Nicko Gibson > Nicko's Quotes

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The Wise Man is square but not sharp, honest but not not malign, straight but not severe, bright but not dazzling.”
― Laozi, Tao Te Ching

“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
― Socrates

“Emotions make excellent servants, but tyrannical masters.”
― John Seymour, Introducing Neuro-Linguistic Programming: Psychological Skills for Understanding and Influencing People

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“Science isn't about WHY, it's about WHY NOT!”
― J.K. Simmons

“Big Brother is Watching You.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”
― Chuang Tzu

“Belly laughs are one of the best things about being sentient, and you should never miss a chance for one.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“99.99 percent of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“Brain cells last as long as you do. You are issued with a hundred billion or so at birth and that is all you are ever going to get. It has been estimated that you lose five hundred of them an hour, so if you have any serious thinking to do there really isn’t a moment to waste.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“Most of what has lived on Earth has left behind no record at all.”
― Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer”
― Douglas Adams

“But they weren’t aliens, I had to remind myself — we were.”
― Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

“Nothing in this world is difficult, but thinking makes it seem so. Where there is true will, there is always a way.”
― Wu Cheng'en, Monkey: A Journey to the West

“Whoso meddles in affairs that are no business of his, will hear truths that will not please him.”
― Anonymous, The Arabian Nights Entertainments

“...But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will tun wild and cause you grief.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“Few people think more than two or three times a year,” Shaw reportedly said. “I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“The plural of anecdote is not data.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Think Like a Freak

“Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

“As W.C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.”
― Steven D. Levitt, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

“We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.”
― Bill Bryson