kavreb > kavreb's Quotes

“Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more; wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking. By walking one makes the road, and upon glancing behind one sees the path that never will be trod again. Wanderer, there is no road-- Only wakes upon the sea.

Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar.”
― Antonio Machado, Campos de Castilla

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Ежели человек, произведший в свою пользу отчуждение на сумму в несколько миллионов рублей, сделается впоследствии даже меценатом и построит мраморный палаццо, в котором сосредоточит все чудеса науки и искусства, то его все-таки нельзя назвать искусным общественным деятелем, а следует назвать только искусным мошенником.”
― Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, История одного города

“Идиоты вообще очень опасны, и даже не потому, что они непременно злы (в идиоте злость или доброта - совершенно безразличные качества), а потому, что они чужды всяким соображениям и всегда идут напролом, как будто дорога, на которой они очутились, принадлежит исключительно им одним. Издали может показаться, что это люди хотя и суровых, но крепко сложившихся убеждений, которые сознательно стремятся к твердо намеченной уели. Однако ж это оптический обман, которым отнюдь не следует увлекаться. Это просто со всех сторон наглухо закупоренные существа, которые ломят вперед, потому что не в состоянии сознать себя в связи с каким бы то ни было порядком явлений...
Обыкновенно противу идиотов принимаются известные меры, чтобы они, в неразумной стремительности, не все опрокидывали, что встречается им на пути. Но меры эти почти всегда касаются только простых идиотов; когда же придатком к идиотству является властность, то дело ограждения общества значительно усложняется. В этом случае грозящая опасность увеличивается всею суммою неприкрытости, в жертву которой, в известные исторические моменты, кажется отданною жизнь... Там, где простой идиот расшибает себе голову или наскакивает на рожон, идиот властный раздробляет пополам все- возможные рожны и совершает свои, так сказать, бессознательные злодеяния вполне беспрепятственно. Даже в самой бесплодности или очевидном вреде этих злодеяний он не почерпает никаких для себя поучений. Ему нет дела ни до каких результатов, потому что результаты эти выясняются не на нем (он слишком окаменел, чтобы на нем могло что-нибудь отражаться), а на чем-то ином, с чем у него не существует никакой органической связи.”
― Михаил Салтыков-Щедрин, История одного города

“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing”
― John Antal, 7 Leadership Lessons of D-Day: Lessons from the Longest Day—June 6, 1944

“Whatever your brilliance, your pessimism, your thoughts about existence, the answer is always... Life. It's not a dialectical idea, it's a lived contradiction. Gramsci said, 'We have to be pessimists in our thinking and optimists in our actions.”
― Agnes Varda, Agnes Varda: Interviews

“What makes hope such an intense pleasure is the fact that the future, which we dispose of to our liking, appears to us at the same time under a multitude of forms, equally attractive and equally possible. Even if the most coveted of these becomes realized, it will be necessary to give up the others, and we shall have lost a great deal.

The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.”
― Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”
― Henry Ford

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. ”
― William James

“To change one’s life:
1. Start immediately.
2. Do it flamboyantly.
3. No exceptions.”
― William James

“If you can change your mind, you can change your life.”
― William James

“The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

“And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”
― Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

“Ni dieu ni maître!

(Neither God nor master)

[Feminist and labour slogan translated to 'No gods, no masters']”
― Louis-Auguste Blanqui

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“It's no accident that most ads are pitched to people in their 20s and 30s. Not only are they so much cuter than their elders...but they are less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parents' stuff. Once you go through that, you can never look at *your* stuff in the same way. You start to look at your stuff a little postmortemistically. If you've lived more than two decades as an adult consumer, you probably have quite the accumulation, even if you're not a hoarder...I'm not saying I never buy stuff, because I absolutely do. Maybe I'm less naive about the joys of accumulation.”
― Roz Chast, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?

“He was some kind of a man... What does it matter what you say about people?"
-- Marlene Dietrich's character in Touch Of Evil, originally written by Whit Masterson as Badge Of Evil. One of the best closing sequences you'll see in classical Hollywood”
― Whit Masterson