Quote of the day

Random Quotes

Government can be a form of gangsterism and is in Russia
and is likely to be here if we don't take care of ourselves pretty carefully.
-Frank Lloyd Wright

I took with me a certain simple criteria with which to measure. That which made for more life,
for physical and spiritual health was good; that which made for less life, which
hurt, dwarfed and distorted life, was bad.
-Jack London

If Fascism came to America it would be on a program of Americanism.
-Huey P Long

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
-James Russell Lowell
 
It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived.
Now it becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.
-Albert Camus

The American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it Capitalism, call it what you like, gives each and every
one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.
-Al Capone

Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural course,
we arrive at Aristocracy of Moneybag.
-Thomas Carlyle

You might as well like yourself. Think about all the time you have to spend with yourself.
- Jerry Lewis as Professor Kelp, in The Nutty Professor
 
''The cat that sits down on a hot stove lid . . . will never sit down on a hot stove lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.''

— Mark Twain
 
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William Ralph Inge​




“It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”
― William Ralph Inge

“Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. ”
― William Ralph Inge

“Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.”
― William Ralph Inge

“A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common hatred of its neighbors.”
― William Ralph Inge

“The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.”
― William Ralph Inge

“Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.”
― William Ralph Inge

“Events in the past maybe roughly divided into those which and probably never happened and those which do not matter.”
― William Ralph Inge

“There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better.”
― William Ralph Inge

“Our real self is not the captive of Space and Time”
― WR Inge

"A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it."
-WR Inge
 
Robert G Ingersoll (1833-1899)

-The infidels of one age have been the aureoled saints of the next. The
destroyers of the old are the creators of the new.

You have no right to erect your toll-gate on the highways of thought.

Slavery includes all crimes. It is the joint product of the kidnapper, the
pirate, the thief, murderer and hypocrite.

We need free bodies and free minds- free labor and free thought,
chainless hands and fetterless brains. Free labor will give us wealth.
Free thought will give us truth.

I would like to see the whole world free- free from injustice- free from superstition.
 
I know of no country where there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of
discussion as in America.
-Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.
-Max Stirner (1806-18560)

The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause,
while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
-Charles P Steinmetz (1865-1923)

Men fear silence as they do solitude, because both give them a glimpse
of the terror of life's nothingness.
-Andre' Maurois (1885-1967)

Dictatorship is power based directly upon force, and unrestricted by any laws.
-V I Lenin (1807-1924)

...Judgment is never just.
-D H Laurence (1885-1930)
 
Bagumbawall tries to write pithy quotes-

Because you are alive, so much more is possible than if you were dead.
-Bagumbawalla

Mistakes are proof that you are trying- just not hard enough.
-Bagumbawalla

Hell is other people, well... except for you of course.
Bagumbawalla
 
Books and friends should be few but good
-Proverb

Some books are undeservedly forgotten: non are undeservedly remembered.
-W H Auden

A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.
T S Eliot

A library is thought in cold storage.
-Herbert Samuel
 

Françoise Sagan​



I was watching the movie Bonjour Tristesse, and wondered about the author.
Here are some quotes from Francoise Sagan.


“Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.”
― Françoise Sagan

“Love lasts about seven years. That's how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.”
― Francois Sagan

“I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.”
― Françoise Sagan

“Nothing brings on jealousy like laughter.”
― Françoise Sagan

“The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.”
― Françoise Sagan

“Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework.”
― Françoise Sagan

“A Strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.”
― Françoise Sagan

“The questions I would have liked to ask people were: ‘Are you in love? What are you reading?”
― Françoise Sagan

“A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you”
― Francoise Sagan

“I like men to behave like men. I like them strong and childish.”
― Francois Sagan

“I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.”
― Francoise Sagan

“It amused me to think that one can tell the truth when one is drunk and nobody will believe it.”
― Françoise Sagan

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Françoise Sagan
 
Tennis quotes are seldom any good,
but here is one that kind of makes sense.
Patrick McEnroe
“I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat.”
― Patrick McEnroe
 
“Man is no longer attracted at all by the good. He finds himself in a state of total indifference with regard to good & evil...
the intervention of an external element is necessary. Obedience to the law is what defines the good, for example. "It is good
because the law requires of it of me" instead of "The law requires it of me because it is good”
― William of Ockham
 
Some quotes about politics

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always
been the systematic organization of hatreds.
-Henry Brook Adams

Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.
-Vera Brittain

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road.
They get run over.
-Aneurin Bevan

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wishing for or
accepting's the death of my adversary.
-Albert Camus

A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
-Benjamin Disraeli

America's present need is not heroics but healing, not nostrums but normalcy.
-Warren G Harding

The essential thing is the formation of the political will of the nation:
that is the starting point for political action
-Adolf H

Party loyalty lowers the greatest of men to the petty level of the masses.
-Jean de la Bruyere

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
-Henry Brooks Adams
 
Some quotations about reality


John Lennon
“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”
― John Lennon
Albert Einstein
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein
Jim Morrison
“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s ********. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”
― Jim Morrison
Lao Tzu
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
― Lao Tzu
Michelle Hodkin
“Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.”
― Michelle Hodkin
Anaïs Nin
“Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anaïs Nin

Cormac McCarthy
“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― Cormac McCarthy

Rachel Carson
“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson
Rick Riordan
“The real world is where the monsters are.”
― Rick Riordan

Søren Kierkegaard
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
― Soren Kierkegaard
Frank Herbert
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
― Frank Herbert

Lewis Carroll
“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
― Lewis Carroll
George Orwell
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
― George Orwell

Douglas Adams
“Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
― Douglas Adams

Jessamyn West
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
― Jessamyn West
 
I have a digital copy of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, in its Spanish translation. That is where I excerpted the pieces of text below from chapter 9 at the end, on which I used English translator programs.
Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the original English version, which is under copyright and not freely available online.
Therefore, I obtained two English versions using the translators, being aware that neither of them would have the quality of the original.

I think I like the first one better.
If somebody can copy the original in English, I'd appreciate it.


1.
"For me, at least retrospectively, the really interesting question is why boredom turns out to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because boredom is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where expressions like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly boring’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe boredom is linked to psychic pain because something that’s boring or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from a deeper type of pain that is always present, even if only at a low-level ambient way, and that most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention."

2.
“For me, at least retrospectively, the really interesting question is why boredom should be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we instinctually shy away from the boring. Maybe it's because boredom is instinctually painful; maybe that's where the expression 'atrocious boredom' or 'mortal boredom' comes from. But there might be more. Boredom might be associated with psychic pain because something that is boring or opaque doesn't provide enough stimulus to distract people from some deeper kind of pain that's always present, even if only at a very low level, and that most of us spend almost all our time and energy trying to avoid feeling directly or with full attention.”
 
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Sherlock Holmes quotes

Crime is common. Logic is rare.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love,
however badly he may have treated her.

As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.

It is stupidity rather than courage to refuse to recognize danger when it is close to you.

The most difficult crime to track is the one that is purposeless.

I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues.
 
I messed up and put the wrong thing her,
so here is a quote from Pippi Longstocking

“I have noticed several times that people don't think I know how to behave even when I'm trying as hard as I can.”
― Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking
 
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Trotsky quotes

“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Tell me anyway--Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”
― Leon Trotsky

“In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”
― Leon Trotsky

“As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the “sacredness of human life” remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.”
― Leon Trotsky,

“‎The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.”
― Leon Trotsky

“The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.”
― Leon Trotsky
 
“Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé

“A roll of the dice will never abolish chance.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé

“To define is to kill. To suggest is to create.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé

“The flesh is sad, alas, and I have read all the books.”
― Stéphane Mallarme

“It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.”
― Stephen Mallarme
 
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Katharine Hepburn:
  • "I have no fear of death. Must be wonderful, like a long sleep".

  • "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun".

  • "Never complain. Never explain".

  • "Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do".

  • "I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun".

  • "Life is hard. After all, it kills you".

  • "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get—only what you are expecting to give—which is everything".

    • "Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then".
    • "I have no romantic feelings about age. Either you are interesting at any age or you are not".
    • "I have lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone".
 
Preamble

Well, Usually I like to stumble on some random, but intriguing, book at a thrift shop, but
thrift shops have been a bit lacking lately, including collectable tennis rackets. I ordered
a book from Abe Books, but that might take 20 days to arrive.

So I began reading a book that I have been avoiding- The Fabric of the Cosmos, Space, Time
and the Texture of Reality, by Brian Green.

It started right out with a quote from Camus about suicide being the most important
philosophical consideration.

So, to postpone reading a few mor minutes, I copied down some nihilistic existential quotes, well, just because.



Nihilism Quotes​


Samuel Beckett
“I can't go on, I'll go on.”
― Samuel Beckett

Charles Bukowski
“I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn't fit the other. I didn't care.”
― Charles Bukowski
Brent Weeks
“Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence.”
― Brent Weeks

Albert Camus
“If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.”
― Albert Camus

Joseph Heller
“Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.”
― Joseph Heller

A.A. Milne
“There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said "Nobody.”
― A.A. Milne

Viktor E. Frankl
“But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

Cormac McCarthy
“The point is there ain't no point.”
― Cormac McCarthy

Alan Moore
“Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.”
― Alan Moore

John Fowles
“I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.”
― John Fowles
 
Al Capone
(I think our president is a fan of Capone)

Quotes about power
  • "Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me".
    • "I have built my organization upon fear".
Quotes on Business & Society
    • "I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand".
    • "This American system of ours... gives to each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it."
    • "Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class".
    • "Why should I be called a public enemy? ... If people did not want beer and wouldn't drink it, a fellow would be crazy for going around trying to sell it!"
Quotes on Identity & Character
    • "I don't even know what street Canada is on".
    • "A crook is a crook... The worst type of these punks is the big politician."
 
Who are all these people that think they deserve to be quoted?

Amelia Earhart​

Amelia Earhart


“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”
― Amelia Earhart

“I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”
― Amelia Earhart

“Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn't be done.”
― Amelia Earhart

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”
― Amelia Earhart

“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.”
― Amelia Earhart

“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”

“Being alone is scary, but not as scary as feeling alone in a relationship.”
― Amelia Earhart
 
Steve Allen, who's that?
“If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.”
― Steve Allen

“If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.”
― Steve Allen

“Humor is a social lubricant that helps us get over some of the bad spots.”
― Steve Allen

“Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.”
― Steve Allen

“When my mother passed away several years ago—well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn’t ‘pass away.’ She died. Something about that verb, ‘to pass away’ always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.”
― Steve Allen,

“The secret to my success, is that I'm just too dumb to know that I can't do it.”
― Steve Allen

“I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed.”
― Steve Allen
 
Random quote from The Gilmore Girls (TV show, 1/09/2006)

Lori Gilmore has to hide the leash from her new dog and clip it on when he's not looking.
She explained-

"He's fine with having his personal freedoms stripped away as long
as he's completely unaware that it's happening- just like a true American."
 
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A couple Gandalf quotes
Saruman believes that it is only great power that can keep evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.” (this quote is badly written- instead of "you", it should say "us")
 
And a few more
“Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.”
― Jim Morrison

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel, or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.”
― Jim Morrison

“Where's your will to be weird?”
― Jim Morrison

“The future is uncertain but the end is always near.”
― Jim Morrison

“I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.”
― Jim Morrison

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”
― Jim Morrison

“No one here gets out alive.”
― Jim Morrison

“You feel your strength in the experience of pain.”
― Jim Morrison

“The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.”
― Jim Morrison
“Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”
― Jim Morrison

“There are things known
and there are things unknown
and in between are the doors.”
― Jim Morrison

“Some of the worst mistakes in my life were haircuts”
― Jim Morrison
 
Some Carl Sagan quotes

On science and knowledge
  • "Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge".

  • "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

  • "The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous".

  • "The only sacred truth is that there are no sacred truths".
On the cosmos and humanity
  • "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself".

    • "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff".

    • "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition".

    • "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us... The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena".

    • "Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another".
On life and perspective
    • "We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever".

    • "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe".

    • "The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning".
 

Jorge Luis Borges​




“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.”
― Jorge Luis Borges
“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

 
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Gore Vidal​


“The unfed mind devours itself.”
― Gore Vidal

“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”
― Gore Vidal

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
― Gore Vidal

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
― Gore Vidal

“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
― Gore Vidal

“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”
― Gore Vidal

“Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.”
― Gore Vidal

“Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. ”
― Gore Vidal

“Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.”
― Gore Vidal

“The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.”
― Gore Vidal

“It is not enough merely to win; others must lose.”
― Gore Vidal

“I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.”
― Gore Vidal
“We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”
― Gore Vidal

“I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place”
― Gore Vidal

“Monotheism is easily the greatest disaster to befall the human race.”
― Gore Vidal
 
Some existentialists on life and the human condition
  • "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." — Jean-Paul Sartre
  • "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." — Albert Camus
  • "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." — Søren Kierkegaard
  • "The most common form of despair is not being who you are." — Søren Kierkegaard
  • "He who has a 'why' to live can bear almost any 'how'." — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • "To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." — Viktor Frankl
On freedom and responsibility
  • "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." — Jean-Paul Sartre
  • "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." — Søren Kierkegaard
  • "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." — Albert Camus
On truth and meaning
  • "We have art in order not to die of the truth." — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • "The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning." — Albert Camus
  • "The universe is a cruel, uncaring void." — Mr. Peanutbutter (BoJack Horseman)
  • "When you stare into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you." — Friedrich Nietzsche
On interpersonal relationships
  • "Hell is other people." — Jean-Paul Sartre
  • "I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world." — Albert Camus
  • "It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages." — Friedrich Nietzsche
On choice and regret
  • "Marry, and you will regret it; don't marry, you will also regret it; marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way." — Søren Kierkegaard
  • "The thought of suicide is a great consolation; one can get through many a bad night with it." — Friedrich Nietzsche
 
I seem to have missed something.
-Bagumbawalla

Anyway, I started a new book Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday, which begins with
an epigraph quoting Martin Gardner-

We all live slapstick lives, under an inexplicable sentence of death.

It comes from his introduction to The annotated Alice- here is the full introduction-

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, in conceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity. We all live slapstick lives, under an inexplicable sentence of death, and when we try to find out what the Castle authorities want us to do, we are shifted from one bumbling bureaucrat to another. We are not even sure that Count West-West, the owner of the Castle, really exists. More than one critic has commented on the similarities between Kafka’s Trial and the trial of the Jack of Hearts: between Kafka’s Castle and a chess game in which living pieces are ignorant of the game’s plan and cannot tell if they move of their own wills or are being pushed by invisible fingers.
The vision of monstrous mindlessness of the cosmos (“Off with its head!”) can be grim and disturbing, as it is in Kafka and the Book of Job, or light-hearted comedy, as in Alice or Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday…. it is a vision that can lead to despair and suicide, to the laughter that closes Jean Paul Sartre’s story “The Wall,” to the humanist’s resolve to carry on bravely in the face of ultimate darkness. Curiously, it can also suggest the wild hypothesis that there may be a light behind the darkness.
 
More quotes from Martin Garder


Martin Gardner​




“There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.”
― Martin Gardner

“If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron… my answer is “How should I know?”… I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries… I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.”
― Martin Gardner

“There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: 'Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities.”
― Martin Gardner

“The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.”
― Martin Gardner

“It is part of the philosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves.”
― Martin Gardner

What can be said in reply? How can a fideist admit that faith is a kind of madness, a dream fed by passionate desire, and yet maintain that one is not mad to make the leap?”
― Martin Gardner

“I’m not sure why I enjoy debunking. Part of it surely is amusement over the follies of true believers, and [it is] partly because attacking bogus science is a painless way to learn good science. You have to know something about relativity theory, for example, to know where opponents of Einstein go wrong. . . . Another reason for debunking is that bad science contributes to the steady dumbing down of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to society.”
― Martin Gardner

“Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals — the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.”
― Martin Gardner

“The rub is that any work of nonsense abounds with so many inviting symbols that you can start with any assumption you please about the author and easily build up an impressive case for it. Consider, for example, the scene in which Alice seizes the end of the White King's pencil and begins scribbling for him. In five minutes one can invent six different interpretations.”
― Martin Gardner

“Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”
― Martin Gardner

“As I will be saying over and over again in this rambling volume, I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries. What is the difference between something and nothing? Why is there something rather than nothing? Should the something of which the universe is fundamentally composed be regarded as like atoms or be regarded as more like a mind? Or is the substratum best thought of as something neutral: material when structured one way, mental when structured another way? I have no desire even to try to answer such questions. I find nothing absurd about the notion that the external world is the mind of God, nor do I find it repulsive to suppose that God can create a world of substance, utterly unlike ideas in God’s mind or anybody’s mind, that can exist whether God thinks about it or not. How can I, a mere mortal slightly above an ape in intelligence, know what it means to say that something is “created” by God, or “thought” by God? One can play endless metaphysical games with such phrases, but I can no more grasp what is behind such questions than my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.”
― Martin Gardner

“Most mathematics deals with static objects such as circles and triangles and numbers. But the great universe "out there," not made by us, is in a constant state of what Newton called flux. At every microsecond it changes magically into something different. Calculus is the mathematics of change.”
― Martin Gardner

“We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains”
― Martin Gardner

“My wife and I own a cat we call Eureka, after Dorothy’s cat in the fourth Oz book. In Eureka’s dim mind she must be a kind of polytheist, fed as she is by the two of us, and by neighbors when we take a trip; surrounded on all sides by giant creatures who move about on their hind legs to do things utterly beyond her ken. But we who are her gods have a power of speculation far greater than that of her tiny feline brain.”
― Martin Gardner

“It is a fortunate and astonishing fact that the fundamental laws of our fantastic fidgety universe are based on relatively simple equations. If it were otherwise, we surely would know less than we know now about how our universe behaves, and Newton and Leibniz would probably never have invented (or discovered?) calculus.”
― Martin Gardner

“The notion that relativity physics supports the avoidance of value judgments in anthropology, for example, or a relativism with respect to morals, is absurd. Actually, relativity introduces a whole series of new “absolutes.”
― Martin Gardner

“Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.”
― Martin Gardener

“Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation …. Albert Einstein,
Autobiographical Notes”
― Martin Gardner
 

Jean Genet​



“Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.”
― Jean Genet

“A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.”
― Jean Genet

“To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.”
― Jean Genet

“My heart's in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand's in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.”
― Jean Genet

“I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.”
― Jean Genet

“I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world.”
― Jean Genet

“Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.”
― Jean Genet

“If we behave like those on the other side, then we are the other side. Instead of changing the world, all we'll achieve is a reflection of the one we want to destroy.”
― Jean Genet

“It's the hour when night breaks away from the day, my dove, let me go.”
― Jean Genet

“They spent their time doing nothing... they let intimacy fuse them.”
― Jean Genet

“I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty. ”
― Jean Genet

“Limited by the world, which I oppose, jagged by it, I shall be all the more handsome and sparkling as the angles which wound me and give me shape are more acute and the jagging more cruel.”
― Jean Genet
 

Miguel de Unamuno​


“Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“Life is doubt,
And faith without doubt is nothing but death.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“The less we read, the more harmful it is what we read.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.”
― Miguel de Unamuno

“Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly — but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.”
― Miguel de Unamuno
 

Antonin Artaud​


“Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones.”
― Antonin Artaud

“There is in every madman
a misunderstood genius
whose idea
shining in his head
frightened people
and for whom delirium was the only solution
to the strangulation
that life had prepared for him.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.”
― Antonin Artaud

“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself, but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
― Antonin Artaud

“If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.”
― Antonin Artaud

“No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I myself am an absolute abyss.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I abandon myself to the fever of dreams, in search for new laws.”
― Antonin Artaud

“All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. ”
― Antonin Artaud

“I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.”
― Antonin Artaud

“How hard is it, when everything encourages us to sleep, though we may look about us with conscious, clinging eyes, to wake and yet look about us as in a dream, with eyes that no longer know their function and whose gaze is turned inward.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I cannot conceive any work of art as having a separate existence from life itself”
― Antonin Artaud

“For nothing bestializes a being like the taste for eternal happiness, the search for eternal happiness at any price, and mademoiselle Lucifer is that **** who never wanted to abandon eternal happiness.”
― Antonin Araud

“Without sarcasm I sink into chaos.”
― Antonin Artaud
 
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