Tom > Tom's Quotes

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
― Tom Robbins

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.”
― E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

“The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices—after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Audiences know what to expect, and that is all that they are prepared to believe in.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Uncertainty is the normal state.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by intertia.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda

“The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.”
― George Carlin, Last Words

“Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.”
― Shunryu Suzuki

“Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice