Kevin Schaeffer > Kevin's Quotes

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
― Laurence J. Peter

“I don't accept the currently fashionable assertion that any view is automatically as worthy of respect as any equal and opposite view. My view is that the moon is made of rock. If someone says to me 'Well, you haven't been there, have you? You haven't seen it for yourself, so my view that it is made of Norwegian Beaver Cheese is equally valid' - then I can't even be bothered to argue. There is such a thing as the burden of proof, and in the case of god, as in the case of the composition of the moon, this has shifted radically. God used to be the best explanation we'd got, and we've now got vastly better ones. God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining. So I don't think that being convinced that there is no god is as irrational or arrogant a point of view as belief that there is. I don't think the matter calls for even-handedness at all.”
― Douglas Adams

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“first, he called idiot savant. The type of person who is so smart in his or her field of expertise that their mind is literally elsewhere. In layman’s terms he explained that these people were smart in school and dumb on the bus. The second category was made up of perfectionists, people who were incapable of letting go of one task and moving on to another. These people were always playing catch-up, rarely rose to any real position of power, and needed to be managed properly. The third category, and the one to be most wary of, were the egomaniacs. These were the people who not only felt that their time was more important than anyone else’s, but who needed to prove it by constantly making others wait”
― Vince Flynn, Act of Treason

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“as much as I’d like to lick chocolate syrup off your body, I want you to shut up.”
― Robert Crais, The Monkey's Raincoat

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“The first sign of being crazy is being unaware that you might be crazy.”
― Russell Blake, Escape

“Experience: Mistakes you have survived.”
― Russell Blake, Night of the Assassin

“You feel strangely empowered when you realize that most of what you're told matters, only matters to those trying to sell you shit.”
― Russell Blake

“the engine cranked over with a reluctant shudder before settling into an uneasy idle that sounded like monkeys banging on a pan with hammers.”
― Russell Blake, Sahara

“The driver had the radio on low – listening to music that sounded like someone had tied percussion instruments to a cow and set it running down an alley.”
― Russell Blake, Jet

“looked like it had been rebuilt by blind chimps after a rocket attack”
― Russell Blake

“I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed reading accident. I hit a book mark and flew across the room.”
― Steven Wright

“Good intentions are ubiquitous in politics; what is scarce is accurate beliefs.”
― Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

“Both bad driving and bad voting are dangerous not merely to the individual who practices them, but to innocent bystanders.”
― Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

“take the opposite approach: Voters’ lack of decisiveness changes everything. Voting is not a slight variation on shopping. Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters do not. The naive view of democracy, which paints it as a public forum for solving social problems, ignores more than a few frictions. It overlooks the big story inches beneath the surface. When voters talk about solving social problems, they primary aim is to boost their self-worth by casting off the workaday shackles of objectivity.”
― Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

“Changing the people you see, changes the way you see people.”
― Bryan Caplan, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration

“The heralded social dividends of education are largely illusory: rising education’s main fruit is not broad-based prosperity, but credential inflation”
― Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money

“If voters are systematically mistaken about what policies work, there is a striking implication: They will not be satisfied by the politicians they elect. A politician who ignores the public’s policy preferences looks like a corrupt tool of special interests. A politician who implements the public’s policy preferences looks incompetent because of the bad consequences.”
― Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies

“Actually, she’d made me promise to cut down on the drinking and swearing, which I have. Unfortunately, this has left me dim-witted and nearly speechless.”
― Nelson DeMille, The Lion

“The problem with doing nothing is that you never know when you're finished.”
― Nelson DeMille

“Sometimes shit happens even if you have a shit shield”
― Nelson Demille

“It's really scary when you have a moment of temporary sanity.”
― Nelson DeMille, The Lion

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“You can be sincere and still be stupid.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Beauty will save the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them — the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“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