Jo > Jo's Quotes

“Writers are the engineers of the human souls”
― Joseph Stalin

“Men are Moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.”
― Joseph Stalin

“What did you expect?”
― John Williams, Stoner

“I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

“Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.
I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can f#$%ing die and leave North Korea!”
― Christopher Hitchens

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“To read without joy is stupid.”
― John Williams

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

“Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.”
― Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel

“We are our choices.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“They tell us that Suicide is the greatest piece of Cowardice... That Suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in this world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“For the most part people are not curious except about themselves.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“If literature stays away from evil, it rapidly becomes boring.”
― Georges Bataille

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Life is a constant process of dying.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
― Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte