Hiranthi > Hiranthi's Quotes

“The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors ... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.”
― George Orwell

“The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the Power to learn from past mistakes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Why should be fruit be held inferior to the flower?”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It was more natural to exist from moment to moment, accepting another ten minutes' life even with the certainty that there was torture at the end of it.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.”
― Ronald H. Coase, Essays on Economics and Economists

“Walking is among the most life-affirming of human activities. It is the way we organize space and orient ourselves to the world at large. It is the living proof that repetition—placing one foot in front of the other—can in fact allow a person to make meaningful progress.”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

“Set for yourself goals, high and noble goals, and perish in pursuit of them!”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: Becoming Who You Are

“Marrying,” Schopenhauer tells us, “means to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find an eel amongst an assembly of snakes.”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

“If there was any meaning to life, it had to be found in suffering.”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

“TO BE IGNORANT OF WHAT OCCURRED before you were born is to remain always a child.”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

“Being a parent is to live out such a disjunction between duty and personal freedom—to love a child with one’s entire being, but to preserve something of one’s identity that parenting cannot touch. Nietzsche explains how this divided self is not only possible but inevitable.”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

“Being a responsible adult is, among other things, often to resign oneself to a life that falls radically short of the expectations and potentialities that one had or, indeed, still has. It is to become what one has always hoped to avoid.”
― John Kaag, Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are