Chia Shin > Chia's Quotes

“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”
― Abraham Lincoln

“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!”
― Larry Niven

“Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“In times of extremes, extremists win. Their ideology becomes a religion, anyone who doesn't puppet their views is seen as an apostate, a heretic or a traitor, and moderates in the middle are annihilated. Fiction writers are particularly suspect because they write about human beings, and people are morally ambiguous. The aim of ideology is to eliminate ambiguity.”
― Margaret Atwood

“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”
― Milton Friedman

“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it.”
― Braveheart

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”
― Woodrow Wilson

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens.”
― Alphonse de Lamartine

“Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain... The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself--ultimate cost for perfect value”
― Robert Heinlein

“After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.”
― Wallace Stevens

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas

“Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.”
― Thomas Aquinas

“How is it they live in such harmony, the billions of stars, when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds?”
― Thomas Aquinas

“Wonder is the desire of knowledge.”
― Thomas Aquinas

“The measure of a man is what he does with power.”
― Plato

“And blood-black nothingness began to spin. A system of cells interlinked, within cells interlinked, within cells interlinked within one stem. And dreadfully distinct against the dark, a tall white fountain played.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein