Benjamin > Benjamin's Quotes

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#1

“To change one’s life:
1. Start immediately.
2. Do it flamboyantly.
3. No exceptions.”
― William James

tags: change

457 likes

#2

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
― William James

tags: actions, attributed, change

597 likes

#3

“Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”
― William James

199 likes

#4

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”
― William James

389 likes

#5

“If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.”
― William James

tags: faith, religion

82 likes

#6

“There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.”
― William James

108 likes

#7

“We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the
meaning of it all.”
― William James

118 likes

#8

“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word 'success' - is our national disease.
”
― William James

61 likes

#9

“The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

tags: life-and-living, mankind

177 likes

#10

“No man is an island, entire of itself.”
― John Donne, No man is an island – A selection from the prose

tags: connectedness, island, isolation, mankind

86 likes

#11

“Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered.”
― W. H. Auden

tags: geology, mankind

16 likes

#12

“Anything devised by man has bureaucracy, corrpution and error hardwired at inception.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

19 likes

#13

“Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

tags: action, body, civilization, continuance, mankind, materialism, mind, philosophy, rationality, reason

20 likes

#14

“(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute”
― Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix

tags: absolutes, freedom, futility, mankind

17 likes

#15

“The atmosphere was electrified by the orgasm with which the strong and secure are overcome when confronted with the visible frailty of someone worse off than themselves.”
― Paul Leppin, Blaugast: A Novel of Decline

tags: cynicism, humanity, mankind

5 likes

#16

“What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

tags: awareness, classic-quotes, essence, existence, humanity, mankind, self-awareness, self-definition

66 likes

#17

“Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than war.”
― Homer

tags: mankind, priority, war, wisdom

30 likes

#18

“It is a great evil to look upon mankind with too clear vision. You seem to be living among wild beasts, and you become a wild beast yourself. ("“The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah”)”
― William Beckford, The Episodes of Vathek

tags: base, beast, beastial, carnal, clarity, honesty, mankind

25 likes

#19

“If you seek for supreme predator, go find God.
He hunts the prime killer of mankind, the Satan.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

tags: chain, devil, food, god, hunter, life, mankind, predator, pyramid, supreme, truth

7 likes

#20

“How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like street lamps.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet

tags: mankind

8 likes

#21

“If the gods do decide to wipe us out, is it such a bad thing? Maybe we've earned a little annihilation.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms

7 likes

#22

“Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

tags: bitterness, dangerous, dishonesty, feuds, force, honesty, lies, lying, man, mankind, peace, pressure, repression, resistance, rivalry, run, secrecy, suppression, tension, truth, war

35 likes

#23

“And the great question for mankind is what is to be loved or hated next, whenever and old love or fear has lost its hold.”
― Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man

tags: fear, great-questions, love, mankind

6 likes

#24

“[Men] prefer the foolish belief and the passions of the earth [to the enlightenment of their souls]. They believe the absurd and shrink from the truth."

"No, they do not. They are afraid, that is all. And they must remain on earth until they come to the way of leaving it."

"And how do they leave? How is the ascent made? Must one learn virtue?"

Here she laughs. "You have read too much, and learned too little. Virtue is a road, not a destination. Man cannot be virtuous. Understanding is the goal. When that is achieved, the soul can take wing.”
― Iain Pears, The Dream of Scipio

tags: beliefs, enlightenment, fear, mankind, philosophy, soul, truth, understanding, virtue

8 likes

#25

“He blinked at the sun and dreamt that perhaps he might snare it and spare it as it went down to its resting place amidst the distant hills.”
― H.G. Wells, The World Set Free

tags: mankind

8 likes

#26

“There is only one class of men, the privileged class.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

tags: class, mankind, privilege

15 likes

#27

“Incurable diseases will eventually
force mankind to justify
disruptive nanotech and genetic engineering.”
― Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident], Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

tags: disease, disruptive, engineering, force, genetic, incurable, justification, mankind, nanotechnology

6 likes

#28

“books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in human conversation.”
― Will Schwalbe, The End of Your Life Book Club

tags: books, mankind

17 likes

#29

“Malicious men may die, but malice never.”
― Molière, Tartuffe

tags: malice, mankind

36 likes

#30

“Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes. Man's first step towards change would be thinking, counter-arguing, re-thinking, twisting, straightening, perfecting, then believing every original idea he intends to make public before making it public. There is always an angle from which an absolute truth may appear askew just as there is always a personal emotion, or a personal agenda, which alienates the ultimate good of mankind.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

tags: crime, deceit, gossip, history, honesty, humanity, libel, lies, selfishness, slander, truth

50 likes

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