Brigitta > Brigitta's Quotes

“All language is but a poor translation.”
― Franz Kafka

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I am free and that is why I am lost.”
― Franz Kafka

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Dear Milena,
I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.”
― Will Rogers

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
― Theodore Kaczynski

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
― Joseph Stalin

“None of them really wanted to listen to someone else’s story anyway; they only wanted to tell their own.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Reality continues to ruin my life.”
― Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense",”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

“The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.”
― Albert Camus

“The American people are free to do exactly what they are told.”
― Ward Churchill

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”
― Karl Marx

“We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.”
― Theodore J. Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future

“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“Most people do not have a problem with you thinking for yourself, as long as your conclusions are the same as or at least compatible with their beliefs.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The more men are freed from privation; the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers, and journals there are; the more means there will be of diffusing inconsistent lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and consequently miserable will men become, which indeed is what we see actually taking place.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War