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#1

“World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

tags: euphemism, logic, optimisation

189 likes

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#2

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tags: bilbo, journey, lost, quest, travel, wander

21823 likes

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#3

“Like every other destruction of optimism, whether in a whole civilisation or in a single individual, these must have been unspeakable catastrophes for those who had dared to expect progress. But we should feel more than sympathy for those people. We should take it personally. For if any of those earlier experiments in optimism had succeeded, our species would be exploring the stars by now, and you and I would be immortal.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

28 likes

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#4

“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

8 likes

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#5

“Men of profound thought appear to themselves in intercourse with others like comedians, for in order to be understood they must always simulate superficiality.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

4 likes

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#6

“Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience.”
― Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep

8 likes

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#7

“And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

tags: death

84 likes

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#8

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.”
― Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

109 likes

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#9

“Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World

47 likes

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#10

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tags: adventuring, death, time

21626 likes

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#11

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

tags: history, rome, soul, thoughts, wisdom

2138 likes

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#12

“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

tags: corpse, incarnation, mind-over-body, soul

547 likes

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#13

“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

tags: empowerment, marcus-aurelius, mind, philosophy, self-improvement, stoicism, thoughts

294 likes

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#14

“The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do.”
― John Holt

114 likes

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#15

“I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

tags: democracy, government, humor

6 likes

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#16

“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
― Mark Twain

tags: happiness, sanity

4459 likes

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#17

“I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

25 likes

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#18

“Stereotypes are valid first-order approximations.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

19 likes

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#19

“The cat’s A.I. was realistic, right down to the total lack of loyalty.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, For We Are Many

17 likes

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#20

“the wonderful thing about knowledge is that you can give it away and still have it.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, Heaven's River

17 likes

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#21

“Well, the fecal matter seems to have struck the atmospheric propulsor.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, For We Are Many

8 likes

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#22

“Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data.”
― V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

69 likes

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#23

“Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence”
― V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

46 likes

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#24

“The experiments I've discussed so far have helped us understand what is going on in the brains of patients with phantoms and given us hints as to how we might help alleviate their pain. But there is a deeper message here: Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience.”
― V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

tags: science

1 likes

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#25

“Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

tags: bourgeois, classism, social-criticism

108 likes

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#26

“Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group.”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

tags: discrimination, equality, morality, psychology

125 likes

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#27

“I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

tags: quirrell

65 likes

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#28

“Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky

tags: anticipation, rationality, reality, thinking

64 likes

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#29

“When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky

tags: fanfiction, harry-potter

62 likes

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#30

“A murderer is only an extroverted suicide.”
― Monty Python's Flying Circus

77 likes

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Tags From Artoemius’s Quotes

euphemism
logic
optimisation
bilbo
journey
lost
quest
travel
wander
death
adventuring
time
history
rome
soul
thoughts
wisdom
corpse
incarnation
mind-over-body
empowerment
marcus-aurelius
mind
philosophy
self-improvement
stoicism
democracy
government
humor
happiness
sanity
science
bourgeois
classism
social-criticism
discrimination
equality
morality
psychology
quirrell
anticipation
rationality
reality
thinking
fanfiction
harry-potter