Gabriel Nita > Gabriel's Quotes

“I think the most romantic letter you ever gave me was “W,” because it’s a couple of soul mate “V”s. Or maybe they were a couple of letters of the same sex engaging in a homosexual relationship. A “W” is two “V”s in a civil union, but the world is not ready to flip that on its head and let them go for the big “M.”
― Jarod Kintz, So many chairs, and no time to sit

“Reading—it’s the third best thing to do in bed.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Title is Invisible

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
― Gore Vidal, Screening History

“If you have the woman you love, what more do you need? Well, besides an alibi for the time of her husband’s murder.
”
― Dark Jar Tin Zoo, Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.

“The criminal is a creative artist; detectives are just critics.”
― Hannu Rajaniemi, The Quantum Thief

“I’m not waiting until my hair turns white to become patient and wise. Nope, I’m dyeing my hair tonight.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale

“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
― Woody Allen

“I am using the word theory as a scientist means it: a set of ideas so well established by observations and physical models that it is essentially indistinguishable from fact. That is different from the colloquial use that means "guess." To a scientist, you can bet your life on a theory. Remember, gravity is "just a theory" too.”
― Philip C. Plait, Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End...

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Books, purchasable at low cost, permit us to interrogate the past with high accuracy; to tap the wisdom of our species; to understand the point of view of others, and not just those in power; to contemplate--with the best teachers--the insights, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history. They allow people long dead to talk inside our heads. Books can accompany us everywhere. Books are patient where we are slow to understand, allow us to go over the hard parts as many times as we wish, and are never critical of our lapses. Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“One of the reasons for its success is that science has a built-in, error-correcting machinery at its very heart. Some may consider this an overbroad characterization, but to me every time we exercise self-criticism, every time we test our ideas against the outside world, we are doing science. When we are self-indulgent and uncritical, when we confuse hopes and facts, we slide into pseudoscience and superstition.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Pseudoscience is embraced, it might be argued, in exact proportion as real science is misunderstood.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“If we know only our own side of the argument, we hardly know even that; it becomes stale, soon learned only by rote, untested, a pallid and lifeless truth.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“The business of scepticism is to be dangerous. Scepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, including, say, high school students, habits of sceptical thought, they will probably not restrict their scepticism to UFOs, aspirin commercials and 35,000-year-old channellees. Maybe they’ll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Perhaps they’ll challenge the opinions of those in power. Then where would we be?”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Trends working at least marginally towards the implantation of a very narrow range of attitudes, memories and opinions include control of major television networks and newspapers by a small number of similarly motivated powerful corporations and individuals, the disappearance of competitive daily newspapers in many cities, the replacement of substantive debate by sleaze in political campaigns, and episodic erosion of the principle of the separation of powers. It is estimated (by the American media expert Ben Bagditrian) that fewer than two dozen corporations control more than half of the global business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books and movies!”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“The development of objective thinking by the Greeks appears to have required a number of specific cultural factors. First was the assembly, where men first learned to persuade one another by means of rational debate. Second was a maritime economy that prevented isolation and parochialism. Third was the existence of a widespread Greek-speaking world around which travelers and scholars could wander. Fourth was the existence of an independent merchant class that could hire its own teachers. Fifth was the Iliad and the Odyssey, literary masterpieces that are themselves the epitome of liberal rational thinking. Sixth was a literary religion not dominated by priests. And seventh was the persistence of these factors for 1,000 years.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Pe vremuri, duelul era un privilegiu boieresc. Numai dacă erai nobil din naştere, aveai dreptul să te simţi ofensat şi să tragi cu pistolul ori să scoţi spada din teacă. Astăzi însă are libertatea să se ofenseze oricare cetăţean onorabil. Aici stă progresul: duelul s-a democratizat. Caracteristica duelului democratic stă în lipsa lui de rezultat, garantată prin lege. Şi cu cât omenirea se va civiliza mai tare, cu atât şi duelul va fi mai lipsit de rezultate şi va oferi cetăţenilor o garanţie mai mare de securitate şi de confort.
[…]
Fiind mai dinainte asigurat că pistolul adversarului nu dă rezultate, domnul care iese pe teren se găseşte în situaţia plăcută a unei cucoane care ştie bine că nu poate să facă copii ― dar tot mai încearcă.”
― George Topîrceanu, Minunile Sfântului Sisoe

“Banalitatea e glasul mare al generaţiilor trecute, pe când paradoxul e numai vocea piţigăiată a unui ins care vrea să facă impresie. Omenirea ştie de mult acest lucru.”
― George Topîrceanu, Minunile Sfântului Sisoe

“Dar eu nu sunt de la Bucureşti. În privinţa aceasta, bucureştenii sunt mai expeditivi; ei fac totul în goană ― treburi, masă, distracţii, dragoste (tot pe fugă, ca piţigoiul) şi, după socoteala lor, asta se cheamă a trăi “intens”. Noi, cei de la Iaşi, suntem de altă părere. Nouă nu ne place să ne grăbim, să dăm lucrurile peste cap, cum fac ei. Când e vorba de treabă serioasă, noi avem alt obicei: nu facem nimic.”
― George Topîrceanu, Minunile Sfântului Sisoe

“Speranța ne îngăduie să atingem un grad de stupiditate inaccesibil prin alte mijloace.”
― Gabriel Osmonde, Lucrarea iubirii

“Atracția sexuală este un catalizator supraputernic, o energie care ar putea fi îndreptată spre țeluri glorioase (Freud s-a încrâncenat pe această cale). Cum se face că ea devine un scop în sine distrugător, se fărâmițează în ridicolul donjuanism al masculilor carnivori care doresc ori stagnează în rumegarea obtuză a masculilor ierbivori care, emasculați prin căsătorie, nu mai doresc? Într-un cuvânt, de la ce masă critică de carne posedată în sus se eliberează bărbatul de multiplicitatea erotică și accede la iubire?”
― Gabriel Osmonde, Lucrarea iubirii

“You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“No matter how quiet and conformist a person’s life seems, there’s always a time in the past when they reached an impasse. A time when they went a little crazy. I guess people need that sort of stage in their lives.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Aren't you afraid of dying?
Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent’s preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it’s supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn.
[…]
If talent’s the foundation you rely on, and yet it’s so unreliable that you have no idea what’s going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have?”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“A cell is just a room if you don't lock the door.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“He made some tea and began to sip it along with the soup. The drink comforted him, not so much because of its flavor, but because its heat reminded him of the warmth he always felt from Natasha’s smile.”
― Antonio Garrido, The Last Paradise

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin