Quotes

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

It almost always takes three mistakes to kill you.

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

Everyone should know of all information that others have deemed unfit for public knowledge.

Screw you! I'ma build my own Googleplex... with black-jack! And hookers! In fact, forget the Googleplex!

I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more about mathematics.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

God is this a stupid question. I mean, this is rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. It is trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. It is stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. It is a blazing mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. It emits more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. This has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Unless this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't even have enough strength left to deride ... the rest of this drivel.

Almost everybody feels at peace with nature: listening to the ocean waves against the shore, by a still lake, in a field of grass, on a windblown heath. One day, when we have learned the timeless way again, we shall feel the same about our towns, and we shall feel as much at peace in them, as we do today walking by the ocean, or stretched out in the long grass of a meadow.

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming that I am a man.

What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

After all, I have not wasted my time. I too have fidgeted, like anyone else, in this aberrant universe.

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

I have a song to sing and I will sing it, although I am alone in an empty house and must sing to my own ears.

The greater part of thinking must be counted among the instinctive functions.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel.

Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.

Each morning I cross the line, with a gardenia in my buttonhole and a fresh volume written in the air. Each morning I wade through a trench filled with vomit to reach the beautiful island of incest; each day the cliff rises up more toweringly, the window-lines straight as a rail-road track and the gleam of them even more dazzling than the gleam of polished skulls. Each morning the trench yawns more menacingly.

There are so many hammocks to catch you if you fall, so many laws to keep you from experience. All these cities I have been in the last few weeks make me fully understand the cozy, stifling state in which most people pass through life. I don't want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don't want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun -- hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, "Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case." I will turn and say to them "It is you who are the basket case. For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn't even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!" And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny -- it is the light that guides your way.

Your twenties are always an apprenticeship, but you don't always know what for.

Two groups start; one group uses an easy-to-use system, and another uses a not-so-easy-to-use system. The first group gets done first, and the competition is over. The winners move forward and the other guys go home.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs are people who have come alive.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let people have guns... why should we let them have ideas?

Quantity has a quality all its own.

Sen vord is thrall and thocht is fre
Keip veill thy tonge I coinsell the

Since word is thrall and thought is free
Keep well thy tongue, I counsel thee.

Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried before.

Our life is what our thoughts make of it.

Our dreams disturb us because they refuse to pander to our fondest notions of ourselves. The closer one looks, the more they seem to insist upon a challenging proposition: you must live truthfully. Right now. And always. Few forces in life present, with an equal sense of inevitability, the bare-knuckle facts of who we are, and the demands of what we might become.

It ain't what you don't know
that gets you in trouble;
It's what you know for sure
that ain't so.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Our food was set in front of us and as we picked up our utensils, Jonathan cleared his throat. "I would like to make a speech." His eyes became wide and his tiny wrinkles gathered at its edges as if he were to burst into a seizure of frenzied giggles. We waited patiently for him to speak as he collected himself, smoothing the laughter from his stark face.
"I am a beast of calamity. I am a pessimistic reminder of mankind's flaws. I am both the instigator and the victim of my own suffering. Unfreiwillig Freiwilliger, I am not an unwilling volunteer for my pain. I love my narcissism, my pernicious display of agony. I would not accept the riches of the world in exchange for my ability to gripe, my blessed malaise. I am the scum of the world, a ruinous mass in the shape of a man, an unfortunate accessory to the children I brought into the world – the most pestilent thing I could have possibly done. O, my poor innocuous children, tainted by my deleterious blood a million apologies cannot heal. I am a beast of calamity, a messy and grievous mistake of this world. Today is my fortieth birthday and I want to kill myself. Amen." His voice broke into laughter at the end of his speech; a flood of choppy little shrieks that no natural force could terminate.

If something is ugly or hard, it is wrong.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. Rely upon your own energies, and so not wait for, or depend on other people.

[M]an postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches surrounding him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future.

Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not until we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, awakens the indignation which arms itself with secret forces. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.

A man's genius, the quality that differences him from every other, the susceptibility to one class of influences, the selection of what is fit for him, the rejection of what is unfit, determines for him the character of the universe.

Our eyes are holden that we cannot see things that stare us in the face, until the hour arrives when the mind is ripened, -- then we behold them, and the time when we saw them not is like a dream.

[G]et the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. ... You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than... to find the solutions.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made
Something more equal to the centuries
Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.
The mountains are dead stone, the people
Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness,
The mountains are not softened nor troubled
And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.

[Y]ou can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

[K]eep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

[H]ave the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Silly people run around
They worry me
And never ask me
Why they don't get past my door.
I'm taking the time for a number of things
That weren't important yesterday.

Look, I've got certain information, certain things have come to light, and uh, has it ever occurred to you, man, that given the nature of all this new shit, that, uh, instead of running around blaming me, that this whole thing might just be, not, you know, not just such a simple, but uh--you know?

The sons of Hermes love to play,
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn't;
Apollo's children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.

[T]he audience is right. They're always, always right. You hear directors complain that the advertising was lousy, the distribution is no good, the date was wrong to open the film. I don't believe that. The audience is never wrong. Never.