Eden > Eden's Quotes

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  • #1
    Exurb1a
    “Brilliant accidents on the way to oblivion”
    Exurb1a

  • #2
    J. Robert Oppenheimer
    “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
    J. Robert Oppenheimer

  • #3
    Carl Sagan
    “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

    Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

    The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

    It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
    Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

  • #4
    Charles Dickens
    “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
    Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

  • #5
    Isaac Asimov
    “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
    Isaac Asimov

  • #6
    Albert Einstein
    “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
    Albert Einstein

  • #7
    Frank Zappa
    “So many books, so little time.”
    Frank Zappa

  • #8
    George Orwell
    “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.”
    George Orwell

  • #9
    George Orwell
    “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
    George Orwell

  • #10
    George Carlin
    “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”
    George Carlin

  • #11
    Alan             Moore
    “Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up.”
    Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

  • #12
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
    Friedrich Nietzsche

  • #13
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    “For the new year — I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito, cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought; hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year — what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth! I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”
    Friedrich Nietzsche

  • #14
    Jawaharlal Nehru
    “Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny. Now the time has come when we shall redeem our pledge - not wholly or in full measure - but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”
    Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India

  • #15
    Abraham Lincoln
    “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
    Abraham Lincoln

  • #16
    Abraham Lincoln
    “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

    But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
    Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

  • #17
    Thomas Jefferson
    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

    That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
    Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

  • #18
    Thomas Babington Macaulay
    “Then out spake brave Horatius,
    The Captain of the gate:
    ‘To every man upon this earth
    Death cometh soon or late.
    And how can man die better
    Than facing fearful odds,
    For the ashes of his fathers,
    And the temples of his Gods,

    ‘And for the tender mother
    Who dandled him to rest,
    And for the wife who nurses
    His baby at her breast,
    And for the holy maidens
    Who feed the eternal flame,
    To save them from false Sextus
    That wrought the deed of shame?

    ‘Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
    With all the speed ye may;
    I, with two more to help me,
    Will hold the foe in play.
    In yon strait path a thousand
    May well be stopped by three.
    Now who will stand on either hand,
    And keep the bridge with me?

    Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
    A Ramnian proud was he:
    ‘Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
    And keep the bridge with thee.’
    And out spake strong Herminius;
    Of Titian blood was he:
    ‘I will abide on thy left side,
    And keep the bridge with thee.’

    ‘Horatius,’ quoth the Consul,
    ‘As thou sayest, so let it be.’
    And straight against that great array
    Forth went the dauntless Three.
    For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
    Spared neither land nor gold,
    Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
    In the brave days of old.

    Then none was for a party;
    Then all were for the state;
    Then the great man helped the poor,
    And the poor man loved the great:
    Then lands were fairly portioned;
    Then spoils were fairly sold:
    The Romans were like brothers
    In the brave days of old.

    Now Roman is to Roman
    More hateful than a foe,
    And the Tribunes beard the high,
    And the Fathers grind the low.
    As we wax hot in faction,
    In battle we wax cold:
    Wherefore men fight not as they fought
    In the brave days of old.”
    Thomas Babington Macaulay, Horatius

  • #19
    Winston S. Churchill
    “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
    Winston S. Churchill

  • #20
    Edward Bulwer-Lytton
    “The pen is mightier than the sword!”
    Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  • #21
    Vladimir Lenin
    “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
    Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

  • #22
    Osamu Dazai
    “What frightened me was the logic of the world; in it lay the foretaste of something incalculably powerful. Its mechanism was incomprehensible, and I could not possibly remain closeted in that windowless, bone-chilling room. Though outside lay the sea of irrationality, it was far more agreeable to swim in its waters until presently I drowned.”
    Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

  • #23
    Osamu Dazai
    “We're all a bunch of clowns. If you want to see a farce, look in the mirror.
    A man crushed by reality puts on a shadow of endurance. If that's beyond your comprehension, dear reader, then you and I will never understand each other. Life's a farce, so we might as well make it a good one.”
    Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery

  • #24
    Thomas Nagel
    “Even if life as a whole is meaningless, perhaps that's nothing to worry about. Perhaps we can recognise it and just go on as before.”
    Thomas Nagel, What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy

  • #25
    Thomas Nagel
    “Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics.

    Thomas Nagel

  • #26
    Thomas Nagel
    “The universe has become not only conscious and aware of itself but capable in some respects of choosing its path into the future--though all three, the consciousness, the knowledge, and the choice, are dispersed over a vast crowd of beings, acting both individually and collectively.”
    Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False

  • #27
    Thomas Nagel
    “Postmodernism's specifically academic appeal comes from its being another in the sequence of all-purpose "unmasking" strategies that offer a way to criticize the intellectual efforts of others not by engaging with them on the ground, but by diagnosing them from a superior vantage point and charging them with inadequate self-awareness. Logical positivism and Marxism were used by academics in this way, and postmodernist relativism is a natural successor in the role.
    [The Sleep of Reason]”
    Thomas Nagel

  • #28
    Thomas Nagel
    “How can one bring into one’s individual life a full recognition of one’s relation to the universe as a whole?”
    Thomas Nagel

  • #29
    Søren Kierkegaard
    “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
    Søren Kierkegaard

  • #30
    Rabindranath Tagore
    “Their real freedom is not within the boundaries of security, but in the highroad of adventures, full of the risk of new experiences”
    Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism



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