Arsalan > Arsalan's Quotes

“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!” —Richard Feynman”
― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

“To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea... cruising, it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.”
― Christopher Combe, One Year in Wonderland: A True Tale of Expat Life in Dubai

“So knowledge grows by subtraction much more than by addition—given that what we know today might turn out to be wrong but what we know to be wrong cannot turn out to be right, at least not easily.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“We who explore the future are like those ancient mapmakers, and it is in this spirit that the concept of future shock and the theory of the adaptive range are presented here – not as final word, but as a first approximation of the new realities, filled with danger and promise, created by the accelerative thrust.”
― Anonymous

“It is as an Arab that he disguises himself for the train journey to the east. He has with him an Egyptian guide, a Turkish gunner and an Arabic interpreter. An Egyptian officer searches the train, with instructions to arrest the Turkish officers on board, and Kemal realises that the game is up. He therefore reveals his identity and harangues the officer. “This is a holy war,” he declaims, “it is a war of Muslim against infidel. It is not for you to stand in the way of God.” Rhetorically masterful, eloquent and persuasive, he cynically but brilliantly persuades the officer of what he himself cannot believe, and the following day all but the Turkish gunner are released.”
― Anonymous

“Really, Tichy. Don’t be so demonic. Ours is simply a world in which more than twenty billion people live. Did you read today’s Herald? The government of Pakistan claims that in this year’s famine only 970,000 perished, while the opposition gives a figure of six million. In such a world where are you going to find Chablis, pheasants, tenderloin with sauce béarnaise? The last pheasant died a quarter of a century ago. That bird is a corpse, only excellently preserved, for we have become masters of its mummification—or rather: we have learned how to hide its death.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy

“I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.”
― Anonymous

“Ranjish hi sahi dil hi dukhane ke liye aa
aa phir se mujhe chhod ke jaane ke liye aa..
Pahale se maraasim na sahii phir bhi kabhi tou
rasm-o-rahe duniya hi nibhane ke liye aa..
Kis kis ko batayenge judaai ka sabab ham
tu mujhse khafaa hai tou zamaane ke liye aa..
kuch tou mere pindaar-e-mohabbat ka bharam rakh
tu bhi to kabhi mujh ko manaane ke liye aa..
ek umr se hoon lazzat-e-giriyaa se bhi maharuum
aye raahat-e-jaan mujh ko rulaane ke liye aa..
ab tak dil-e-khushfeham ko tujh se hain ummiden
ye aakharii shammen bhi bujhaane ke liye aa ....”
― Ahmed Faraz

“Flowers spring to blossom where she walks
The careful ways of duty;
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her
Are flowing curves of beauty.
”
― John Greenleaf Whittier