James Madsen > James's Quotes

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#1

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
― George Bernard Shaw

tags: ideas

638 likes

#2

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

tags: chemistry, relationships

9703 likes

#3

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”
― Yoko Ono

tags: aging, autumn, fall, life, seasons, spring, summer, time, winter

1247 likes

#4

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. ”
― Frank Herbert

62 likes

#5

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."

[Letter, November 1856]”
― Hector Berlioz

tags: death, lessons, life, mortality, time

137 likes

#6

“You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.”
― James M. Barrie

168 likes

#7

“Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

tags: government, rulership, spacing-guild

140 likes

#8

“What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. . . . The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.”
― Samuel Clemens

31 likes

#9

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

313 likes

#10

“If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.”
― Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment

51 likes

#11

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It

tags: 1931, art, mystery, philosophy, science

5271 likes

#12

“By doubting we come to the question, and by questioning we may come upon the truth.”
― Pierre Abélard

6 likes

#13

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

tags: life, philosophy, philosophy-of-life, progress

4009 likes

#14

“On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

291 likes

#15

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.”
― Bertrand Russell

tags: life, love

1430 likes

#16

“This account of him [Thomas More] developed as I wrote: what first attracted me was a person who could not be accused of any incapacity for life, who indeed seized life in great variety and almost greedy quantities, who nevertheless found something in himself without which life was valueless and when that was denied him was able to grasp his death.”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

11 likes

#17

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”
― Christopher Morley

tags: do, morley, read, think

292 likes

#18

“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”
― Samuel Butler

20 likes

#19

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.”
― Mark Twain

tags: humor

1049 likes

#20

“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

7476 likes

#21

“If a person measures his spiritual fulfillment in terms of cosmic visions, surpassing peace of mind, or ecstasy, then he is not likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. If, however, he measures it in terms of enjoying a sunrise, being warmed by a child's smile, or being able to help someone have a better day, then he is likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. ”
― Arthur Miller

77 likes

#22

“Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.”
― Mary Gaitskill

tags: authors, inspiration, readers, vision, writing

137 likes

#23

“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
― Carl Sagan

tags: politics, religion, science

1185 likes

#24

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”
― Carl Sagan

tags: books, reading, writing

1739 likes

#25

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan

tags: astronomer, science, writer

8055 likes

#26

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

tags: love, mercy

3736 likes

#27

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”
― Carl Sagan

tags: books, literacy, reading

2362 likes

#28

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
― Carl Sagan

tags: evidence, faith, science, skepticism

1497 likes

#29

“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
― Carl Sagan

tags: connection, evolution, humanity, humility, life, love, meaning, people, purpose, vastness

1419 likes

#30

“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”
― Carl Sagan

950 likes

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