Sarah > Sarah's Quotes

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”
― Mark Twain

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
― Albert Einstein

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
― Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
― Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin

“Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool?

You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.”
― Temple Grandin, The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's

“If language naturally evolves to serve the needs of tiny rodents with tiny rodent brains, then what's unique about language isn't the brilliant humans who invented it to communicate high-level abstract thoughts. What's unique about language is that the creatures who develop it are highly vulnerable to being eaten.”
― Temple Grandin

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”
― John von Neumann

“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.”
― Johannes Kepler

“The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness. ”
― Michel de Montaigne

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“You can't get any movement larger than five people without including at least one fucking idiot.”
― Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars

“And, again, this story needs to be revised, is under revision as I type these words. The only way to write an autobiography, I suppose, is to keep writing indefinitely. As soon as your fingers stop moving, this act—your fingers stalling on the keyboard—changes the story. There. I can't keep up. And this idea that it should all be working toward something, that the autobiographical subject in the present tense should be working through the biggest puzzle of her life and arriving somehow at... something. Something big. At what? Happiness? Understanding? Forgiveness? A baby? A book?

I have not arrived.”
― Jill Christman, Darkroom: A Family Exposure

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
― Doris Lessing