Emil Petersen > Emil's Quotes

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#1

“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

tags: faith, skepticism

468 likes

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#2

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

4325 likes

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#3

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

tags: humor, proverb

12960 likes

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#4

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Alan Alda

tags: assumptions, close-mindedness, intelligence, isaac-asimov, knowledge, open-mind, open-mindedness, open-minds, opinions, receptivity, science, science-of-mind

2615 likes

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#5

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

tags: individuality, majority, minority, pause, reflect, wisdom

43958 likes

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#6

“A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs and Other Stories

tags: depression, humor, melancholy, wit

423 likes

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#7

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

tags: rational-thought, science

1072 likes

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#8

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

tags: attributed-no-source, human-nature, humor, infinity, philosophy, science, stupidity, universe

148816 likes

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#9

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tags: hope, inspirational, love

8307 likes

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#10

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

tags: entrepreneurship, inspirational, leadership

792 likes

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#11

“When I Was One-And-Twenty

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue.”
And I am two-and-twenty,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.”
― A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

tags: love, maturity, poetry, wisdom, youth

44 likes

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#12

“Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
I'd throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted stiff and dry:
'Farewell,' said you, 'forget me.'
'Fare well, I will,' said I.

If e'er, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone shading
The heart you have not stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word.”
― A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

tags: love, rejection

99 likes

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#13

“How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.”
― A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

tags: nature, poetry, sun

82 likes

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#14

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

tags: inspirational, optimism, perception, pessimism

46629 likes

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#15

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

tags: inspirational, talent

8201 likes

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#16

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tags: frost, glitter, gold, lost, poetry, roots, strength, strong, wander, wither

58214 likes

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#17

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”
― James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion

tags: optimism, pessimism

2212 likes

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#18

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

tags: attitude, distress, mind-over-body, pain, stoicism

2645 likes

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#19

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

tags: education, ignorance, intelligence, libraries

3994 likes

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#20

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of 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

tags: anti-intellectualism, cult, culture, democracy, ignorance, intellectual, political, politics, united-states, willful-ignorance

2476 likes

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#21

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”
― G.K. Chesterton

tags: boredom, human-nature, ignorance

1854 likes

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#22

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
― Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

tags: certainty, ignorance, knowledge, open-mindedness, science, willful-ignorance

840 likes

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#23

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”
― John von Neumann

tags: life, math, maths

356 likes

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#24

“One simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured.”
― Schopenhauer Arthur

tags: animals, life, pain, suffering

9 likes

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