Don > Don's Quotes

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.”
― Ernest Hemingway

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

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”
― Nietzsche

“you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“...throw roses into the abyss and say: 'here is my thanks to the monster who didn't succeed in swallowing me alive.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“There are terrible people who, instead of solving a problem, bungle it and make it more difficult for all who come after. Whoever can't hit the nail on the head should, please, not hit at all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism – and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But, if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s elan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective — who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled — can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie. The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive”
― Stanley Kubrick

“Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.”
― Carl Sagan

“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”
― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”
― Charles Darwin

“Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.”
― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future