Simon Reynolds > Simon's Quotes

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#1

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

tags: ambiguity, certainty, humility, knowledge, policy

968 likes

#2

“You can't make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”
― Michelle Obama

tags: decision-making, decisions, fear

632 likes

#3

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

tags: civil-rights, free-speech, free-will, freedom, intelligence, liberty, stupidity

4205 likes

#4

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
― Voltaire

tags: answers, man, questions, thinking

4626 likes

#5

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: atheism, reason, science, skeptic

3328 likes

#6

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

tags: action, change, inspirational, misattributed-to-gandhi, philosophy, wish

114361 likes

#7

“I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern―to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

tags: magic-carpet, time

414 likes

#8

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller

tags: activism, adaption, change, development, digital-revolution, future, movement, new-models, p2p, progress, progression, protest, revolution, science, society, structural-changes, technology, world, zeitgeist, zeitgeist-movement

1666 likes

#9

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
― David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

tags: errors, philosophy, religion

446 likes

#10

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”
― David Hume

tags: emotions, philosophy, reason

216 likes

#11

“We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.”
― POPPER, KARL R.

tags: sociology

82 likes

#12

“The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

68 likes

#13

“What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, and the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You can't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build your world from it.”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

tags: ruby

2703 likes

#14

“A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others - not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others”
― Karl Popper

74 likes

#15

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

tags: charles-bayard-mitchell

101565 likes

#16

“Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

15913 likes

#17

“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: integrity

2771 likes

#18

“i have never pondered over questions that are not questions.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo

tags: nietzsche-autobiographical

25 likes

#19

“Education is the movement from darkness to light.”
― Allan Bloom

tags: education

41 likes

#20

“Dare to think for yourself.”
― Voltaire

tags: freedom-of-thought

1139 likes

#21

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

tags: inspirational, music, philosophy

74332 likes

#22

“If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.”
― Hilary Mantel

tags: creativity, distraction, inspiration, openness, problem-solving, procrastination, writers-block

309 likes

#23

“Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

tags: freedom, inspirational, literature

2612 likes

#24

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn

tags: hope, optimism

1625 likes

#25

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

tags: humor, religion

30245 likes

#26

“If not us, then who?
If not now, then when?”
― John Lewis

tags: action, change, civil-rights, integrity, moral-courage, personal-responsibility

294 likes

#27

“Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”
― Stephen Fry

425 likes

#28

“Science is the key to our future, and if you don’t believe in science, then you’re holding everybody back. And it’s fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don’t believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don’t believe in science, that’s a recipe for disaster. We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong.”
― Bill Nye

tags: science

77 likes

#29

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein

tags: compassion, einstein, nature, philosophy

7507 likes

#30

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym

tags: challenges, change, courage, life

3140 likes

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