Iman Grainca > Iman's Quotes

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“Then why do you want to know?"

"Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?”
― Umberto Eco, Baudolino

“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”" -”
― Umberto Eco

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
― Bertrand Russell

“In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
― Bertrand Russell

“It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.”
― Bertrand Russell

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”
― Bertrand Russell

“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
― Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.”
― Spinoza

“The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.”
― Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics/Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect/Selected Letters

“The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men...”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”
― Spinoza

“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“No reason compels me to maintain that the body does not die unless it is changed into a corpse. And, indeed, experience seems to urge a different conclusion. Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that I should hardly have said he was the same man.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

“Don’t cry and don’t rage. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

“What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.”
― Jean Jacques Rousseau

“Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it. ”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau