Kiang > Kiang's Quotes

“Love without sacrifice is like theft”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“I prefer to have some beliefs that don't make logical sense.”
― Louise Erdrich

“There is no love; there are only proofs of love.”
― Pierre Reverdy

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“It is not the length of life, but the depth.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.”
― Isaac Asimov

“The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.”
― Kurt Cobain

“I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”
― Kurt Cobain

“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are.”
― Kurt Cobain

“Practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so why practice?”
― Kurt Cobain

“Nobody dies a virgin... Life fucks us all.”
― Kurt Cobain

“Birds scream at the top of their lungs in horrified hellish rage every morning at daybreak to warn us all of the truth, but sadly we don't speak bird.”
― Kurt Cobain

“Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self esteem.”
― Kurt Cobain

“In order to fly you have to create space in the open air so that your wings can really spread out. It’s like a parachute. They only work from a high altitude. To fly you have to begin taking risks. If you don’t want to, maybe the best thing is just to give up, and keep walking forever.”
― Jorge Bucay, Déjame que te cuente

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Humans see what they want to see.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

“It’s much easier not to know things sometimes.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

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

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.”
― Louise Erdrich, Original Fire

“If a rat is a good model for your emotional life, you're in big trouble.
”
― Robert M. Sapolsky

“If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a "genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

“Depression is not generalized pessimism, but pessimism specific to the effects of one's own skilled action.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

“Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the brain, or behavior. They're about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies.”
― Robert M Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers