Gabriel Lopes > Gabriel's Quotes

“people sometimes mistake their own shortcomings for those of society and want to fix the Cities because they don’t know how to fix themselves.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue hapiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain".

"I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.”
― Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

“The work of each individual contributes to a totality, and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives—past and present and to come—forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole? Daneel, keep your mind fixed firmly on the tapestry and do not let the trailing off of a single thread affect you.”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“Changelessness is decay."
"A paradox. There is no decay without a change for the worse."
"Changelessness is a change for the worse”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does not entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists.”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“Work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes undying part of a totality. That totality is human life. Past and present and to come forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens and thousands of years. And has been growing more elaborate, and on the whole more beautiful.”
― Isaac Asimov, Robots and Empire

“The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority.”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel

“Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary, the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it to an ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death — which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors.”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel

“Words are a medium that reduces reality to abstraction for transmission to our reason, and in their power to corrode reality inevitably lurks the danger that the words themselves will be corroded too.”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel

“Mesmo imaginada, uma dor continua a ser uma dor: está lá quando nos deitamos à noite, está lá antes do pequeno-almoço.”
― João Tordo, O Bom Inverno

“Queria estar em toda a parte ao mesmo tempo e tinha inveja de toda a gente que estava noutro lugar qualquer. Um bocado como os velhos que têm saudades da ditadura só porque na altura ainda eram novos. Fui um hedonista, e o hedonismo paga-se caro.”
― João Tordo, O Bom Inverno

“If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Se antes de cada acto nosso nos puséssemos a prever todas as consequências dele, a pensar nelas a sério, primeiro as imediatas, depois as prováveis, depois as possíveis, depois as imagináveis, não chegaríamos sequer a mover-nos de onde o primeiro pensamento nos tivesse feito parar.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Há esperanças que é loucura ter. Pois eu digo-te que se não fossem essas já eu teria desistido da vida.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Without a future, the present serves no purpose,”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“If shame still has any meaning in this hell we're expected to live...it is thanks to that person who had the courage to go and kill,... Agreed, but shame won't fill our plates,... You're right in what you say, there have always been those who have filled their bellies because they had no sense of shame.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations