Marie-Luise Smith > Marie-Luise's Quotes

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#1

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

tags: humor, thinking

1388 likes

#2

“Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

tags: atheism, belief, blind, blind-faith, blindness, christian-faith, christian-miracle, critical-thinking, critical-thought, death-of-reason, doubt, doubt-is-sin, eternity, existence, foundation-of-belief, human-nature, intoxication, meaning, meaning-of-life, metaphor, miracle, myth, nature, origin, philosophy, purpose, purpose-of-life, reason, reflection, religious-faith, resurrection, resurrection-of-jesus, sin, sinful, thinking, thoughts, wasted-life

1097 likes

#3

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”
― Albert Einstein

tags: god, rational, religion, thinking

570 likes

#4

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”
― Carl Sagan

321 likes

#5

“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

tags: egocentrism, feeling, suffering, thinking, thought, truth

330 likes

#6

“No brain at all, some of them [people], only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think.”
― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

tags: brain, eeyore, humor, thinking, thoughts, winnie-the-pooh

260 likes

#7

“As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.”
― Byron Katie, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

tags: suffering, thinking, victim

257 likes

#8

“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."

(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)”
― David McCullough

tags: clarity, creative-process, precision, thinking, thought, writing

271 likes

#9

“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”
― Baruch De Spinoza, Ethics

tags: adoration, astonishment, authority, causation, cause, foolish, fools, gods, heresy, heretical, ignorance, impious, interpret, knowledge, miracles, mob, nature, philosopher, piety, preservation, stare, the-gods, thinking, truth, understanding, wonder

211 likes

#10

“When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.”
― Horace Walpole

tags: clarity, decision, decisions, gardening, thinking, thought

134 likes

#11

“...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

tags: listening, thinking

125 likes

#12

“Keep in mind, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that one does not exist. You simply haven’t discovered it yet.”
― Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

240 likes

#13

“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

tags: paradox

285 likes

#14

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
― Albert Einstein

9091 likes

#15

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.”
― Stephen Hawking

tags: philosophy, science

8627 likes

#16

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.

—"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64”
― Albert Einstein

tags: 1955, curiosity, mystery

6825 likes

#17

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation

71605 likes

#18

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

tags: happiness

15047 likes

#19

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

tags: books, dan-brown, religion, science

3639 likes

#20

“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
― Albert Einstein

tags: art, cybernetics, science

1805 likes

#21

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

tags: inspirational, values

2789 likes

#22

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

tags: cosmology, delusion, knowledge, religion, science, truth, understanding

1803 likes

#23

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

tags: magic, science, technology, wonder

1753 likes

#24

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
― Carl Sagan

tags: evidence, faith, science, skepticism

1497 likes

#25

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”
― Abraham Lincoln

tags: abraham-lincoln, life, politics, religion, science

1400 likes

#26

“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan

1479 likes

#27

“Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

tags: bigotry, fiction, prejudice, science

1291 likes

#28

“God does not play dice with the universe.”
― Albert Einstein, The Born-Einstein Letters 1916-55

tags: quantum-physics, science

1045 likes

#29

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr

tags: religion, science

1043 likes