Richard > Richard's Quotes

“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be left waiting for us in our graves-or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“So you think that money is the root of all evil? [...] Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for me to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed or enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else could you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place. Every bit of you has been replaced many times over (which is why you eat, of course). You are not even the same shape as you were then. The point is that you are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.”
― Steve Grand, Creation: Life and How to Make It

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ”
― Anais Nin

“I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them.”
― Anais Nin

“Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.”
― Anais Nin

“I am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you.”
― Anais Nin

“There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work.”
― Anaïs Nin, HENRY AND JUNE

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Life is wasted on the living.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“If you've done 6 impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The Universe, the whole infinite Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“It's not so much an afterlife' Said Arthur, 'more a sort of apres vie”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“You mean," said Arthur, "you mean you can see into my mind?"
"Yes," said Marvin.
Arthur stared in astonishment.
"And ...?" he said.
"It amazes me how you can manage to live in anything that small.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to test, however, it invariably produced a plastic cup filled with a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“People create the reality they need in order to discover themselves”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“The point is that if the love object is divine perfection, then one’s own self is elevated by joining one’s destiny to it.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death