Alan Victor Willis > Alan's Quotes

“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers.
He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers--and spirit itself will stink.
Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace.
He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart.
In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall.
The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched.
I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins--it wanteth to laugh.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants,' while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”
― Socrates

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Only the self-sufficient stand alone - most people follow the crowd and imitate.”
― Bruce Lee

“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“Personality is built up largely by acts of introjection: contents that were before experienced outside are taken inside.”
― Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”
― R.D. Laing

“The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.”
― Martin Heidegger

“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
― Epictetus

“The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?”
― Bob Marley

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
― Mark Twain

“Some won’t appreciate you no matter how much you do for them. Release yourself. Go where you’re appreciated and understood. –”
― Robert Tew

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
― Heraclitus

“Love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don't know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who've never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you've felt what it means to love as you and I know it - total passion for the total height - you're incapable of anything less.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“The Full Measure of a man is not to be found in the man himself, but in the colors and textures that come alive in others because of him.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“If you want to be more alive, love is the truest health.”
― Rumi, The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing

“It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.”
― Francis Bacon

“We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigour, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self; to have faith in this self and in life.”
― Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom