Bryan Murphy > Bryan's Quotes

“Anything that can be said can be said clearly.”
― Wittgenstein

“In the chalky trough under the blackboard
are lessons dusted and already forgotten.
The teacher is squawking away once more,
scratching into the dark Welsh tabula rasa
the truths so far about God and arithmetic
with the expungible white of fossil shells.”
― Richie McCaffery

“Scientist alone is true poet.”
― Allen Ginsberg

“.. solo essere liberi di andarsene ogni giorno può dimostrarci la sincerità di un rapporto.”
― Vasco Rossi

“I know too much and not enough”
― Allen Ginsberg

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
― Carl Sagan

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”
― Douglas Adams

“Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named "Bush", "Dick", and "Colin." Need I say more?”
― Chris Rock

“Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me.”
― Anatole France

“You need to read more science fiction. Nobody who reads science fiction comes out with this crap about the end of history”
― Iain Banks

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel

“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Linha Reta

Linha sem imaginação.”
― Mario Quintana

“Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”
― George Orwell

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.”
― Woody Allen

“The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.”
― Thomas H. Huxley, Collected Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.”
― Tom Clancy

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.”
― Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

“Penso, como ele, que a fronteira entre a verdade e a mentira é um caminho no deserto. Os homens dividem-se dos dois lados da fronteira. Quantos há que sabem onde se encontra esse caminho de areia no meio da areia?”
― Pepetela, Mayombe

“As a matter of fact, that's the reason why I've learned to speak this language, and to write it too: so I can speak in the place of a dead man, so I can finish his sentences for him. The murderer got famous, and his story's too well written for me to get any ideas about imitating him. He wrote in his own language. Therefore I'm going to do what was done in this country after Independence: I'm going to take the stones from the old houses the colonists left behind, remove them one by one, and build my own house, my own language. The murderer's words and expressions are my unclaimed goods. Besides, the country's littered with words that don't belong to anyone anymore.”
― Kamel Daoud, The Meursault Investigation

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values