Pouya

“Some of my scientific friends and colleagues confess that they cannot for the life of them see why I don't abandon ship and join them. The short answer is that I have managed, by straddling the boundaries, to have the best of both worlds. By working with scientists I get a rich diet of fascinating and problematic facts to think about, but by staying a philosopher without a lab or a research grant, I get to think about all the theories and experiments and never have to do the dishes”
― Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us," he says after the phone stops ringing. "Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads--at least that's where I imagine it--there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“In most cases, people, even wicked people, are far more naive and simple-hearted than one generally assumes. And so are we.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Even Napoleon Bonaparte understood this when, at the end of his life, he stated, “Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the spirit.”
― Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life