Brian > Brian's Quotes

“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.”
― Napolean Hill

“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

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.”
― Tom Clancy

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

“You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.”
― Chuck Yeager

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
― Emily Dickinson

“[The public school system is] usually a twelve year sentence of mind control.
Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and
compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it
instead into meek subservience to authority.”
― Walter Karp

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“How do I wish to be remembered, if at all? I think perhaps just as a fairly desirable sort of character actor.”
― James Mason

“...Life is much simpler if you don’t notice anything....”
― Tom Upton, Just Plain Weird

“And Yet the Books

And yet the books will be there on the shelves, separate beings,
That appeared once, still wet
As shining chestnuts under a tree in autumn,
And, touched, coddled, began to live
In spite of fires on the horizon, castles blown up,
Tribes on the march, planets in motion.
“We are,” they said, even as their pages
Were being torn out, or a buzzing flame
Licked away their letters. So much more durable
Than we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses, perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it's still a strange pageant,
Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity.

Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.”
― James Clavell, Shōgun