daryl > daryl's Quotes

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Nameless City

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”
― Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto

“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.”
― Alan Watts

“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

“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
― Terence McKenna

“Marie came that evening and asked me if I'd marry her. I said I didn't mind; if she was keen on it, we'd get married. Then she
asked me again if I loved her. I replied, much as before, that her question meant nothing or next to nothing--but I supposed I didn't.

'If that's how you feel,' she said, 'why marry me?'

I explained that it had no importance really, but, if it would give her pleasure, we could get married right away. I pointed out that, anyhow, the suggestion came from her; as for me, I'd merely said, 'Yes.'
Then she remarked that marriage was a serious matter. To which I answered: 'No.'
She kept silent after that, staring at me in a curious way. Then she asked:
'Suppose another girl had asked you to marry her--I mean, a girl you liked in the same way as you like me--would you have said 'Yes' to her, too?'

'Naturally.'

Then she said she wondered if she really loved me or not. I, of course, couldn't enlighten her as to that. And, after another silence, she murmured something about my being 'a queer fellow.' 'And I daresay that's why I love you,' she added. 'But maybe that's why one day I'll come to hate you.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“As sure as I am that the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can ever be the whole truth.”
― Alice Harford

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.”
― John Locke

“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Beasts abstract not.”
― John Locke

“If the fact that brutes abstract not be made the distinguishing property of that sort of animal, I fear a great many of those that pass for men must be reckoned into their number.”
― Bishop Berkeley

“Props to Ornette Coleman for trying to castrate himself.”
― Yoni Wolf

“Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it's realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy.”
― Ron Paul

“It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”
― Ron Paul, End the Fed

“While I oppose most gun control proposals, there is one group of Americans I do believe should be disarmed: federal agents.”
― Ron Paul

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“There seems to be plenty of it,' was all I would answer, when the investigator asked me to say what I felt about time.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law

“Light and darkness dancing together, born together, born of each other, neither preceding, neither following, both fully being in joyful rhythm.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet

“And When is not what matters. It’s what happens in the When that matters.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet

“That joy in existence without which the universe will fall apart and collapse.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet

“Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)”
― René Descartes

“We can formulate Plantinga’s version of the ontological argument as follows: 1) It is possible that a maximally great being exists. 2) If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world. 3) If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. 4) If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world. 5) If a maximally great being exists in the actual world, then a maximally great being exists. 6) Therefore, a maximally great being exists.”
― William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates