vaughn > vaughn's Quotes

“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

[Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.”
― John Lennon

“MUSIC I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!”
― Conrad Aiken

“I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.”
― Bjarne Stroustrup

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
― Albert Einstein

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
― Heinrich Heine

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Where words leave off, music begins.”
― Heinrich Heine

“We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.”
― Jacques-Yves Cousteau

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“[D]on't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...”
― Neil Gaiman

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
― Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

“Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”
― Epicurus

“Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.”
― Wallace Stevens

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I don't have pet peeves - I have major psychotic fucking hatreds.”
― George Carlin

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
― Elie Wiesel

“You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.”
― Samuel Beckett

“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
― Plato

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. ”
― Pericles

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
― Tagore

“Men rarely if ever dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. ”
― Robert Heinlein

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
― Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
― Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science

“Luck is the residue of design.”
― John Milton