the unexpected. Dr. Who...
Friedrich Nietzsche is one of my favorite philosophers. I recently discovered this page with one hundred seventy-six of his aphorisms. Here are three examples: Forbidden generosity.-There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary beings. Sense of truth.-I think well of all skepticism to which I may reply "Let us try it." But I no longer want to hear anything of all those things and questions which do not permit experiments. This is the limit of my "sense of truth" for there courage has lost its rights Free nature.- We are so fond of being out among Nature, because it has no opinions about us....
"But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads." - Camus...
"I caught this insight on the way and quickly seized the rather poor words that were closest to hand to pin it down lest it fly away again. And now it has died of these arid words and shakes and flaps in them - and I hardly know any more when I look at it how I could ever have felt so happy when I caught this bird." Friedrich Nietzche from The Gay Science section 298...
"The attraction of everything problematic, the delight in an X, however, is so great in such more spiritual, more spiritualized men that this delight flares up again and again like a bright blaze over all the distress of what is problematic, over all the danger of uncertainty... We know a new happiness" -Friedrich Nietzsche...
"In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists--and if it did, it would have no value." -Ludwig Wittgenstein...
"You must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star." Friedrich Nietzsche...
"It is more convenient to follow one's conscience than one's intelligence, for at every failure, conscience finds an excuse and an encouragement in itself. That is why there are so many conscientious and so few intelligent people." Nietzsche...