Big Books of 2026

John > John's Quotes

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  • #1
    Sally Mann
    “I tend to agree with the theory that if you want to keep a memory pristine, you must not call upon it too often, for each time it is revisited, you alter it irrevocably, remembering not the original impression left by experience but the last time you recalled it. With tiny differences creeping in at each cycle, the exercise of our memory does not bring us closer to the past but draws us further away.”
    ― Sally Mann, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
    tags: memory
    45 likes

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  • #2
    Baruch Spinoza
    “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.”
    ― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
    tags: emotion, knowledge, self-actualisation, suffering
    160 likes

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  • #3
    Baruch Spinoza
    “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.”
    ― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
    97 likes

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  • #4
    Baruch Spinoza
    “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
    ― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
    tags: ethics, virtue
    25 likes

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  • #5
    Baruch Spinoza
    “Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.”
    ― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
    tags: ethics, hate, love, love-thy-enemies, moral-philosophy, nonviolence, philosophy, spinoza, violence
    17 likes

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  • #6
    Michel Foucault
    “People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”
    ― Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
    1031 likes

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  • #7
    Michel Foucault
    “Where there is power, there is resistance.”
    ― Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
    tags: activism, leftism, power, resistance
    597 likes

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  • #8
    Baruch Spinoza
    “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
    ― Baruch Spinoza
    tags: education, free-thought, philosophy
    884 likes

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  • #9
    Baruch Spinoza
    “Everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare.”
    ― Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
    351 likes

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  • #10
    Baruch Spinoza
    “There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.”
    ― Benedictus de Spinoza
    133 likes

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  • #11
    Thomas Pynchon
    “They're in love. Fuck the war.”
    ― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
    904 likes

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  • #12
    Thomas Pynchon
    “Why should things be easy to understand?”
    ― Thomas Pynchon
    tags: epistemology, puzzle, thinking, understanding, universe
    337 likes

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  • #13
    Thomas Pynchon
    “A screaming comes across the sky.”
    ― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
    tags: first-sentence
    204 likes

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  • #14
    Thomas Pynchon
    “There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery. ”
    ― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
    180 likes

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  • #15
    Thomas Pynchon
    “Shall I project a world?”
    ― Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
    149 likes

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  • #16
    Thomas Pynchon
    “What goes around may come around, but it never ends up exactly the same place, you ever notice? Like a record on a turntable, all it takes is one groove's difference and the universe can be on into a whole 'nother song.”
    ― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
    126 likes

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  • #17
    Ursula K. Le Guin
    “What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”
    ― Ursula K. LeGuin
    844 likes

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  • #18
    Ursula K. Le Guin
    “This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence. There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.”
    ― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Farthest Shore
    tags: balance, darkness
    244 likes

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  • #19
    Ursula K. Le Guin
    “Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.”
    ― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Farthest Shore
    tags: the-farthest-shore
    190 likes

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  • #20
    Ursula K. Le Guin
    “To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.”
    ― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
    163 likes

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  • #21
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    “If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
    ― Jean-Paul Sartre
    tags: loneliness, solitude
    4528 likes

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  • #22
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    “Hell is—other people!”
    ― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
    tags: garcin, hell, people
    2337 likes

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  • #23
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
    ― Jean-Paul Sartre
    tags: freedom, life-experience, self-determination
    1671 likes

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  • #24
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    “Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”
    ― Jean Paul Sartre
    tags: freedom
    1493 likes

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  • #25
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    “You are -- your life, and nothing else.”
    ― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
    805 likes

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  • #26
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    “Life begins on the other side of despair.”
    ― Jean-Paul Sartre
    tags: inspirational
    790 likes

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  • #27
    Herman Melville
    “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
    ― Herman Melville
    5282 likes

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  • #28
    Herman Melville
    “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”
    ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
    tags: adventure, laughter
    2667 likes

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  • #29
    Herman Melville
    “A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”
    ― Herman Melville, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities
    1209 likes

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  • #30
    Herman Melville
    “It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
    ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
    926 likes



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Tags From John’s Quotes

memory
emotion
knowledge
self-actualisation
suffering
ethics
virtue
hate
love
love-thy-enemies
moral-philosophy
nonviolence
philosophy
spinoza
violence
activism
leftism
power
resistance
education
free-thought
epistemology
puzzle
thinking
understanding
universe
first-sentence
balance
darkness
the-farthest-shore
loneliness
solitude
garcin
hell
people
freedom
life-experience
self-determination
inspirational
adventure
laughter