Mirel Goldenberg > Mirel's Quotes

“Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well I have others.”
― Groucho Marx

“The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.”
― Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

“Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.”
― Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“How did it get so late so soon?”
― Dr. Seuss

“Life gets really simple once you cut out all the bull shit they teach you in school.”
― George Carlin

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Being crazy isn't enough.”
― Dr. Seuss

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Myth is mecessary because reality is so much larger than rationality.”
― Rolland Hein

“In this stillness that is at the same time movement, in this darkness that is at the same time light, change is found not in the realm of ideas but in the energizing desire that is realized through precipitation. Desire tends towards its own realization and change takes place when the desire for it shatters the bounds of the possible, breaking the dialectical equilibrium holding together the framework of what is existent. It is at such moments that the imaginary flows into the real and overwhelms it, inundating it until it has been absorbed.”
― Michael Richardson, Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”
― Thomas Szasz

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“One is not the loneliest number but zero is.”
― Boris Zubry

“No wonder Van Gogh blasted his head off. Crows and sunlight. Idle zero. Zero eating your guts like an animal inside, letting you shit and fuck and blink your eyes, but nothing, a nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski, Screams From the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970

“We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”
― Leon Trotsky

“When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.”
― Plato

“Entropy requires no maintenance.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Schrödinger's Cat 1: The Universe Next Door

“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

“One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.”
― John Piper

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“In times of war, you often hear leaders - Christian, Jewish, and Muslim - saying, 'God is on our side.' But that isn't true. In war, God is on the side of refugees, widows, and orphans.”
― Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time

“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
― Eric Hoffer

“May the blind see the forms,
May the deaf hear sounds.

May the naked find clothing,
The hungry find food;
May the thirsty find water
And delicious drinks.

May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy;
May the forlorn find new hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity.

May the frightened cease to be afraid
And those bound be freed;
May the powerless find power,
And may the people think of benefiting one another”
― Shantideva

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Everyone does deserve a second chance, although we don't often get one, and even when we do get a second chance, we're likely to make the same mistake again. The things we learn later rather than sooner tend to result from harsh lessons, but mostly we learn nothing at all.”
― Binnie Kirshenbaum, The Scenic Route

“There it lay, fixed in future time, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, willful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.”
― George Orwell

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
― Theodore Dalrymple