Dave > Dave's Quotes

“The lesson of my childhood was that if you anticipate misfortune, you make it hurt less. It’s a fool’s truth, but what truth isn”
― Vu Tran, Dragonfish

“We’re all honorary citizens of that primal forest, and our burdens and weaknesses always remain. They are an ineradicable part of ourselves; they are our humanity. But when we bring light, the day becomes ours and their power to determine our future is diminished. This is the way it works. The trick is, you can only brighten the forest from beneath the canopy of its trees . . . from within. To bring the light, you must first make your way through the bramble-filled darkness. Safe travels.”

Excerpt From: Born to Run”
― Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen -- Born to Run: Piano/Vocal/Chords

“The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
― Walker Percy

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“In the dark, all cats are black.”
― John Cage

“In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
― Bertrand Russell

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.”
― Bertrand Russell

“So far as I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”
― Bertrand Russell

“When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons”
― Bertrand Russell

“The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1- Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2- Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3- Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4- When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5- Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6- Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8- Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9- Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10- Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”
― Russell Bertrand

“Drinking’s funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on drinking, we’d be sitting at the kitchen table or out at the picnic table with a six-pack or whiskey.”
― Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

“Probably nothing going on inside, thinks Tangerine. Often the case with people who don’t read fiction. Hollow inside, monochrome, so they can switch gears no problem. They swallow something and forget about it as soon as it goes down their throat. Constitutionally incapable of empathy. These are the people who most need to read, but in most cases it’s already too late.”
― Kōtarō Isaka, Bullet Train

“KIMURA Tokyo Station is packed. It’s been a while since Yuichi Kimura was here last, so he isn’t sure if it’s always this crowded. He’d believe it if someone told him there was a special event going on. The throngs of people coming and going press in on him, reminding him of the TV show he and Wataru had watched together, the one about penguins, all jammed in tight together. At least the penguins have an excuse, thinks Kimura. It’s freezing where they live. He waits for an opening in the stream of people, cuts between the souvenir shops and kiosks, quickening his pace. Up a short flight of stairs to the turnstile for the Shinkansen high-speed bullet train. As he passes through the automated ticketing gate”
― Kōtarō Isaka, Bullet Train

“Spend more time doing things that make you forget about the time.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there”
― Csikszentmihaly

“Life is not measured by time. It is measured by moments.”
― Armin Houman

“Rhode Island likes things difficult, hard to find. The other unofficial state motto—“If you were supposed to know, you’d know.”
― Don Winslow, City on Fire

“Lesson: Don’t hold on to something’s going to pull you into a trap. If you’re going to let go, let go early. Better yet, don’t take the bait at all.”
― Don Winslow, City on Fire

“Better to get away light than get caught heavy.”
― Don Winslow, City on Fire

“A society that has no sense of the sacred is one in which you’ll have a lot of anomie, normlessness, loneliness, hopelessness.”
― Jamie Wheal, Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost its Mind

“Idris: Are all people like this?
The Doctor: Like what?
Idris: So much bigger on the inside.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Of course there is enough to stir our wonder anywhere; there's enough to love, anywhere, if one is strong enough, if one is diligent enough, if one is perceptive, patient, kind enough -- whatever it takes.”
― William Gass

“One glance at any government budget anywhere in the world tells the story—the money is always in place, already allocated, the motive everywhere is fear, the more immediate the fear, the higher the multiples.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

“Theology is ignorance with wings.”
― Sam Harris

“Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“What can be done to resurrect and implement the pan-African project? Cameron Duodu too, has looked back and asked what went wrong. As a Ghanian rookie reporter he witnessed the celebrations of freedom on 6 March 1957 a few years later he reported on Ghana from the crisis in the Congo. For him the Congo’s tragedy illustrates Africa's problem with the western world, whereby the Congo is still not stable and able to relieve the poverty of its people. Lamumba, writes Duodo, sadly lost power, he lost his country and in the end, his very life. The amazing thing, he adds, is that Lamumba had done absolutely nothing against the combination of forces that wanted him dead. They just saw him as a threat to their interests. Interest narrowly defined to mean “His country has got resources. We want them. He might not give them to us so let us go get him.” All this was done, Duodu observes, to achieve the selfish end of continuing to control the Congo’s rich mineral resources, but it wasn't only the Congo they wished to control they wanted to gulp down the entire African continent, Duodu add, and some so still do.”
― Susan Williams, White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa