PH > PH's Quotes

“The unfed mind devours itself.”
― Gore Vidal

“Men who fear demons see demons everywhere.”
― Brom, The Child Thief

“I hope to arrive to my death, late, in love, and a little drunk.”
― Atticus c

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”
― Albert Einstein

“The paradise of the rich is made out of the hell of the poor.”
― Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs

“Education is a system of imposed ignorance.”
― Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

“I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!”
― Charles M. Schulz

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

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
― Samuel Beckett

“In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death”
― Gore Vidal, Creation

“To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
― Allen Saunders

“‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire

“The strength of a belief has no relationship to its veracity”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Spinoza Problem

“Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.”
― Chris Hedges

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I don't belong to any side. What's more, I think flags are nothing but painted rags that represent rancid emotions. Just seeing someone wrapped up in one of them, spewing out hymns, badges and speeches, gives me the runs. I've always thought that anyone who needs to join a herd so badly must be a bit of a sheep himself”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Prisoner of Heaven

“The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself.”
― Richard Francis Burton, The Book of a Thousand Nights and One Night: 17 Volumes, Complete

“Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. He is wrong; man is a thinking erratum. Each period in life is a new edition that corrects the preceding one and that in turn will be corrected by the next, until publication of the definitive edition, which the publisher donates to the worms.”
― Machado de Assis, Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas

“In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.”
― Sydney J. Harris

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.”
― William Blake

“I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
― James Baldwin

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”
― Philip Roth

“A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them...A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.”
― Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire