Chris > Chris's Quotes

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

“The sort of twee person who thinks swearing is in any way a sign of a lack of education or a lack of verbal interest is just a fucking lunatic.”
― Stephen Fry

“I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.”
― Robert J. Sawyer

“The beginning of wisdom, as they say. When you're seventeen you know everything. When you're twenty-seven if you still know everything you're still seventeen.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.”
― Confucius

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
― C.S. Lewis

“It would be impossible to imagine going through life without swearing, and without enjoying swearing.”
― Stephen Fry

“Einstein was once asked how many feet are in a mile. Einstein's reply was "I don't know, why should I fill my brain with facts I can find in two minutes in any standard reference book?”
― Albert Einstein

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.”
― William Shakespeare

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss,
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:
But O, what damnèd minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Men in rage strike those that wish them best.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Proselytizing is a moral imperative and feeds the marketplace of ideas. I want to hear everyone tell the truth as they see it. I want to learn from everyone.”
― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed.”
― Anne Rice, The Witching Hour

“We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: "He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.”
― Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays

“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
― Martin Luther

“An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.”
― Orlando A. Battista

“My weapon is literature
”
― Chinua Achebe

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
― Charles Dickens

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae

“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings