Lan Tran > Lan's Quotes

“Chỉ nên hưởng cái phần xứng đáng với tài đức của mình thôi. Nếu tài đức tầm thường mà được phú quý hoặc được nhiều người ngưỡng mộ thì sẽ mang họa vào thân.”
― Nguyễn Hiến Lê, Hồi Kí Nguyễn Hiến Lê

“Khi nghèo thì phải tận lực chiến đấu với cảnh nghèo vì phải đủ ăn thì mới giữ được sự độc lập và tư cách của mình. Nhưng khi đủ ăn rồi thì đừng nên làm giàu, phải để thì giờ làm những việc hữu ích mà không vì danh vì lợi. Giá trị của ta ở chỗ làm được nhiều việc như vậy hay không.”
― Nguyễn Hiến Lê, Hồi Kí Nguyễn Hiến Lê

“It's easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

“Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of the deepest joy in our lives.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

“If you defer investing your time and energy until you see that you need to, chances are it will already be too late.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, How Will You Measure Your Life?

“Success is achieving what one really wants.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“Maturity is the ability to relate appropriately to other realities than one’s own.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“The two-fold goal of all human striving is the avoidance of pain, and the fulfillment of happiness.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“The mastery of any subject requires that one identify himself with the particular state of consciousness appropriate to that subject.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“Society cannot but depend to a disproportionate degree on its capable few to develop and flourish.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“A human being, in order to function fully and effectively in this world, needs to develop in himself all four of these tools of maturity: 1) physical energy and bodily self-control; 2) emotional calmness and expansive feeling; 3) dynamic, persistent will power; and 4) a clear-sighted, practical intellect. Remove any one of these aspects from the equation and the equation itself becomes distorted. Each aspect depends for its perfection on the other three....These tools are best developed in sequence: bodily awareness first, then sensitivity of feeling, then will power, and last of all, intellect.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“Tôi nhận thấy rằng bất kỳ ai cũng phải tự tạo lấy đời sống của mình bằng những từng trải của mình; nghĩa là những lời khuyên của người khác ảnh hưởng rất ít đến đời sống của ta, nếu ta không có cái tính tình, cái tâm trạng của người đó, không ở trong hoàn cảnh của người đó, đã từng trải gần gần như người đó. Phải có đồng thanh mới tương ứng, hoặc nói theo giọng khoa học ngày nay, phải có bắt đúng điện ba thì mới lên tiếng.”
― Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 8 bài tựa đắc ý

“-  Tìm một nhân sinh quan, tự hỏi: sống để làm gì, đời người ra sao?
-  Nhận rằng bổn phận mỗi người là tạo hạnh phúc cho bản thân và cho người chung quanh.
-  Muốn làm tròn bổn phận, phải giữ gìn sức khoẻ và tu tâm luyện trí để làm việc.
-  Nhưng phải biết cách làm việc cho có hiệu quả.
-  Rồi làm việc xong thì phải nghỉ, kiếm được tiền thì phải tiêu, vậy vấn đề hưởng thụ ở đời cũng cần thiết như vấn đề phục vụ xã hội.
-  Phải lo tính trước cho tuổi già khỏi bệnh tật, túng thiếu mà thành một gánh nặng cho gia đình, xã hội.
-  Sau cùng vấn đề quan trọng nhất đối với thanh niên là vấn đề hôn nhân, vì có khéo lựa bạn trăm năm thì mới có người giúp đỡ, mới vui vẻ, hăng hái làm việc, mới hưởng hạnh phúc ở đời được.”
― Nguyễn Hiến Lê, 8 bài tựa đắc ý

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman

“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
― Howard Thurman

“Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's own situation so as not to be overcome by them.”
― Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey

“If your kid needs a role model and you ain't it, you're both fucked.”
― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin

“We're so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fuckin' planet? . . . And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin' great. It's been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn't goin' anywhere, folks. We are! We're goin' away. Pack your shit, we're goin' away. And we won't leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we'll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.”
― George Carlin

“Religion is like a pair of shoes.....Find one that fits for you, but don't make me wear your shoes.”
― George Carlin

“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”
― George Carlin

“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”
― George Carlin

“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”
― George Carlin

“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!

We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.

The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin

“Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”
― George Carlin

“There's a humorous side to every situation. The challenge is to find it.”
― George Carlin

“The claim "hate speech is not free speech" implies "free" is a type of speech, as opposed to how speech is treated in a free society.”
― Michael Malice

“Those who need leaders are not qualified to choose them.”
― Michael Malice, The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics