Aria Gia > Aria's Quotes

“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.”
― Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
― E.F. Schumacher

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
― Albert Einstein

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”
― Albert Einstein

“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.”
― Albert Einstein

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
― Albert Einstein

“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”
― Albert Einstein

“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.”
― Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza: The Letters

“I'm so disturbed when my women students behave as though they can only read women, or black students behave as though they can only read blacks, or white students behave as though they can only identify with a white writer.”
― Bell Hooks

“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.”
― Bell Hooks

“What had begun as a movement to free all black people from racist oppression became a movement with its primary goal the establishment of black male patriarchy.”
― Bell Hooks

“When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.”
― bell hooks

“Why is it that many contemporary male thinkers, especially men of color, repudiate the imperialist legacy of Columbus but affirm dimensions of that legacy by their refusal to repudiate patriarchy?”
― Bell Hooks

“Yesterday I was thinking about the whole idea of genius and creative people, and the notion that if you create some magical art, somehow that exempts you from having to pay attention to the small things.”
― Bell Hooks

“Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women . . . . they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.”
― bell hooks

“I believe that this nation can only heal from the wounds of racism if we all begin to love blackness. And by that I don't mean that we love only that which is best within us, but that we're also able to love that which is faltering, which is wounded, which is contradictory, incomplete.”
― Bell Hooks

“I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.”
― Bell Hooks

“I feel enormously blessed to be a successful black woman writer in this culture, but I have found my small fame, such as it is, to be very isolating... because I think that especially for black women, the more we rise from the bottom, the more we move and journey, the more we are the targets of the most brutal and vicious attacks.”
― Bell Hooks

“I began writing a book on love because I felt that the United States is moving away from love.”
― Bell Hooks

“Being oppressed means the absence of choices”
― bell hooks

“For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don't have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community.”
― Bell Hooks

“I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear, and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic, tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism. ”
― bell hooks