Brok3n > Brok3n's Quotes

“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“Come now and let us go and risk our lives unnecessarily. For if they have got any value at all it is this that they gave got none. Frei lebt wer sterben kann.”
― Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
― Steve Jobs

“This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“That's a rhetorical question, and trying to answer rhetorical questions instead of being cowed by them is a good habit to cultivate.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

“Philosophers' Syndrome: mistaking a failure of the imagination for an insight into necessity.”
― Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained

“Άριστος τρόπος τοῦ ἀμύνεσθαι τὸ μὴ ἐξομοιοῦσθαι”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Love is a serious mental disease.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“You don't get to advertise all the good that your religion does without first scrupulously subtracting all the harm it does and considering seriously the question of whether some other religion, or no religion at all, does better.”
― Daniel Dennett

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“A friend to all is a friend to none.”
― Aristotle

“A true story is never quite so true as an invented one.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.”
― Peter De Vries

“While I had often said that I wanted to die in bed, what I really meant was that in my old age I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon

“Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“ The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
― Kent M. Keith, The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council

“The value today of philosophy to physics seems to me to be something like the value of early nation-states to their peoples. It is only a small exaggeration to say that, until the introduction of the post office, the chief service of nation-states was to protect their peoples from other nation-states. The insights of philosophers have occasionally benefited physicists, but generally in a negative fashion—by protecting them from the preconceptions of other philosophers.”
― Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature

“Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”
― Mark Twain

“There are many statues of men slaying lions, but if only the lions were sculptors there might be quite a different set of statues.”
― Aesop

“When you say anything controversial, you are likely to be blamed not so much for what you have said as for what people think that someone who has said what you said would also say.”
― Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist's Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kung Fu Monkey -- Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]”
― John Rogers

“I am disappointed that you have replaced some good, old-fashioned and humorous cartoons with distasteful ones. For example, "The Far Side" by Gary Larson is not funny, just lacking in good taste. "Calvin and Hobbes" by Watterson could be more acceptable if made less offensive (at times). "Doonesbury" and "Bloom County," I suppose, reflect our times. Far better for our newspaper to be working to change what is so unacceptable to us all in these times. Many other cartoons are funny, likable and reflective of the real and good in our country.
-- Mary Kohler, Yonkers (letter published in the Herald Statesman, Yonkers NY, 11/12/86)
Quoted in /The Bloom County Library/”
― Berkeley Breathed, The Bloom County Library, Vol. 1: 1980-1982

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.”
― Louise Antoine

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
― Gustav Flaubert

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“to hell with anything unrefined has always been my motto”
― Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel

“An atheist is a person who believes that the murder of a single little girl—even once in a million years—casts doubt upon the idea of a benevolent God.”
― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation