YA > YA's Quotes

“Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.”
― Hafez

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“There is a Divine Providence operating over and above the materialistic happenings of biological evolution.”
― John C. Eccles

“The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, The Golden Apple

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

“Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST.”
― Frank Zappa

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”
― Frank Zappa

“There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.”
― Frank Zappa

“Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?'
Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?”
― Frank Zappa

“I am dead because I have no desire,
I have no desire because I think I possess,
I think I possess because I do not try to give;
Trying to give, I see that I have nothing,
Seeing that I have nothing, I try to give myself,
Trying to give myself, I see that I am nothing,
Seeing that I am nothing, I desire to become,
Desiring to become, I live.”
― René Daumal

“Philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks.”
― Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.”
― Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

“It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content… it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion.”
― René Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part 2

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”
― Albert Einstein

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.”
― Thomas Merton, Love and Living

“Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

Other people are excited,
as though they were at a parade.
I alone don't care,
I alone am expressionless,
like an infant before it can smile.

Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.

Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharp;
I alone am dull.
Other people have purpose;
I alone don't know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother's breasts.”
― Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”
― Bill Bullard

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“When Paul announced himself in a rather formal way to the secretary, he said simply, “I am Watzlawick.” She suspected he was a new psychiatric patient showing up for an appointment at the wrong time, and she interpreted his introduction as, “I am not Slavic.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution

“In the irrational universe of demanded spontaneity, the power of state reaches beyond the prohibition of acts contrary to society, assigning itself the task of prescribing the citizen's thoughts and convictions. To quote Revel's concise conclusion, 'C'est dans les sociétiés totalitaires que l'Etat se charge de 'donner un sens' à la vie des êtres' ['In totalitarian societies the state assumes the task of giving life a meaning']. Thus original thought becomes treason, and life becomes a hell of a particular kind.”
― Paul Watzlawick, Münchhausen's Pigtail, or Psychotherapy & "Reality"

“Our everyday, traditional ideas of reality are delusions which we spend substantial parts of our daily lives shoring up, even at the considerable risk of trying to force facts to fit our definition of reality instead of vice versa. And the most dangerous delusion of all is that there is only one reality.”
― Paul Watzlawick, How Real Is Real? Confusion, Disinformation, Communication

“How do we know what we believe we know?”
― Paul Watzlawick