Rajeev Ramakrishnan > Rajeev's Quotes

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions."

(Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)”
― Albert Einstein

“എല്ലാ മതങ്ങളും തുടങ്ങിയിട്ടുള്ളത് ഏതെങ്കിലുമൊരു ഭൂപ്രദേശത്തിലെ ഒരു ജനതയുടെ താത്കാലികമായ ജീവിത പ്രശ്നങ്ങളോടുള്ള ആത്മീയ പ്രതികരണമായിട്ടാണ് അത് കൊണ്ട് എല്ലാ മതങ്ങള്‍ക്കും ജന്മനാ ഒരു എത്തനിക്ക് സ്വഭാവം ഉണ്ട്”
― Anand

“പുരികങ്ങളുടെയും കണ്ണുകളുടെയും ചുവന്ന പാതയിലെ സായാഹ്നയാത്രകളുടെയും അച്ഛാ, ഇലകൾ തുന്നിച്ചേർത്ത ഈ കൂടുവിട്ട് ഞാൻ പുറത്തേയ്ക്കു പോവുകയാണ്. യാത്ര.”
― O.V. Vijayan, ഖസാക്കിന്റെ ഇതിഹാസം | Khasakkinte Ithihasam | The Legends of Khasak

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”
― Denis Diderot

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“o love is to battle, if two kiss
the world changes, desires take flesh
thoughts take flesh, wings sprout
on the backs of the slave, the world is real
and tangible, wine is wine, bread
regains its savor, water is water,
to love is to battle, to open doors,
to cease to be a ghost with a number
forever in chains, forever condemned
by a faceless master;
the world changes
if two look at each other and see

Piedra de Sol (The Sun Stone), translated by Eliot Weinberger”
― Octavio Paz

“Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads, a woman who feels too much, a woman who writes...
Don’t fall in love with an educated, magical, delusional, crazy woman. Don’t fall in love with a woman who thinks, who knows what she knows and also knows how to fly; a woman sure of herself.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who laughs or cries making love, knows how to turn her spirit into flesh; let alone one that loves poetry (these are the most dangerous), or spends half an hour contemplating a painting and isn't able to live without music.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is interested in politics and is rebellious and feel a huge horror from injustice. One who does not like to watch television at all. Or a woman who is beautiful no matter the features of her face or her body.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is intense, entertaining, lucid and irreverent. Don’t wish to fall in love with a woman like that. Because when you fall in love with a woman like that, whether she stays with you or not, whether she loves you or not, from a woman like that, you never come back.”
― Martha Rivera-Garrido

“A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”
― Karl Marx

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.

[These words are also inscribed upon his grave]”
― Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
― N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society