Els De Schryver > Els's Quotes

“we can't build our dreams,
on suspicious minds”
― Elvis Presley

“It's like learning to ride a unicorn. You never forget.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Songs are as sad as the listener.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale."
George W. Bush has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot . . .
PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . .
So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.
They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reasons that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody's telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“L'illusion d'avoir trouvé la vérité, au mieux nous fixe là où nous sommes, au pire nous conduit à vouloir l'imposer aux autres.”
― Stéphane Hessel, Tous comptes faits ou presque

“The talent for self-justification is surely the finest flower of human evolution, the greatest achievement of the human brain. When it comes to justifying actions, every human being acquires the intelligence of an Einstein, the imagination of a Shakespeare, and the subtlety of a Jesuit.”
― Michael Foley, The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy

“The 1970s was the decade of liberation, of anger at injustice and demands for recognition and rights. But over time, the demand for specific rights degraded into a generalized sense of entitlement, the demand for specific recognition into a generalized demand for attention and the anger at specific injustice into a generalized feeling of grievance and resentment. The result is a culture of entitlement, attention-seeking and complaint.”
― Michael Foley, The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life makes it Hard to be Happy

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“Your soul is the whole world.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Ik doe een poging om het daarbij aansluitende mensbeeld, de spiegel die ons omringt, onder woorden te brengen:

Mensen zijn competitieve wezens die vooral uit zijn op hun eigen profijt. Op maatschappelijk vlak is dat in het voordeel van ons allemaal, want iedereen zal in die competitie zijn uiterste best doen om aan de top te geraken. Daardoor krijgen we betere en goedkopere producten in combinatie met een efficiëntere dienstverlening binnen een één gemaakte vrije markt, zonder inmenging door de overheid. Dit is ethisch correct, want het slagen of mislukken van een individu in die competitie hangt volledig af van diens eigen inspanningen. Iedereen is bijgevolg zelf verantwoordelijk voor het eigen succes of falen. Vandaar het belang van onderwijs, want onze wereld is een razendsnelle evoluerende kenniseconomie die om hoogopgeleide mensen met flexibele competenties vraagt. Eén hoger-onderwijsdiploma is goed, twee is beter en levenslang leren een must. Iedereen moet blijven groeien. Immers, de competitie is bikkelhard. Vandaar ook de dwingende noodzaak aan functioneringsgesprekken en constante evaluaties, dit alles geleid door de onzichtbare hand vanuit een centraal management.

Dit is de korte samenvatting van het grote verhaal dat vandaag de dag onze cultuur beheerst en dat bijgevolg onze identiteit vormt.”
― Paul Verhaeghe

“Psychologisch beschouwd is het juister de verklaring voor het huidige profitariaat en individualisme te zoeken in een maatschappij die mensen opvoedt om steeds hun eigen voordeel na te streven, los van en desnoods ten koste van de ander. 'Je leeft maar één keer.”
― Paul Verhaeghe, Identiteit

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“Life is not what we live; it is what we imagine we are living.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“Given that we can live only a small part of what there is in us -- what happens with the rest?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“Human beings can't bear silence. It would mean that they would bear themselves.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“[Vanity's] an unrecognized form of stupidity... you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that’s a glaring form of stupidity.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America