Jeff > Jeff's Quotes

“It is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have someone roasted alive on their account.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. … That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
― Anthony de Mello

“It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling...”
― V.S. Naipaul, Magic Seeds

“Truth cannot be constructed. To live in ideology is, as Havel so eloquently reminds us, inevitably to live in a lie. Truth can only be revealed. We cannot be creators, only receptors.”
― James W. Sire

“All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.”
― Clive James

“Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked.

Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.”
― George Packer

“Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.”
― John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

“Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.”
― Terence McKenna

“In 1959, Vice-President Nixon, speaking to members of California’s Commonwealth Club, was asked if he’d like to see the parties undergo an ideological realignment—the sort that has since taken place—and he replied, “I think it would be a great tragedy . . . if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line.” He continued, “I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion.” Therefore, “when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people.”
― Jeffrey Frank

“«…you’re too old not to have had, how shall I say, certain experiences. You’ve had bad internet dates. You’ve had people be creeps to you. You’ve seen what you’ve seen; you’ve felt what you’ve felt. Ideology is for people who don’t trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world»

«I feel like I am going mad»

«Madness is actually quite rare in individuals. It’s groups of people who go mad. Countries, cults ... religions»”
― Douglas Coupland

“We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.”
― John Champlin Gardner Jr., On Becoming a Novelist

“I was a little excited but mostly blorft. "Blorft" is an adjective I just made up that means 'Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.' I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
― Mark Twain

“You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.”
― Paul McCartney

“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed.
For after all, he was only human. He wasn't a dog.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.”
― Mark Twain

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.”
― Alice Walker

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”
― Anatole France

“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

“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
― James Herriot , All Creatures Great and Small

“Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.”
― Colette

“You think those dogs will not be in heaven! I tell you they will be there long before any of us.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Petting, scratching, and cuddling a dog could be as soothing to the mind and heart as deep meditation and almost as good for the soul as prayer.”
― Dean Koontz, False Memory

“Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality

“To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, the whole world would be vegetarian.”
― Linda McCartney, Linda's Kitchen: Simple and Inspiring Recipes for Meals Without Meat