Greg > Greg's Quotes

“With an evermore increase of industrialisation the machine stops being merely a tool, develops a life of its own and imposes its rhythm onto human. Operating it he moves mechanically, becomes part of the machine.”
― Fritz Lang, Metropolis

“Money is the barometer of a society's morals. When you see that deals are no longer made voluntarily but under duress, that in order to produce you need the permission of people who produce nothing, that money flows to those who trade not in goods but in favours, that people get rich through bribery and connections, not through work, that the laws do not protect you from these people but these people from you, that corruption is rewarded and honesty punished, then you know that your society is on the verge of collapse.”
― Ayn Rand

“The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. There is no such thing as tomorrow. There never will be, because time is always now.”
― Alan Watts

“Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Racing is like life; it’s not always about who’s the fastest, but who can handle the curves.”
― Unknown

“Simulation is the situation created by any system of signs when it becomes sophisticated enough, autonomous enough, to abolish its own referent and to replace it with itself.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simluation

“The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“To Do is To Be – Friedrich Nietzsche

To Be is To Do – Immanuel Kant

Do Be Do Be Do – Frank Sinatra”
― Unknown

“No land was ever acquired honestly on the history of the earth.”
― Philip Meyer

“Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world of it's proper value.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“The mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman, the ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman, the reality within.”
― Fritjof Capra

“Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Most people do not see their beliefs. Instead, their beliefs tell them what they see. This is the simple difference between clarity and confusion.”
― Matt Kahn

“Never did a book reveal such truths,
Why seek a name? It matters not;
The boundless found a shape and form
In sacrifice's sacred knot.

Oh see, what is possession's worth
If it knows not to offer its all?
Things pass away. Aid them in passing,
Lest life from a hidden crack should fall.

Forever, be the giver, not the taker.
The mule, the cow—all press their way
To where the king’s image, like a child,
Is sated, smiles, and softly lays.

His temple breathes unceasing calm,
He takes and takes, yet grants reprieve,
So gentle even, the princess's hand
Holds the papyrus bloom, but does not cleave.

Here, sacrifice’s paths are cut,
The Sunday rises, ungrasped by weeks.
Man and beast drag gains aside,
Unseen by gods, as profit speaks.

Though hard, commerce bends to will,
Earth cheapened, tamed by practiced skill,
But one who pays the ultimate price,
Surrenders all—they too are sacrificed.

(Translation by CoPilot AI)”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Samtliche Werke

“In contrast to a journalistic appropriation, however, scientists will endeavour to reveal the principles and building blocks of their own construction and make them comprehensible.
They will also endeavour to take into account all available details to such an extent that they do not contradict their image, in the words of the philosopher Karl Popper, to test the ‘truth similarity’ of a theory [K. Popper, Objective Knowledge. An Evolutionary Approach]. If they succeed in doing this, some will grant the result the quality of a “re-construction” of past reality and thus raise it to an “objective” level. In the vast majority of cases, however, this is not the only possible view, not even the most probable in the mathematical sense, because historical facts are rarely calculable, but a plausible one, i.e. a treatment of the problem that is appropriate to it and makes a recognisable contribution to its understanding [E. von Glasersfeld, An Introduction to Radical Constructivism]. One of the most important tasks of a degree programme is to learn to allow this plurality of perspectives without confusing it with arbitrariness.”
― Eckhard Wirbelauer, Antike

“The pious man knows nothing of a holy Catholic Church, whose world-embracing power other expositors prefer to contrast with the limited conventicles of the heretics. He only knows a holy Christianity whose goods consist in our becoming children of God, brothers of Jesus Christ, disciples of the Holy Spirit and comrades of the apostles. The article on eternal life fills us with hope and longing for the hereafter, protects us from the sorrows of this life and makes us willing to part from it. With the Amen, however, we surrender ourselves to God’s will to want what he wants from us.”
― Friedrich Wiegand, Das apostolische Symbol im Mittelalter: Eine Skizze (Vorträge der Theologischen Konferenz zu Giessen, 21)

“If one sees a handful of powerful and rich people at the pinnacle of opulence and fortune, while the crowd below grovels in obscurity and wretchedness, it is because the former valued the things they enjoy only because others are deprived of them and even without changing their condition, they would cease to rejoice if the people ceased to suffer.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

“Consciousness, by its very nature, exists only in the singular. I would like to say: the total number of all "consciousnesses" is always merely "one.”
― Erwin Schrödinger, Geist und Materie (Diogenes Taschenbuch)

“The reason why our feeling, perceiving, and thinking self appears nowhere in our scientific worldview can easily be expressed in five words: It is itself this worldview. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained within it as a part.”
― Erwin Schrödinger, Geist und Materie (Diogenes Taschenbuch)

“A purely intellectual worldview entirely without mysticism is absurd.”
― Erwin Schrödinger, Meine Weltansicht