Andrei Pogorilowski > Andrei's Quotes

“For what is worth: Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening team with a peculiar membership goes to work on them. Otherwise, life will go on exactly as before, no matter how painful, unrealistic, unjust, ludicrous, or downright dumb that life may be.
The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise, the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic person, capable of having seemingly good ideas not in general circulation. „Such a person, working alone“, he says, „is invariably ignored as a lunatic.“
The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas, and who testifies that the first specialist is far from mad. „A person like that working alone“, he says, „can only yearn out loud for changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be“.
The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain anything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of most people, no matter how stupid or pig-headed they may be. „He will say almost anything in order to be interesting and exciting,“ says Slazinger. „Working alone, depending solely on his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Bluebeard

“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“The most it ever seems we know how to do with time, is to waste it.”
― Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

“It was in the hands of two ministers, one lady, and two Jews, and all these people, though the way had been paved already with them, Stepan Arkadyevitch had to see in Petersburg.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

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

“Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de 20 casas de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo".”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad