Vasco > Vasco's Quotes

“Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.”
“Chairman, allow me to interrupt you with a question,” said K., “didn’t you mention a control agency? As you describe it, the organization is such that the very thought that the control agency might fail to materialize is enough to make one ill.”
“You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some particular way -- said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic, and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.”
― Machiavelli Niccolo, The Prince

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Empires and churches are born under the sun of death.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“One mind is enough for a thousand hands.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

“God is necessary, and therefore must exist... But I know that he does not and cannot exist... Don't you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

“God is the pain of the fear of death”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“One must be a great man indeed to be able to hold out even against common sense."
"Or else a fool.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“Collective madness is called sanity ..”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“Illusions are more common than changes in fortune”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, شرق بهشت

“Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden