psychia > psychia's Quotes

“I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good. Touched by a masterpiece, a person begins to hear in himself that same call of truth which prompted the artist to his creative act. When a link is established between the work and its beholder, the latter experiences a sublime, purging trauma. Within that aura which unites masterpieces and audience, the best sides of our souls are made known, and we long for them to be freed. In those moments we recognize and discover ourselves, the unfathomable depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It

“The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”
― Thomas Szasz

“The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. ”
― Thomas Szasz

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. ”
― Thomas Szasz

“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“For whence did Dante get the material for his hell, if not from this actual world of ours? And indeed he made a downright hell of it.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

“But at the bottom, the immanent philosopher sees in the entire universe only the deepest longing for absolute annihilation, and it is as if he clearly hears the call that permeates all spheres of heaven: Redemption! Redemption! Death to our life! and the comforting answer: you will all find annihilation and be redeemed!”
― Philipp Mainländer, Die Philosophie der Erlösung

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays cosily tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“One has never said better how much "humanism", "normality", "quality of life" were nothing but the vicissitudes of profitability.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“Creatures of a day, what is any one? What is he not? Man is but a dream of a shadow. Yet when there comes as a gift of heaven a gleam of sunshine, there rest upon men a radiant light and, aye, a gentle life.”
― Pindar, Odes for Victorious Athletes

“Custom is the lord of everything,
of mortals and immortals king.
High violence it justifies,
with hand uplifted plundering.”
― Pindar

“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”
― Simonides

“Any man is good when life treats him well, and bad when it treats him badly.”
― Simonides

“We are all debts owed to death.”
― Simonides

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.”
― Simonides

“Dancing is silent poetry.”
― Simonides

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“What hath night to do with sleep?”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“To be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost