Niall > Niall's Quotes

“I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.”
― Albert Einstein

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.”
― François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

“The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”
― Aristotle

“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.”
― James Freeman Clarke

“The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.”
― John Maynard Keynes

“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
― Albert Einstein

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.”
― Erwin Schrodinger

“Boredom: the desire for desires.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”
― Marcel Proust

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
― Marcel Proust

“The beauty of our system is that it isolates everybody. Each person is sitting alone in front of the tube, you know. It's very hard to have ideas or thoughts under those circumstances. You can't fight the world alone.”
― Noam Chomsky

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Love is a better master than duty.”
― Albert Einstein

“Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.”
― Albert Einstein

“The universe is computing its own destiny.”
― James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

“To affirm is not to bear, carry, or harness oneself to that which exists, but on the contrary to unburden, unharness, and set free that which lives.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy

“Without God all things are permitted.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
― John Maynard Keynes

“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Insulted and Humiliated

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking...”
― Leo Tolstoy