Over the years, I’ve collected a number of quotes. Perhaps you will enjoy them as well. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
”Would that equanimity grew as lushly as bitterness.”
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
-- Aldous Huxley
"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimization."
“We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do.”
-- Auberon Herbert
“Good does not always triumph over Evil; and Evil does not always triumph over Good. But the active always triumph over the passive.”
-- The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, 1974
“But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?”
―Walter E. Williams,All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View
”The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order and in the assertion that, without Authority there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that anarchy can be instituted by a violent revolution.
But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.”
— Leo Tolstoy
“It’s been easier to convince people to hand over half their income, their children to war, and their freedoms in perpetuity – than to engage them in seriously considering how roads might function in the absence of taxation.”
”Fear not hell, for if it exists, you shall find yourself in good company.”
"The proper way to approach a prostitute is to adapt the attitude of a theatergoer, sitting back and suspending disbelief for the duration of the show. The improper way is to doltishly insist that the play is just a bunch of people putting on charades because you have paid the price of the ticket, or, conversely, to believe utterly in what you are watching."
— Nguyễn Thanh Việt
"Imagine that someone proposed that the key to establishing social justice and restraining corporate greed was to establish a very large corporation, much larger than any corporation hitherto known—one with revenues in the trillions of dollars.
A corporation that held a monopoly on some extremely important market within our society.
And used its monopoly in that market to extend its control into other markets.
And hired men with guns to force customers to buy its product at whatever price it chose.
And periodically bombed the employees and customers of corporations in other countries.
By what theory would we predict that this corporation, above all others, could be trusted to serve our interests and to protect us both from criminals and from all the other corporations?
If someone proposed to establish a corporation like this, would your trepidation be assuaged the moment you learned that every adult would be issued one share of stock in this corporation, entitling them to vote for members of the board of directors?
If it would not, is the governmental system really so different from that scenario as to explain why we may trust a national government to selflessly serve and protect the rest of society?"
Michael Huemer, "The Problem Of Authority", Cato Unbound
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“The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”
-- Sophie Scholl
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"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
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"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
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"The State is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: 'I, the State, am the People.' Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth."
— Nietzsche
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"Think nothing profitable to you which compels you to break a promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any person, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains about it."
-- Marcus Aurelius
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"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
-- Frederic Bastiat, The Law
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A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
--Robert A. Heinlein
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"Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own."
-- Marcus Aurelius
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"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"
-- Lord Byron
Third Stanza
The Destruction of Sennacherib
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"When you put someone on a pedastal, they have no choice but to look down on you"
-- Unknown
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"What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask."
--Sam Keen
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Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
-- Rosa Luxemburg
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Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.
-- Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks
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“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
— Margaret Thatcher
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"Two elements must therefore be rooted out once for all, - the fear of future suffering, and the recollection of past suffering; since the latter no longer concerns me, and the former concerns me not yet."
-- Letter 78, Letters from a Stoic, Seneca
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Capital goes where it's welcome and stays where it's well treated.
--Walter B. Wriston
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Let us hope our weapons are never needed, but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns, and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.
-- Edward Abbey, 1979
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"'Tis love, 'tis love," said the Duchess, "that makes the world go round."
"Somebody said," whispered Alice,"that it's done by everybody minding their own business."
"Ah well," replied the Duchess, "it means much the same thing."
-- Lewis Carroll
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Weird how people are so quick to say they'd die for you but so slow to make breakfast.
-- Honest Toddler
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"Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants."
-- Karl Lagerfield
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As man now is, God once was:
As God now is, man may be[come].
-- Lorenzo Snow (1840)
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"Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process."
-- E.B. White
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“The reason you haven’t felt it is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons.”
-- Don Draper, Madmen
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Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
--Hunter S. Thompson
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"Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want."
-- Anna Lappe
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"Do not talk about giftedness, inborn talents! One can name great men of all kinds who were very little gifted. They acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we put it), through qualities the lack of which no one who knew what they were would boast of: they all possessed that seriousness of the efficient workman which first learns to construct the parts properly before it ventures to fashion a great whole; they allowed themselves time for it, because they took more pleasure in making the little, secondary things well than in the effect of a dazzling whole."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”
-- T.E. Lawrence
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"Not failure, Utahraptor! Approximations of success!..Failure is just success rounded down, my friend!"
-- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics
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"Brother Cavil: In all your travels, have you ever seen a star go supernova?
Ellen Tigh: No.
Brother Cavil: No? Well, I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air.
Ellen Tigh: The five of us designed you to be as human as possible.
Brother Cavil: I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body!"
-- Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactica
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"Events beyond our control have no power to disgrace us. Only our own decisions and the actions we freely choose to perform can bring us disgrace or honor. "
-- William O. Stephens, The Rebirth of Stoicism
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"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible."
-- Frank Herbert
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'Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.
-- Joseph Sobran
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"Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, 'If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, "A faster horse!"' People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page."
-- Steve Jobs
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"I don't consider myself bald, I'm just taller than my hair."
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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"Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells."
-- Marcus Aurelius
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"Every day, think as you wake up: today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it."
-- Dalai Lama
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"The correct scientific answer to the question "Does cryonics work?" is: "The clinical trials are in progress. Come back in a century and we'll give you a reliable answer." The relevant question for those of us who don't expect to live that long is: "Would I rather be in the control group, or the experimental group?" We are forced by circumstances to answer that question without the benefit of knowing the results of the clinical trials."
-- Ralph Merkle
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"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
-- H.L. Mencken
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"Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws."
-- S.J. Perelman
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"Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."
-- Buddha
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"You already have everything you need to be content, right here and right now.
Do you have eyes that see? You have the ability to appreciate the beauty of the sky, of greenery, of people’s faces, of water.
Do you have ears that hear? You have the ability to appreciate music, the sound of rainfall, the laughter of friends.
You have the ability to feel rough denim, cool breezes, grass on bare feet…to smell fresh-cut grass, flowers, coffee..to taste a plum, a chili pepper, chocolate.
This is a miracle, and we take it for granted."
-- Leo Babauta
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"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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"When you’ve created something of real value, you don’t need to do any marketing, spend any money on advertising, or push people to subscribe.
People will find you, and they’ll think you’re so great they want to tell their friends about it. Your readers will become your marketers. Your value will become your advertising budget."
-- Leo Babauta
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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
--Aristotle
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“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
-- Socrates
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"Try to treat everyone as kindly and with as much forbearance as you would if you knew they were suffering from a terminal disease - because, you know, they are."
-- Sean Hastings
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"What to do if you find yourself trapped beneath a large boulder with no means of escape: Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won’t be troubling you much longer."
-- Douglas Adams
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"You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter."
-- Nicholas Sparks
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"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
-- H.L. Mencken
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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis, God In The Dock
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"Most people spend their time trying to find someone to sleep with, instead of finding someone worth waking up to."
-- Tweetgram