Ken > Ken's Quotes

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

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Sorrow is often wisdom’s companion but it is better to learn from others sorrow to prevent our own”
― Peter Bevelin, A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes

“Praise by name, criticize by category”
― Peter Bevelin, All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

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

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Scientists are cautiously beginning to question the view that the brain is the sole and absolute ruler over the body. The gut not only possesses an unimaginable number of nerves, those nerves are also unimaginably different from those of the rest of the body. The gut commands an entire fleet of signaling substances, nerve-insulation materials, and ways of connecting. There is only one other organ in the body that can compete with the gut for diversity—the brain. The gut’s network of nerves is called the “gut brain” because it is just as large and chemically complex as the gray matter in our heads. Were the gut solely responsible for transporting food and producing the occasional burp, such a sophisticated nervous system would be an odd waste of energy. Nobody would create such a neural network just to enable us to break wind. There must be more to it than that.”
― Giulia Enders, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ

“Every day we live and every meal we eat we influence the great microbial organ inside us - for better or for worse.”
― Giulia Enders, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ

“Count Dracula. A genetic defect has been identified in his home country, Romania, that results in symptoms that include a lack of tolerance to garlic, sensitivity to sunlight, and the production of red urine.”
― Giulia Enders, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ

“The aim of cleaning, then, should be to reduce bacteria numbers—but not to zero. Even harmful bacteria can be good for us when the immune system uses them for training. A couple of thousand Salmonella bacteria in the kitchen sink are a chance for our immune system to do a little sightseeing. They become dangerous only when they turn up in greater numbers. Bacteria get out of hand when they encounter the perfect conditions: a protected location that is warm and moist with a supply of delicious food.”
― Giulia Enders, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ

“Simple carbohydrates such as sponge cake, rice, or pasta make it through to the small intestine pretty quickly. There, they are digested and rapidly cause an increase in the levels of sugar in our blood. The doorman detains proteins and fats in the stomach for considerably longer. A piece of steak may easily be churned about for six hours before all of it has disappeared into the small intestine. This explains why we often fancy a sweet dessert after eating meat or fatty, fried foods. Our blood sugar levels are impatient and want to rise quickly, and dessert provides a quick blood sugar fix. Meals rich in carbohydrates may perk us up more quickly, but they do not keep us feeling full for as long as meaty or fatty meals. Small Intestine When the mini-morsels reach the small intestine, the real process of digestion begins. As it passes through this tube, the motley cake mush will almost completely disappear into its walls—a bit like Harry Potter on Platform 9¾. The small intestine pluckily pounces on the piece of cake. It squeezes it, hashes it up from all sides, wiggles its villi in what we might now call the cake chyme, and when it is thoroughly mixed, moves it on down the digestive line. Under the microscope we can see that even the microvilli help it along! They move up and down like tiny trampling feet.”
― Giulia Enders, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ

“Can you accept the notion that once you change your internal state, you don’t need the external world to provide you with a reason to feel joy, gratitude, appreciation, or any other elevated emotion?”
― Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

“A memory without the emotional charge is called wisdom.”
― Joe Dispenza, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

“Don't try to carpet the world when it's far easier to give out slippers.”
― William Stixrud, The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”
― Joseph Campbell

“A part is not just a temporary emotional state or habitual thought pattern. Instead, it is a discrete and autonomous mental system that has an idiosyncratic range of emotion, style of expression, set of abilities, desires, and view of the world. In other words, it is as if we each contain a society of people, each of whom is at a different age and has different interests, talents, and temperaments. In”
― Richard C. Schwartz, Internal Family Systems Therapy

“To listen entails a fundamental letting go of self-centeredness. We have to be willing to put down our own thoughts, views, and feelings temporarily to truly listen.”
― Oren Jay Sofer, Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”
― Jamie Anderson

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Imbalanced systems,whether internal or external, will tend to polarize.”
― Richard C. Schwartz, Internal Family Systems Therapy

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
― Selwyn Duke

“When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and which they think is effected by demons. Nothing is effected by demons, there are no demons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“Money’s greatest intrinsic value—and this can’t be overstated—is its ability to give you control over your time.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.”
― David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words