Hbshumon > Hbshumon's Quotes

“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“...logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“... That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Mediocrity is contextual.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“God seems to have a kind of laid-back management style I’m not crazy about.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“I am not what you see and hear.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“I read,' I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“John Dewey, as we have already noted, said that the desire to be important is the deepest urge in human nature; and William James said: “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

“Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.”
― John Dewey