Dave > Dave's Quotes

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“We love the things we love for what they are.”
― Robert Frost

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
― Robert Frost

“If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.”
― Robert Frost

“Freedom lies in being bold.”
― Robert Frost

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
― Robert Frost

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
― Robert Frost

“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”
― Will Rogers

“Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Always speak politely to an enraged dragon.”
― Steven Brust, Jhereg

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

(Letter 16, 1657)”
― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

“Everything must be made as simple as possible. But not simpler.”
― Albert Einstein

“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
― Albert Einstein

“The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“[Said during a debate when his opponent asserted that atheism and belief in evolution lead to Nazism:]

Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of Charles Darwin is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. Darwin’s thought was not taught in Germany; Darwinism was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, Darwin, Einstein and Freud were alike despised by the National Socialist regime.

Now, just to take the most notorious of the 20th century totalitarianisms – the most finished example, the most perfected one, the most ruthless and refined one: that of National Socialism, the one that fortunately allowed the escape of all these great atheists, thinkers and many others, to the United States, a country of separation of church and state, that gave them welcome – if it’s an atheistic regime, then how come that in the first chapter of Mein Kampf, that Hitler says that he’s doing God’s work and executing God’s will in destroying the Jewish people? How come the fuhrer oath that every officer of the Party and the Army had to take, making Hitler into a minor god, begins, “I swear in the name of almighty God, my loyalty to the Fuhrer?” How come that on the belt buckle of every Nazi soldier it says Gott mit uns, God on our side? How come that the first treaty made by the Nationalist Socialist dictatorship, the very first is with the Vatican? It’s exchanging political control of Germany for Catholic control of German education. How come that the church has celebrated the birthday of the Fuhrer every year, on that day until democracy put an end to this filthy, quasi-religious, superstitious, barbarous, reactionary system?

Again, this is not a difference of emphasis between us. To suggest that there’s something fascistic about me and about my beliefs is something I won't hear said and you shouldn't believe.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club