John Catron > John's Quotes

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#1

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

tags: conscience, majority, right-and-wrong, truth, wrong

1616 likes

#2

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

tags: ataraxy, be-yourself, confidence, fitting-in, individuality, misattributed-dr-seuss, those-who-matter

130513 likes

#3

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: corruption-politics, decline-of-the-west, government

16 likes

#4

“One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.”
― Khalil Gibran

2834 likes

#5

“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”
― Oscar Wilde

tags: age, discretion, secret, trust, truth, woman

1170 likes

#6

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
― Andre Gide

tags: truth

1156 likes

#7

“For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.”
― Aristotle

59 likes

#8

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

tags: life, self-actualization, unrealized-potential

2596 likes

#9

“It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

127 likes

#10

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in so far as it stands ready against the accidental and the unforeseen, and is not apt to fall.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

155 likes

#11

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

tags: inspiration, truth, wisdom

7300 likes

#12

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

tags: life, love

62460 likes

#13

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn't be socialists.”
― Friedrich Hayek

132 likes

#14

“Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others.
The same applies when you are stupid.”
― Ricky Gervais

tags: stupidity

132 likes

#15

“[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. [...] They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power—obviously they get offended—they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.”
― Yuri Bezmenov

tags: beauty, civil-rights, communism, communists, defenders, destabilization, disillusioned, disillusionment, enemies, enemy, execution, idealism, instructors, instrumental, job, kgb, knowledge, marxism, marxists, nation, offended, offense, political, politics, power, professors, prostitutes, purpose, socialism, socialist, soviet, united-states, useful-idiots, worst

70 likes

#16

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

tags: books, thought

31313 likes

#17

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”
― haruki murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

tags: inspirational, running

8535 likes

#18

“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

tags: nagasawa

4029 likes

#19

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

tags: pain

1711 likes

#20

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

tags: equanimity, future, inspirational, reason, stoic, stoicism, worry

1777 likes

#21

“When I die and go to heaven, to St. Peter, I will tell: "one more soldier reporting for duty, sir. I've served my time in hell.”
― M. Popplewell

tags: life-and-death, religious-quote

4 likes

#22

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

tags: anti-intellectualism, cult, culture, democracy, ignorance, intellectual, political, politics, united-states, willful-ignorance

2479 likes

#23

“Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

445 likes

#24

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: bene-gesserit, fear, litany-against-fear, motivational, scifi

16915 likes

#25

“If the truth shall kill them, let them die.”
― Immanuel Kant

tags: death, killing, truth

154 likes

#26

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”
― Theodore Parker, The present aspect of slavery in America and the immediate duty of the North: a speech delivered in the hall of the State house, before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Convention, on Friday night, January 29, 1858

tags: arc-of-the-universe, atheism, barack-obama, justice, martin-luther-king-jr, morality, obama-inaguration, obama-speeches, preacher, sermons, slavery, unitarianism

100 likes

#27

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

tags: lotr, war

4531 likes

#28

“In one thing you have not changed, dear friend," said Aragorn: "you still speak in riddles."
"What? In riddles?" said Gandalf. "No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

798 likes

#29

“When I was young, I forgot how to laugh in the cave of Trophonius; when I was older, I opened my eyes and beheld reality, at which I began to laugh, and since then, I have not stopped laughing. I saw that the meaning of life was to secure a livelihood, and that its goal was to attain a high position; that love’s rich dream was marriage with an heiress; that friendship’s blessing was help in financial difficulties; that wisdom was what the majority assumed it to be; that enthusiasm consisted in making a speech; that it was courage to risk the loss of ten dollars; that kindness consisted in saying, “You are welcome,” at the dinner table; that piety consisted in going to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

tags: kierkegaard, laugh, life, philosophy

146 likes