Stuart Piper > Stuart's Quotes

“I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.”
― Noam Chomsky

“I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.”
― Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“be a person with knowledge not just opinions”
― Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“But language," said Professor Lovell, "is not like a commercial good, like tea or silks, to be bought and paid for. Language is an infinite resource.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“After all, I absorb the world around me, and that’s changing all the time. Just as all the water that was in my body last time we met has now been replaced with new water, the things that make up me have changed too.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“What I'm really scared of is believing the words society makes me speak are my own.”
― Sayaka Murata, Earthlings

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
― William Gibson

“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
― Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents

“Shakespeare can show us what we are like at moments when we cannot see ourselves.”
― Peter Saccio

“When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.”
― Bertrand Russell

“There are more valuable things in life than safety and comfort. Learn. You owe it to yourself.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Witch

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“To be accused of speaking too loudly about one injustice but not others by someone who doesn’t care about any of them is to be told, simply, to keep quiet.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“You will not be good teachers if you focus only on what you do and not upon who you are.”
― Rudolf Steiner

“There is no more horrible crime against liberty than to compel men to kill each other when their conscience tells them to live in peace.”
― Bertrand Russell, Complete Collection of Bertrand Russell (Annotated): Works Include The Problems of Philosophy, The Analysis of Mind, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, Political Ideals, & More

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”
― Noam Chomsky

“We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.”
― Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

“Becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species.”
― Chris Hedges

“Deep rivers run quiet.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”
― William James

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
― William James

“Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.”
― William James, The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition

“If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals . . . We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us -- create who we are. It is we who created the system. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009)”
― Haruki Murakami