Jon > Jon's Quotes

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

“The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies."
(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)”
― Voltaire

“The greatest untold story is the evolution of God.”
― G.I. Gurdjieff

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man ... a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.”
― Rod Serling

“If the emotions are free the intellect will look after itself”
― A.S. Neill

“All crimes, all hatreds, all wars can be reduced to unhappiness.”
― A. S. Neill

“The function of a child is to live his/her own life, not the life that his/her anxious parents think he/she should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educators who thinks they knows best”
― A.S. Neill

“The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.”
― Stephen Hawking

“Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

“As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensating to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Completely give up even concentration, and hold nothing in your mind: you are verily the Self, and therefore free.”
― Robert Wolfe, Always - Only - One

“Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing.”
― Konrad Lorenz

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.”
― Gustave Le Bon, سيكولوجية الجماهير

“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.

You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house;
and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can't find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!”
― Kabir, The Kabir Book: Forty-four of the Ecstatic Poems of Kabir

“The Need to Win

When an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets –
He is out of his mind.

His skill has not changed, But the prize
Divides him. He cares,
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting –
And the need to win
Drains him of power.”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.” Vernon Sanders Law”
― Andrea Perron, House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story Volume One: The True Story Volume One

“We must admit that our opponents in this argument have a marked advantage over us. They need only a few words to set forth a half-truth; whereas, in order to show that it is a half-truth, we have to resort to long and arid dissertations.”
― Frédéric Bastiat

“A little Learning is a dangerous Thing.”
― Alexander Pope

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman