Maru Kun > Maru's Quotes

“Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.”
― Alasdair Gray

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
― Carl Sandburg

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

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life & writings of Benjamin Franklin

“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”
― Jean Paul Sartre

“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”
― James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.”
― Aristotle

“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
― John Philpot Curran

“People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don't admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It's the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.”
― Iris Murdoch

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
― Richard Dawkins

“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
― Elmore Leonard

“The difference between genius and stupidity is: genius has its limits.”
― Alexandre Dumas-fils

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man.”
― Mark Twain

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
― Mark Twain

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

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

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell

“War does not determine who is right — only who is left.”
― Anonymous

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
― Bertrand Russell

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy