Navarjun > Navarjun's Quotes

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

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“People like me, LB, the truly great ones ... we are always alone.”
― Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing...

“I'd far rather be happy than right any day.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“But some back-of-the-napkin math told me even one tank was enough to blow the whole Hab up. So I brought them all in.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“They’re not much different from kitchen trash bags, though I’m sure they cost $50,000 because of NASA.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“Only an idiot would keep that thing near the Hab. So anyway, I brought it back to the Hab. Either”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“with the knowledge that you cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives.”
― David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

“we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.”
― David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

“everyone knows what He’s thinking when He retires to His bed at night: that one of His best gifts—the ability to have faith in an unseen hereafter—has backfired.”
― David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

“people do, in fact, act against their moral convictions and this is an unhappy fact about ourselves’.”
― Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good

“Every damn thing in the universe can be broken down into smaller things, even atoms, even protons, so theoretically speaking, I guess you had a winning case. A collection of things should be considered one thing. Unfortunately, theory don’t always carry the day.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“That was the way man was meant to live, he’d say, in harmony with the wild, like the Indians, not this lords-of-the-earth crap, trying to rule the entire goddamn planet, cutting down all the forests and killing every creature you couldn’t bring to heel.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Just remember,” Mom said after examining the blisters, “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” “If that was true, I’d be Hercules by now,” Lori said.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“the surest way to feel rich was to invest in quality nonessentials.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“The Mahabharata reminds us that it is natural and desirable for human beings to want happiness and pleasure as they seek to be good. Kama is one of the legitimate goals of human life. The Christian denial of physical pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, is happily absent from the epic and most ancient Indian texts. So is the ‘thou shalt not’ approach, which makes one feel guilty, and turns one off the moral project. The notion of dharma as it emerges from the Mahabharata is a plural one. Being plural makes greater demands on one’s reason, for human objectives sometimes conflict with each other, and this forces one to choose. The attraction of a clean ethical theory like Utilitarianism is that it attempts to resolve moral issues on the basis of a single criterion. Pluralism is more complex but no less rational. One needs to order different virtues in a hierarchy in order to help one to choose in the case of a conflict.”
― Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good

“Be intent on the action,
not on the fruits of action.2”
― Gurcharan Das, The Difficulty of Being Good

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht