Daniel > Daniel's Quotes

“It will certainly show what our ancestors would be thinking if they were alive today. People have often speculated about this. Would they approve of modern society, they ask, would they marvel at present-day achievements? And of course this misses a fundamental point. What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: "Why is it so dark in here?”
― Terry Pratchett, Pyramids

“Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Mr. Nancy passed a key to Shadow, another to Czernobog. “Is there a flashlight on the bus?” asked Shadow. “No,” said Mr. Nancy. “But it’s just dark. You mustn’t be afraid of the dark.” “I’m not,” said Shadow. “I’m afraid of the people in the dark.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless. The tale is the map which is the territory. You must remember this.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Put simply, unlike terrestrial organisms it did not adapt to its surroundings over the course of hundreds of millions of years, so as only then to produce a rational species, but it had gained control over its environment from the start.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“Every age has its signature afflictions. Thus, a bacterial age existed; at the latest, it ended with the discovery of antibiotics. Despite widespread fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder (BPD), and burnout syndrome mark the landscape of pathology at the beginning of the twenty-first century.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

“So long as what is foreign does not attract unwelcome attention, immune defenses ignore it. It follows that the biological immune system is more hospitable than previously assumed. That is, it does not harbor xenophobia. As such, it proves more intelligent than human societies. Xenophobia is a pathologically escalated immunoreaction that proves damaging to one’s own development”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

“Neoliberalism makes citizens into consumers. The freedom of the citizen yields to the passivity of the consumer. As consumers, today’s voters have no real interest in politics –in actively shaping the community. They possess neither the will nor the ability to participate in communal, political action. They react only passively to politics: grumbling and complaining, as consumers do about a commodity or service they do not like. Politicians and parties follow this logic of consumption too. They have to ‘deliver’. In the process, they become nothing more than suppliers; their task is to satisfy voters who are consumers or customers.”
― Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power