John A > John's Quotes

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.”
― J. M. Barry

“If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.”
― Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

“Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes,thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors - hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom - the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?"
"I've felt it all my life," she said.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgement and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been calle anti social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads.”
― Ayn Rand

“Your fear of death is not a love for life. . .”
― Ayn Rand

“I refuse to apologize for my ability—I refuse to apologize for my success—I refuse to apologize for my money.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”
― Mark Twain

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
― Leo Buscaglia

“Were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint, but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a light-house.

[Letter to his wife, 17 July 1757, after narrowly avoiding a shipwreck; often misquoted as "Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."]”
― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin Volume 2