AQ > AQ's Quotes

“For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic)”
― Kant

“From the crooked timber of humanity, a straight board cannot be hewn.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Enlightenment is the emancipation of man from a state of self-imposed tutelage... of incapacity to use his own intelligence without external guidance. Such a state of tutelage I call 'self-imposed' if it is due, not to lack of intelligence, but to lack of courage or determination to use one's own intelligence without the help of a leader. Sapere aude! Dare to use your own intelligence! This is the battle-cry of the Enlightenment.”
― Immanuel Kant

“My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others! ”
― Marquis de Sade

“In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.”
― Marquis de Sade

“It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others.”
― D.A.F. Marquis de Sade

“Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.”
― Marquis de Sade, Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

“Can we become other than what we are?”
― Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

“Before you were born, you were nothing more than an indistinguishable lump of unformed matter. After death, you simply will return to that nebulous state. You are going to become the raw material out of which new beings will be fashioned. Will there be pain in this natural process? No! Pleasure? No! Now, is there anything frightening in this? Certainly not! And yet, people sacrifice pleasure on earth in the hope that pain will be avoided in an after-life. The fools don't realize that, after death, pain and pleasure cannot exist: there is only the sensationless state of cosmic anonymity: therefore, the rule of life should be ... to enjoy oneself!”
― Marquis de Sade

“I am a libertine, but I am not a criminal nor a murderer, and since I am compelled to set my apology alongside my vindication, I shall therefore say that it might well be possible that those who condemn me as unjustly as I have been might themselves be unable to offset the infamies by good works as clearly established as those I can contrast to my errors. And yet you who today tyrannize me so cruelly, you do not believe it either: your vengeance has beguiled your mind, you have proceeded blindly to tyrannize, but your heart knows mine, it judges it more fairly, and it knows full well it is innocent.”
― Marqués de Sade, Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue

“Self-interest lies behind all that men do, forming the important motive for all their actions; this rule has never deceived me”
― Marquis de Sade

“All my sensations have been snuffed out. I no longer have any taste for anything; there is nothing I like. It was foolish to feel so much longing for the world. It now seems dismal and boring. Sometimes I feel inclined to become a Trappist monk, and it is possible that one fine day I will disappear without anyone's knowing what has become of me. I had never felt so misanthropic as I have since being amongst people again, and if to them I seem like a foreigner, they can be sure that they produce the same effect on me.”
― Marquis de Sade

“It is in the lawful power of no human being to force me to believe or accept what he says or thinks; and however little regard I have for these human reveries, however much I flout them, there is no person on earth who can pretend to the right to censure or punish me therefor. Into what chasm of errors or foolishness would we not tumble were all men blindly to adhere to what it suited some other men to establish! And through what incredible injustice will you call moral that which emanates from you; immoral that which I uphold? To what arbitration shall we apply in order to find out upon which side right and reason lie?”
― Marquis de Sade, Juliette

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde

“No good deed goes unpunished.”
― Oscar Wilde

“There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose

“They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Everything popular is wrong.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
― René Descartes

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna

“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.”
― Terence McKenna

“You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”
― Terence McKenna