Aron > Aron's Quotes

“I hear you say: ‘All that is not /fact/ : it is poetry’. Nonsense! Bad poetry is false, I grant; but nothing is truer than true poetry. And let me tell the scientific men that the artists are much finer and more accurate observers than they are, except of the special minutiae that the scientific man is looking for.”
― Charles Sanders Peirce

“Too high for common selfishness , he could
At times resign his own for others' good,
But not in pity - not because he ought,
But in some strange perversity of thought,
That swayed him onward with a secred pride
To do what few or none could do beside;
And this same impulse would, in tempting time,
Mislead his spirit equally to crime;
So much he soared beyond, or sank beneath,
The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe
And longed by good or ill to seperate
Himself from all who shared his mortal fate.”
― Lord Byron

“... for although people can be made worse off by all other gifts, correct reasoning alone can only be for the good.”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“But the cinephile is … a neurotic! (That’s not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it’s because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, “When you love life, you go to the movies,” it’s false! It’s exactly the opposite: when you don’t love life, or when life doesn’t give you satisfaction, you go to the movies.”
― François Truffaut

“The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”
― Voltaire

“Je sais que la poésie est indispensable, mais je ne sais pas à quoi.”
― Jean Cocteau

“I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1

“A law of nature is never true in the sense in which 'He is an amusing fellow' may be; and the two latter statements are not true in the sense in which 'I've' got a headache' is ... Again, in what sense is one to say of a proverb that it is true? Have you ever tried to put some rare and subtle experience, or some half-forgotten (but strong) impression into words? If you do, you will find that truth, in this case, is inseperably tied up with the literary quality of your writing: it needs no less than a poet to express fully and faithfully such fragile states of mind.”
― Friedrich Waismann

“All language is but a poor translation.”
― Franz Kafka

“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

“Wir sind dem Aufwachen nahe, wenn wir träumen, daß wir träumen.”
― Novalis

“(...), dat alle woorduitingen meer of minder ontwikkelde verbale imperatieven zijn, dat dus toespreken altijd neerkomt op bevelen of bedreigen, en begrijpen op gehoorzamen; (...)”
― L.E.J. Brouwer

“Il y a dans le dessin une très grande jouissance. L'écriture, c'est le dessin noué autrement. (...) Et quand je dessine, j'écris, et, peut-être, que quand j'ecris, je dessine.”
― Jean Cocteau

“Brave and creative men never consider pleasure and pain as ultimate values—they are epiphenomena: one must desire both if one is to achieve anything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

“Is it not knowledge that doth alone clear the mind of all perbutations?”
― Francis Bacon

“Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“I mistrust all Systematisers and I avoid them — the will to a System is a lack of integrity.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Ganz blind arbeitete er vorwärts, ohne jeden Ehrgeiz, nur um sich zu betäuben und nicht an die vielen Dinge zu denken, auf die er verzichten mußte. Er begriff, daß ein wunderbares Geheimnis in diesem Fieber war, mit dem sich viele Leute über die Nutzlosigkeit und Leere ihres ganzen Lebens hinwegtäuschten, und hoffte, so auch seinem Leben einen Sinn aufzwingen zu können, freilich vergessend, daß die erste Jugend nicht einen Sinn des Lebens will, sondern das ganze vielfältige Leben selbst.”
― Stefan Zweig, Scharlach / Sternstunden der Menschheit

“Ce n'est pas très difficile de travailler dans un bureau, il suffit d'être un peu méticuleux, de prendre des décisions rapidement, et de s'y tenir. J'avais vite compris qu'il n'est pas forcément nécessaire de prendre /la meilleur décision/, mais qu'il suffit, dans la plupart des cas, de prendre /une décision quelconque/, à condition de la prendre rapidement; enfin, si on travaille dans le secteur public.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Platform

“Il faut vouloir vivre les grands problèmes, par le corps et par l’esprit”
― Georges Bataille

“... and finally there came the customer we'd always dreamed of, who wanted us as consultants. To be a consultant is the ideal work, the sort from which you derive prestige and money without dirtying your hands, or breaking your backbone, or running the risk of ending up roasted or poisoned: all you have to do is take off your smock, put on your tie, listen in attentive silence to the problem, and then you'll feel like the Delphic oracle. You must then weigh your reply very carefully and formulate it in convoluted, vague language so that the customer also considers you an oracle, worthy of his faith and the rates set by the Chemists' Society.”
― Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

“Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”
― John von Neumann

“The great object of life is Sensation - to feel that we exist - even though in pain - it is this "craving void" which drives us to gaming - to battle - to travel - to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
― Byron

“La jeunesse est un temps pendant lequel les conventions sont et doivent être mal comprises : ou aveuglément combattues, ou aveuglément obéies. On ne peut pas concevoir, dans les commencements de la vie réfléchie, que seules les décisions arbitraires permettent à l'homme de fonder quoi que ce soit : langage, sociétés, connaissances, œuvres d'art.”
― Paul Valéry

“European identity, it seems, is only perceived by educated people. And that is sad, but it is a start.”
― Umberto Eco

“Mon sort est-il donc de passer ma vie entre des légitimistes fous, égoïstes et polis, adorant le passé, et des républicains fous, généreux et ennuyeux, adorant l’avenir ?”
― Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen

“Live? Our servants will do that for us..”
― Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Axel

“Plus je me suis examiné, plus j'ai vue que je n'étais propre qu'à être roi.”
― Armand De Madaillan De Lesparre Lassay

“That inferior minds confine their thoughts within the bounds of the country where they are born; but those to whom God has given a greater degree of light, omit nothing that may be of defence to them from afar.”
― Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu

“After he became the Master, the world believed that he could not lose, and he had to believe it himself. Therein was the tragedy.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go