Quotes About Thought Provoking

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
― Albert Einstein

“I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“But I've strayed so far from normal now, I'll never find my way back. And the truth is, I no longer want to.”
― Alyson Noel, Saving Zoë

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
― Cesare Pavese

“Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled "This could change your life.”
― Helen Exley

“Normal people can become very annoying if put in annoying situations.”
― Jessica Park, Flat-Out Love

“While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story—their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done.”
― Alyson Noel, Shadowland

“He lingered at the door, and said, 'The Lion wants courage, the Tin Man a heart, and the Scarecrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do you want?'...
She couldn't say forgiveness, not to Liir. She started to say 'a soldier,' to make fun of his mooning affections over the guys in uniform. But realizing even as she said it that he would be hurt, she caught herself halfway, and in the end what came out of her mouth surprised them both.
She said, 'A soul-'
He blinked at her.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken...”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If love is blind, then maybe a blind person that loves has a greater understanding of it.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

“You're stressing too much about what might be. Do something to take your mind off thinking about what might never happen.”
― Simone Elkeles, Leaving Paradise

“At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find your inner motivation to seek for new ideas on your own.”
― Bill Watterson

“It's just like John Mayer says in "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room". When it's this bad, you have to get out or you'll get burned.”
― Susane Colasanti, Waiting For You

“What work do I have to do then?" said Will, but went on at once, "No, on second thought, don't tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it'll feel as if I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“As long as there's life, there's hope.”
― Tamora Pierce

“The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you
have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.”
― Jodi Picoult

“Words are like people, I think. Put too many of them too close together and they cause trouble.”
― Carolee Dean, Take Me There

“Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“One thing you have to realize from now on is that it doesn't matter if this is a dream or not. Survival depends on what you do, not what you think.”
― Rebecca McKinsey, Anterria

“Your mind can be either your prison or your palace. What you make it is yours to decide”
― Bernard Kelvin Clive, Your Dreams Will Not Die

“There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“This is how everything should end: with the forgotten remembered, the wounded healed, and the sinners forgiven.”
― Jenny Hollowell

“But then something happened, Ray, something amazing. Something...

"That white cop sitting next to me? He took a long look at my mother when she came in, just like, absorbed her, and then without even turning to me, he just put his hand on my back, up between my neck and shoulder...

"And all he did was squeeze. Give me a little squeeze of sympathy, then rubbed that same spot with his palm for maybe two, three seconds, and that was it.

"But I swear to you, nobody, in my entire life up to that point had ever touched me with that kind of tenderness. I had never experienced a sympathetic hand like that, and Ray, it felt like lightning.

"I mean, the guy did it without thinking, I'm sure. And when dinnertime rolled around he had probably forgotten all about it. Forgot about me, too, for that matter... But I didn't forget.

"I didn't walk around thinking about it nonstop either, but something like seven years later when I was at community college? The recruiting officer for the PD came on campus for Career Day, and I didn't really like college all that much to begin with, so I took the test for the academy, scored high, quit school and never looked back.

"And usually when I tell people why I became a cop I say because it would keep Butchie and Antoine out of my life, and there's some truth in that.

"But I think the real reason was because that recruiting officer on campus that day reminded me, in some way, you know, conscious or not, of that housing cop who had sat on the bench with me when I was thirteen.

"In fact, I don't think it, I know it. As sure as I'm standing here, I know I became a cop because of him. For him. To be like him. God as my witness, Ray. The man put his hand on my back for three seconds and it rerouted my life for the next twenty-nine years.

"It's the enormity of small things... Adults, grown-ups, us, we have so much power... And sometimes when we find ourselves coming into contact with certain kinds of kids? Needy kids? We have to be ever so careful...”
― Richard Price