Yajana Rao > Yajana's Quotes

“I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“You have everything but one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else - he never dares cut the rope and be free.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
― William Gibson

“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?”
― Leo Tolstoy, Семейное счастие

“In other words, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
― Seneca

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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

“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us -- there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“It is said that men may not be the dreams of the god, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“The problem is that our ideas are sticky: once we produce a theory, we are not likely to change our minds....”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“If something is permitted by the laws of physics, then the only thing that can prevent it from being technologically possible is not knowing how.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

“If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position hire the best writer. it doesn't matter if the person is marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever, their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. great writers know how to communicate. they make things easy to understand. they can put themselves in someone else's shoes. they know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society... Writing is today's currency for good ideas.”
― Jason Fried, Rework

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“If you're an atheist, you know, you believe, this is the only life you're going to get. It's a precious life. It's a beautiful life. Its something we should live to the full, to the end of our days. Where if you're religious and you believe in another life somehow, that means you don't live this life to the full because you think you're going to get another one. That's an awfully negative way to live a life. Being a atheist frees you up to live this life properly, happily and fully”
― Richard Dawkins

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked -- as I am surprisingly often -- why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it?”
― Richard Dawkins

“Not inventing, and not adopting new ideas, can itself be both dangerous and immoral.”
― Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist

“What you are looking for is what is looking.”
― Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening

“Our progress in meditation does not depend on the measure of pleasure or pain in our experience. Rather, the quality of our practice has to do with how open we are to whatever is there.”
― Joseph Goldstein, Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom

“one of the most radical, far-reaching, and challenging statements of the Buddha is his statement that as long as there is attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant, liberation is impossible.”
― Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening