Pär Vallander > Pär's Quotes

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
― Albert Einstein

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

“The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”
― Maya Angelou

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
― H.L. Mencken

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

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
― Oscar Wilde, Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man

“Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”
― Leo F. Buscaglia

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”
― George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you'll never meet them. All right, so we do the best we can. Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that's the result of a chance meeting too. You're damned right. Drink up. We'll have another.”
― Charles Bukowski

“It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki

“If you only had 48 hours left to live, would you spend it like you normally spend your weekends? If not, why spend 2/7th of your life wasting your free time? After all, free time isn’t free. Free time is the most expensive time you have, because nobody pays for it but you. But that also makes it the most valuable time you have, as you alone stand to reap the profits from spending it wisely.”
― Jarod Kintz, I Should Have Renamed This

“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.
Listen to it carefully.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts

“Hide not your talents, they for use were made,
What's a sundial in the shade?”
― Benjamin Franklin

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

“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.”
― Bob Dylan

“It takes a very long time to become young.”
― Pablo Picasso

“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”
― William James

“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door”
― Milton Berle

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
― Albert Einstein