Floris > Floris's Quotes

“It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Ik [ben] voorstander van abortus tot het veertigste levensjaar, en van euthanasie vanaf het veertigste.”
― Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven

“Kings are the slaves of history.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. I'm a very serious “possibilist”. That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful.”
― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.”
― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“here’s the paradox: the image of a dangerous world has never been broadcast more effectively than it is now, while the world has never been less violent and more safe.”
― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“When things are getting better we often don’t hear about them. This gives us a systematically too-negative impression of the world around us, which is very stressful.”
― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“Look for systems, not heroes.”
― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“That question is too good to spoil with an answer.”
― Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven

“In een paroxysme van kleuren ging de hemel zich inmiddels te buiten aan een zonsondergang, zoals die in Europa alleen door een krankzinnige belichtingstechnicus verzonnen kon worden, waarop onmiddelijk ontslag zou volgen”
― Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven

“Al het oude was eens nieuw, en al het nieuwe zal eens oud zijn. Het alleroudste is het heden, want er is nooit iets anders geweest dan het heden. Nooit heeft iemand in het verleden geleefd, en in de toekomst leeft ook niemand.”
― Harry Mulisch, The Discovery of Heaven

“The Israeli court psychiatrist who examined Eichmann found him a “completely normal man, more normal, at any rate, than I am after examining him,” the implication being that the coexistence of normality and bottomless cruelty explodes our ordinary conceptions and present the true enigma of the trial.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“In the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“Questions you cannot answer are usually far better for you than answers you cannot question.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Silence isn’t neutrality; it is supporting the status-quo.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“You are very amiable, no doubt, but you would be charming if you would only depart.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers