Raed > Raed's Quotes

“The most expensive part of building is the mistakes.”
― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

“He had been granted his life's wish-but conditionally.”
― Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“To lose a brother is to lose someone with whom you can share the experience of growing old, who is supposed to bring you a sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, creatures who people the tree of your life and give it new branches. To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches. To lose your mother, well, that is like losing the sun above you. It is like losing--I'm sorry, I would rather not go on.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later.”
― Guy Sajer, The Forgotten Soldier

“It is just that narrative can be lethal when used in the wrong places.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you may have to denarrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore the blogs. Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; nudge System 1 (the heuristic or experiential system) out of the important ones. Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical. This insulation from the toxicity of the world will have an additional benefit: it will improve your well-being.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“between one-third and one-half of all marriages fail,”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“We humans are the victims of an asymmetry in the perception of random events. We attribute our successes to our skills, and our failures to external events outside our control, namely to randomness.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“I don’t run for trains.” Snub your destiny. I have taught myself to resist running to keep on schedule. This may seem a very small piece of advice, but it registered. In refusing to run to catch trains, I have felt the true value of elegance and aesthetics in behavior, a sense of being in control of my time, my schedule, and my life. Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking. You stand above the rat race and the pecking order, not outside of it, if you do so by choice.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don’t be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth—remember that you are a Black Swan.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“Likewise, democracy in Saudi Arabia is potentially our enemy.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

“But in Jordan, it is hard to imagine a more moderate and pro-Western regime than the current undemocratic monarchy.”
― Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

“Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“For what's the point of breeding children, if each generation does not improve on what went before.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.”
― Hilary Mantel

“a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

“how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavour to do himself honour among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

“they have been troubled with the same disease to which the whole race of mankind is subject; the nobility often contending for power, the people for liberty, and the King for absolute dominion. All which, however happily tempered by the laws of that Kingdom, have been sometimes violated by each of the three parties,”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

“I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

“They have a notion, that when people are met together, a short silence does much improve conversation: this I found to be true; for during those little intermissions of talk, new ideas would arise in their minds, which very much enlivened the discourse.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

“for they have no conception how a rational creature can be compelled, but only advised, or exhorted; because no person can disobey reason, without giving up his claim to be a rational creature.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

“Everything belonged to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy. . . .”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“The best bluff, it turns out, is the one in which even the bluffer is unaware of the cards he is holding.”
― David McRaney, You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

“matter how good you’ve got it, you are no stranger to tears.”
― David McRaney, You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

“mais oü sont les neiges d'antan”
― Anonymous

“I have heard people say love is weak but they’re wrong—love is strong. In nearly everyone it trumps all other things—patriotism and ambition, religion and upbringing. And of every kind of love—the epic and the small, the noble and the base—the one that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all.”
― Terry Hayes, I Am Pilgrim

“Everyone has a choice. Even if you’re trained to hate, you can choose tolerance. You can choose empathy.”
― Zak Ebrahim, The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice