"The rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of Earth, at the mercy of a Gravity we have only begun to learn how to detect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith in Kute Korrespondences, hoping that for each psi-synthetic taken from Earth's soul there is a molecule, secular, more or less ordinary and named, over here - kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding in each Deeper Significance and trying to string them all together like terms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret Function whose name, like the permuted names of God, cannot be spoken... plastic saxophone reed sounds of unnatural timbre, shampoo bottle ego-image, Cracker Jack prize one-shot amusement, home appliance casing fairing for winds of cognition, baby bottles tranquilization, meat packages disguise of slaughter, dry-cleaning bags infant strangulation, garden hoses feeding endlessly the desert... but to bring them together, in their slick persistence and our preterition... to make sense out of, to find the meanest sharp sliver of truth in so much replication, so much waste... [Gravity's Rainbow, p. 590]"
— Thomas Pynchon

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)

"Wake up, you idiots! Whatever made you think that money was so valuable?"
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)

"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
— Albert Einstein

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
— Albert Einstein

"Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
— Albert Einstein

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
— Albert Einstein

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
— Albert Einstein

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
— Albert Einstein

"The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."
— Albert Einstein

"A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it."
— Albert Einstein

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
— Albert Einstein

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning."
— Albert Einstein (Relativity: The Special and the General Theory)

"Never memorize something that you can look up."
— Albert Einstein

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity"
— Albert Einstein

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
— Albert Einstein

"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
— Albert Einstein

"if a cluttered desk is that of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?"
— Albert Einstein

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
— Albert Einstein

"What is right is not always popular and what is popular is not always right."
— Albert Einstein

"Albert Einstein's Rules of Work:

1) Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2) From discord, find harmony.
3) In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."
— Albert Einstein

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."
— Albert Einstein

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
— Albert Einstein

"Creativity is intelligence having fun."
— Albert Einstein

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."
— Albert Einstein

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
— Albert Einstein

"It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer."
— Albert Einstein

"It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind."
— Albert Einstein

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
— Albert Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"
— Albert Einstein

"Nothing happens until something moves."
— Albert Einstein

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
— Albert Einstein

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
— Hermann Hesse

"People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest."
— Hermann Hesse

"Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours."
— Hermann Hesse

"Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish."
— Hermann Hesse

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?"
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"In the end
these things matter most:
How well did you love?
How fully did you live?
How deeply did you let go?"
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"You only lose what you cling to."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"what we think, we become"
— Siddhārtha Gautama