Jonpatterns > Jonpatterns's Quotes

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  • #1
    Johann Hari
    “This denial is bizarre. Last time Chomsky denied something I attributed to him, it was Chomsky's word against mine and there was no way to resolve this argument. This time, however, there's some fairly conclusive evidence. Look at http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/. It describes itself as 'the official weblog of Professor Noam Chomsky', and it is attached to Z Magazine, for which Chomsky has regularly written for over a decade. It claims Chomsky makes direct blog entries. Yet Chomsky claims he has 'nothing to with with it'. Are we really meant to believe this? If it is true, why does he carry on writing for a magazine that publishes a false blog in his name?”
    Johann Hari

  • #2
    Isaac Asimov
    “Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”
    Isaac Asimov

  • #3
    Winston S. Churchill
    “Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
    Winston Churchill

  • #4
    W.S. Merwin
    “For a Coming Extinction

    Gray whale
    Now that we are sending you to The End
    That great god
    Tell him
    That we who follow you invented forgiveness
    And forgive nothing

    I write as though you could understand
    And I could say it
    One must always pretend something
    Among the dying
    When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
    Empty of you
    Tell him that we were made
    On another day

    The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
    Winding along your inner mountains
    Unheard by us
    And find its way out
    Leaving behind it the future
    Dead
    And ours

    When you will not see again
    The whale calves trying the light
    Consider what you will find in the black garden
    And its court
    The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
    The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
    And fore-ordaining as stars
    Our sacrifices

    Join your word to theirs
    Tell him
    That it is we who are important”
    W.S. Merwin

  • #5
    Daron Acemoğlu
    “Economic institutions shape economic incentives: the incentives to become educated, to save and invest, to innovate and adopt new technologies, and so on. It is the political process that determines what economic institutions people live under, and it is the political institutions that determine how this process works.”
    Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

  • #6
    John Keats
    “O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
    Let it not be among the jumbled heap
    Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
    Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
    Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
    May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
    ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
    Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
    But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
    Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
    Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
    Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
    Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
    When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.”
    John Keats, The Complete Poems

  • #7
    John Green
    “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
    John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

  • #8
    Calvin Coolidge
    “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
    Calvin Coolidge

  • #9
    Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    “- Why me?
    - That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
    - Yes.
    - Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
    Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

  • #10
    Robert M. Pirsig
    “The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
    Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

  • #11
    Peter Høeg
    “The fear for oneself, that one can do something about. Upon it one can turn the light of awareness. But when one is no longer worrying about oneself, then the fear comes for other people and, after that, for the world.
    There are no fearless people, only fearless moments.”
    Peter Hoeg
    tags: fear

  • #12
    Douglas Adams
    “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
    Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

  • #13
    Albert Camus
    “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
    Albert Camus

  • #14
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    “No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
    Friedrich Nietzsche

  • #15
    Salman Rushdie
    “Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.

    If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

    I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

    To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”
    Salman Rushdie

  • #16
    Richard Rorty
    “members of labor unions, and un-organized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers - themselves desparately afraid of being downsized - are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
    At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for - someone willing to assure them that once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen and post modernist professors will no longer be calling the shots...
    One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion... All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet pp89-90”
    Richard M. Rorty

  • #17
    Douglas Adams
    “The story so far:
    In the beginning the Universe was created.
    This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
    Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

  • #18
    Anaïs Nin
    “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
    Anais Nin

  • #19
    Allen Saunders
    “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
    Allen Saunders

  • #20
    Edward Abbey
    “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
    Edward Abbey, The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

  • #21
    Sarah Vowell
    “We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”
    Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli

  • #22
    Audrey Niffenegger
    “Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.”
    Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

  • #23
    “Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.”
    Hakuin

  • #24
    Martin Luther King Jr.
    “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
    Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

  • #25
    Martin Luther King Jr.
    “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”
    Martin Luther King Jr.

  • #26
    Niels Bohr
    “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
    Niels Bohr

  • #27
    Lang Leav
    “I still search
    for you in crowds,
    in empty fields
    and soaring clouds.
    In city lights
    and passing cars,
    on winding roads
    and wishing stars.

    I wonder where
    you could be now,
    for years I’ve not said
    your name out loud.

    And longer since
    I called you mine—
    time has passed
    for you and I.

    But I have learnt
    to live without,
    I do not mind—
    I still love you anyhow.”
    Lang Leav, Lullabies (Volume 2)

  • #28
    Douglas R. Hofstadter
    “Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law”
    Douglas Hofstadter

  • #29
    Dorothy Parker
    “Time doth flit; oh shit.”
    Dorothy Parker

  • #30
    Muhammad Ali
    “I Ain't Got No Quarrel With The VietCong...No VietCong Ever Called Me Nigger.”
    Muhammad Ali



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