Mathieu > Mathieu's Quotes

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“A friend to all is a friend to none.”
― Aristotle

“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.”
― John Maynard Keynes

“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“There is truth in wine and children”
― Plato, Symposium / Phaedrus

“if possible, build your expertise before you build your network, and build your network before you build your company.”
― Rand Fishkin, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World

“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor”
― Alexis Carrel

“focus less on the impression you’re making on others and more on the impression you’re making on yourself.”
― Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

“Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become”
― Amy Cuddy

“preparation is obviously important, but at some point, you must stop preparing content and start preparing mind-set. You have to shift from what you’ll say to how you’ll say it.”
― Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

“Alcohol is a far greater killer than all opiates. You can buy alcohol on any street corner throughout the world. It gets your brain, your liver. It destroys your morals, destroys your vitality, kills the sexual potential, and you become sluggish. It was a great pity that Prohibition failed. The experiment was too radical. Instead of barring it altogether, the dispensation of alcohol should have been under prescription, or some other control. Prohibition was one of the worthiest attempts of a group to impose their will upon the rest of the people. But of course if you prohibit something you deprive people of an essential liberty; when you deny the right of choice you oppose the greatest gift in the world. People will not stand for it. Alcohol makes man mad, leads to such strange behaviourism. Yet beer and liquor ads maintain newspapers, television, some huge portion of the national and the world economy. Drinker that I am, I think essentially I am the victim of an addiction that is here in the world, revealed to all, exposed to all. It is there. We who are weak take to it and are destroyed by it, but is essentially a weakness of governments everywhere to allow this poison to circulate like a river through the bloodstream of the human race. As one of the heartiest drinkers in the world, I speak with a voice of authority.”
― Errol Flynn, My Wicked, Wicked Ways

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”
― Gore Vidal, Screening History

“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”
― Gore Vidal, Julian

“The unfed mind devours itself.”
― Gore Vidal

“Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
― Gore Vidal

“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
― Gore Vidal

“Nature tells the truth as it is; it has no euphemism”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom

“Euphemisms chosen by fear are a covenant with hypocrisy and will immediately destroy the poem and eventually destroy the poet.”
― Lenore Kandel, Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel

“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish