Mike's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 115)

"That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth."
— Tim O'Brien

tags: fiction, stories, truth, writing
27 people liked it

"'CEASE FIRE,' Captain Johansen shouted. 'Cease fire, what's wrong with you guys? Stop wasting the goddamn ammo. CEASE FIRE!'
'Cease fire,' the lieutenants hollered.
'Cease fire,' the platoon sergeants hollered.
'Cease the goddamn fire,' shouted the squad leaders.
'That,' I told Barney, 'is the chain of command.'"
— Tim O'Brien (If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home)

2 people liked it

""Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.""
— Tim O'Brien

17 people liked it

"A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written."
— Tim O'Brien

tags: fiction, lies, truth, writing
10 people liked it

"Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice."
— Michael Crichton (State of Fear)

tags: fiction, science
128 people liked it

"It's better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear."
— Michael Crichton

tags: death, fear, laughing
107 people liked it

"Everyone has a hidden agenda. Except me!"
— Michael Crichton

tags: inspirational, science
17 people liked it

"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world."
— Michael Crichton

18 people liked it

"No one escapes from life alive."
— Michael Crichton (Congo)

tags: death, life
10 people liked it

"Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse."
— Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park)

9 people liked it

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
— Michael Crichton

9 people liked it

"This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you - the ability to imagine."
— Michael Crichton (Sphère)

7 people liked it

"If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. "
— Michael Crichton

tags: history
7 people liked it

"Extrapolating from the statistical growth of the legal profession, by the year 2035 every single person in the United States will be a lawyer, including newborn infants."
— Michael Crichton (State of Fear)

tags: truth
4 people liked it

""absence of proof is not proof of absence.""
— Michael Crichton

tags: -crichton-, -lost, world-
3 people liked it

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

tags: dance, heaven, hurt, inspirational, life, love, sing
15,698 people liked it

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
— Albert Einstein

tags: humor, insanity, life
9,317 people liked it

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

tags: friends, friendship
9,214 people liked it

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

tags: wisdom
9,072 people liked it

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

tags: activism, apathy, hate, indifference, love, opposite, philosophy
7,008 people liked it

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

tags: advertising, apple, change, commercial, computers, different, misfits, nonconformity, quo, rebels, status, think
6,797 people liked it

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

tags: darkness, drive-out, hate, inspirational, light, love, peace
6,738 people liked it

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

tags: animals, books, dogs, friends, humor
6,534 people liked it

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
— Elbert Hubbard

tags: friend, friendship, knowledge, love
6,224 people liked it

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

tags: individuality, majority, minority, pause, reflect, wisdom
6,044 people liked it

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: enemies, forgiveness, strategy
5,950 people liked it

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: inspirational, music, philosophy
5,473 people liked it

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

tags: deadlines, humor, work
5,255 people liked it

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: strength
5,194 people liked it

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: honesty, inspirational
5,304 people liked it

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: life
4,169 people liked it

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."
— Mother Teresa

tags: judge, judgemental, love, time
4,110 people liked it

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

tags: books, friends, friendship, life
3,843 people liked it

"Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. "
— Bill Gates

tags: humor, work
3,656 people liked it

"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

tags: integrity
3,707 people liked it

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

tags: life
3,629 people liked it

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Anaïs Nin

tags: life, philosophy
3,544 people liked it

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
— Thomas A. Edison

tags: edison, failure, inspirational
3,576 people liked it

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

tags: humor, scifi
3,231 people liked it

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
— C.S. Lewis

tags: body, soul
3,346 people liked it

"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

3,304 people liked it

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

tags: education
3,058 people liked it

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love."
— Mother Teresa

tags: actions, can-do, great-love, great-things, inspirational, love, small-things
3,081 people liked it

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
— Virginia Woolf

tags: women
2,980 people liked it

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

tags: humor, open-mind, thinking
2,911 people liked it

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."
— Groucho Marx

tags: books, humor, reading, television
2,797 people liked it

"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
— André Gide

tags: life, love
2,888 people liked it

"People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."
— Mother Teresa

tags: catholicism, christianity, forgiveness, god, goodness, happiness, honesty, kindness, relgion, world
2,855 people liked it

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

tags: greatness
2,630 people liked it

"It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it."
— Oscar Wilde

tags: books, reading
2,606 people liked it

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