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ALWAYS UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Trying to remember good
quotes is like trying to pick up a handfull of mercury-- the
tighter you grip the more that slips through. (note: please
don't touch mercury or you'll end up like me)
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not
after you."
"I will not say: 'do not weep,' for not
all tears are an evil."
- Gandalf
"Faithless is
the heart that turns aside when the road becomes dark."
-
Gimli
"A faithful heart makes wishes come true."
-
Jen Yu
[Spoken while writing on a chalk board and beginning a
Continuum Mechanics lecture] " 'Stress' ... if this were a
psychology course, I would write '99% self-induced'..."
-
J.A.M. Boulet
"Of good, fast, and cheap, you can choose 2 of the 3-
you can't have them all." (i.e. you can have it fast and
cheap, but it won't be good; you can have it good and fast,
but it won't be cheap; etc.)
- Business Axiom
"Like many things, I am nothing."
- Li Mu
Bai
"The things we touch have no permanence. My master
would say: there is nothing we can hold onto in this world.
Only by letting go can we truly possess what is real."
-
Li Mu Bai
"Real sharpness comes without effort."
- Li Mu Bai
"No growth without resistance. No action without
reaction. No desire without restraint."
- Li Mu Bai
"I've already wasted my whole life. I want to tell you
with my last breath that I have always loved you. I would
rather be a ghost, drifting by your side as a condemned soul,
than enter heaven without you. Because of your love, I will
never be a lonely spirit."
- Li Mu Bai
"The human race likes to give itself airs. One good
volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the
human race has in its entire history."
- Ray Bradbury.
"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing
in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts,
they alter the facts to fit their views... which can be very
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs
altering."
- Dr Who.
"The number you have dialed
is imaginary. Rotate phone 90 degrees and try again."
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but
not simpler."
- Albert Einstein.
"The most
exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' ('I found it!') but rather
'hmm....that's funny...'"
- Isaac Asimov.
"Anyone
who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
- Albert Einstein.
"Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight
hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep
on who is to be trained! A Jedi must have the deepest
commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I
watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to
the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. What he was
doing. Hmph! Adventure. Heh! Excitement. Heh! A Jedi craves
not these things. You are reckless!"
- Yoda
"Do or
do not. There is no try."
- Yoda
"Size matters
not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? And
well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful
ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy
surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this
crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; between you,
me, the tree, the rock, everywhere."
- Yoda
"A
Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark
side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are
they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once
you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your
destiny..."
- Yoda
"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know
what I am doing."
- Werner von Braun
"Man is the
best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only
one that can be mass-produced with unskilled labor."
-
Werner von Braun
"God could cause us considerable
embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us: we
should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom."
- Goethe
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it
would not be called research, would it ?"
- Albert
Einstein.
"The face is the mirror of the
mind, and the eyes- without speaking- confess the secrets of
the heart."
- someone
Remember to be gentle with
yourself and others. We are all children of chance, and
none can say why some fields will blossom and others lay brown
beneath the August sun. Care for those around you.
Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less
than yours, their choices in life no more easily made.
And give- give in any way you can, of whatever you
possess. To give is to love. To withhold is to
wither. Care less for your harvest than how it is
shared, and your life will have meaning and your heart will
have peace.
- Kent Nerburn All
the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
- Jaques
Where men gather, a bustle
of chaos ensues.
- Keldorn Every great
decision creates ripples--like a huge boulder dropped in a
lake. The ripples merge, rebound off the banks in unforeseeable
ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more
uncertain the consequences.
- Dr. Who
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind
don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
- Dr. Seuss I like
nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary
ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through
the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that
enables you to laugh at life's realities.
- Dr. Seuss
There are no
choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes
afterwards, when you ask 'Why me?' and 'What if?'. When you
look back and see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or
forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it
wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking
a different set of questions.
- M. Payne
The past is a gaping hole. The genius of the hole: no matter
how much time you spend climbing out, you can still fall back
down in an instant. You try to run from it, but the more you
run, the deeper it grows behind you, its edges yawning at your
heels. Your only chance is to turn around and face it.
- M. Payne
Your past has a way of sneaking up on you. You'll hear broken
echoes of it everywhere, like a bad replay. You'll get mad at
everyone for reminding you about it, even if it's all in your
head.
- M. Payne
When entertainment turns into a surreal reflection of your
life, you're a lucky man if you can laugh at the joke. Luck
and I weren't on speaking terms.
- M. Payne
The trouble with wanting something is the fear of losing it,
or never getting it. The thought makes you weak.
- M. Payne
All this time we got the fable of Sleeping Beauty wrong. The
prince didn't kiss her to wake her up. No one who slept for a
hundred years is likely to wake up. It was the other way
round. He kisses her to wake himself up from the nightmare
that has brought him there.
- M. Payne
The trueness of a thing like love, hate, etc I think is better
measured not by how quickly it starts up, but by how slowly it
dies out.
- Me
Life must destroy and consume other life to survive. Do
you think this is the signature of a benign divinity?
- Me |
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"No matter where you go- there you are."
Click
to hear Buckaroo Banzai (remember him?) say this
quote
"Sometimes I do what I want to. The rest of the
time- I do what I have to."
- Cicero
"What
we do in life echoes in eternity."
- Maximus
Meridius
"The price of freedom is eternal
vigilance."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Quiet your mind, and feel the powerful presence
of life come flooding in."
- Qui-Gon Jinn
"Be mindful of the future, but not at the
expense of the present."
- Qui-Gon Jinn
"Your focus determines your reality."
- Qui-Gon Jinn
" 'The time has come,' the walrus said,
'to
talk of many things:
of shoes and ships and sealing
wax,
of cabbages and kings.' "
- Lewis
Carroll
"It is better to sleep on things beforehand than
lie awake about them afterwards."
- Baltasar Gracian
"Harmony is the inner cadence of contentment we
feel when the melody of life is in tune. When somehow
we're able to strike the right chord- to balance the
expectations of our families and our responsibilities in
the world on the one hand with our inner needs for
spiritual growth and personal expression on the other...
Usually, when the distractions of life deplete our
energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we
need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream,
time to think, time to contemplate what's working and
what's not, so we can make changes for the better...
Learn how to pause."
- Sarah Ban Breathnach
"Age is opportunity no less than youth itself."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"I give you the chameleon, whose ability to blend
itself into the background tells you all you need to
know about the roots of ecology and the foundations of a
personal identity"
- Frank Herbert
I am
responsible for everything ... except for my very
responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being.
Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled
to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world ... in
the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without
help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole
responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to
tear myself away from this responsibility for an
instant.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
To eat is to
appropriate by destruction.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
Fear? If I have gained anything by damning
myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
Life moves pretty fast... if you don't stop and
look around once in a while-- you could miss it !!
-
Ferris Bueller
The old fathers wove the skein of your life long
ago. Hide in a hole if you like- you won't live a second
longer. ...And fear profits a man nothing.
- Herger
A man who cannot cast aside a thing of value at
need is in fetters.
- Aragorn
Many of the
truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.
- Obi Wan Kenobi
If you embrace the pain, it
cannot touch your soul.
- Kain
In a room
full of 400 people, it takes 400 people to keep the
silence-- it takes one to break it.
- Me
At
least as important as the ability to be right and not
wrong, is the ability to **know** if you are right or
wrong.
- Me
Free will has its limits. A
snail can choose to some extent to be a happy snail or a
sad snail, an optimist or a pessimist snail, a
hardworking or lazy snail, but a snail cant choose to be
an eagle.
- Me
Interacting free wills
inevitably cause suffering.
- Axiom
Einstein
was a brilliant physicist, but not particularly
well-noted for his views on nutrition.
- Me
Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I
have others.
- Groucho Marx
Generalizations are always wrong.
- Axiom (?) (!)
I am a nobody, and nobody is perfect; therefore, I
am perfect.
- Axiom
Open yourself to the truth, then trust in your natural
responses, and everything will fall into place.
- Lao Tzu
They say the mirror never lies. Actually its not
true, though-- it gets it backwards every time.
Shows what they know, also shows that getting self
perspective is deceptively tricky.
- Me
Show me a man with 20 friends, and I'll show you a man
with zero.
- Me
Soren Kierkegaard
The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual
life and just as only great souls are exposed to
passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to
what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than
grandiose thoughts in embryo.
The truth is a
snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You
cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it,
but only in such a way that it catches you.
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the
hour of giving birth, look at the dying mans struggle at
his last extremity, and then tell me whether something
that begins and ends thus could be intended for
enjoyment.
It is quite true what Philosophy
says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that
makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived
forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it
comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never
becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no
moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-
looking position.
The more a man can forget, the
greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can
undergo, the more he can remember the more divine his
life becomes.
In order to swim one takes off all
ones clothes in order to aspire to the truth one must
undress in a far more inward sense, divest oneself of
all ones inward clothes, of thoughts, conceptions,
selfishness etc. before one is sufficiently naked.
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals
profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so
formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound
like beautiful music.
Since my earliest
childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As
long as it stays, I am ironic; if it is pulled out, I shall
die.
:::NEW:::
Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society's
understanding.
- R. Al'Goul
There are some people without decency who must be fought
without hesitation, without remorse.
- R. Al'Goul
What chance does the world have when good people do
nothing?
- R Dawes
People need dramatic examples to shake them out of
apathy.
- B. Wayne
You
can construct the character of a man and his age not
only from what he does and says, but from what he fails
to say and do.
- G.N. Douglas
A
pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to
cure a person in love.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
At
times one remains faithful to a cause only because its
opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
Can
an ass be tragic? To perish under a burden one can
neither bear nor throw off? The case of the philosopher.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
In
the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now
sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of
existence, and loathing seizes him.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
It
is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say
in a whole book.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
Love
is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
Out
of damp and gloomy days, out of solitude, out of
loveless words directed at us, conclusions grow up in us
like fungus: one morning they are there, we know not
how, and they gaze upon us, morose and gray. Woe to the
thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the
plants that grow in him.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
Success
has always been a great liar.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
The
individual has always had to struggle to keep from being
overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be
lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is
too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
There is always some madness in love. But there is
also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
This
is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of
love, and keep modest as a giver.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly
realizes that in the process one has learned something
that one really needed to know in the worst way - before
one began.
Friedrich
Nietzsche
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...I tell you that it is the greatest good for a
human being to have discussions every day about virtue
and the other things you hear me talking about,
examining myself and others, and that the unexamined
life is not livable for a human being...
- Socrates
To fear death, my friends, is only to think
ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think
that we know what we do not know. For anything that men
can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen
to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well
that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but
that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we
do not know?
- Socrates
In every one of us
there are two ruling and directing principles, whose
guidance we follow wherever they may lead; the one being
an innate desire of pleasure; the other, an acquired
judgment which aspires after excellence.
- Socrates
A system of morality which is based on relative
emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar
conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing
true.
- Socrates
Whenever, therefore, people
are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is
clear that the error has slid into their minds through
the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.
-
Socrates
Well I am certainly wiser than this
man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any
knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows
something which he does not know, whereas I am quite
conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I
am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not
think that I know what I do not know.
- Socrates
For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does
one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not
make a man blessed and happy.
- Aristotle
Aristotle illustrates his view of the relation
of metaphor to simile as follows. When the poet say of
Achilles, He sprang on them like a lion, this is a
simile. When he says, The lion sprang on them, this is
metaphor; for as both animals are brave, he has
transferred the name of lion to Achilles. Elsewhere he
calls simile a metaphor with a preface and declares it
inferior to metaphor on two counts: it is lengthier,
therefore less pleasing; and since it does not affirm
that this is that, the mind does not inquire into the
matter. Now it is true that metaphor is often (not, I
think, always) preferable to simile on both these
grounds, but the grounds are rhetorical not semantic
ones. Terseness is more pleasing and more stimulating to
thought than verbosity; that is what it comes to.
Excellence or virtue is a settled disposition of
the mind that determines our choice of actions and
emotions and consists essentially in observing the mean
relative to us ... a mean between two vices, that which
depends on excess and that which depends on defect.
- Aristotle
The moral virtues, then, are
produced in us neither by nature nor against nature.
Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their
reception, but their complete formation is the product
of habit.
- Aristotle
Everything necessarily
is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot
divide and say that one or the other is necessary. I
mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or
not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary
for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not
to take place, though it is necessary for one to take
place or not to take place.
- Aristotle
SUMO- I just don't see why it's still not an
Olympic event.
"My hands are tied, my body bruised... she's got
me with nothing to win and nothing left to lose."
-
Bono
"Sweet the sin; bitter the taste in my
mouth. I see seven towers, but I only see one way out.
You've got to cry without weeping, talk without
speaking, scream without raising your voice. I took the
poison from the poison stream, and I floated out of
here..."
- Bono
Unbroken spirit, obscured and disquiet, finds
clearness this trial demands, and at the end of this day
sighs in anxious relief- for the fortune lies still in
his hands. If there's a pensive fear, or a wasted year,
a man must learn to cope. If his obsession is real,
suppression that he feels must turn to hope.
- Dream
Theater
There should be a science of
discontent. People need hard times and oppression to
develop psychic muscles.
- Muad'Dib
My father once told me that
respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for
all morality. "Something cannot emerge from
nothing," he said. This is profound thinking if you
understand how unstable "the truth" can be.
- Muad'Dib
The concept of progress acts as
a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of
the future.
- Muad'Dib
Deep in the human unconscious
is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes
sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond
logic.
- Muad'Dib
There is in all things a
pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry,
elegance, and grace--those qualities you find always in
that which the true artist captures. You can find it in
the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along
a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or
the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns
in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the
dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to
see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is
clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity.
In such perfection, all things move toward death.
- Muad'Dib
These are illusions of popular history which a
successful religion must promote: Evil men never
prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the
best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue
always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad
human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one
from demon possession; only females understand the
ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness .
. .
-From the Missionaria Protectiva
One cannot have a single thing without its opposite.
- Muad'Dib
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he
thereby become a monster. And if you gaze overlong into
an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- Nietzsche
Why is it that the hardest thing in the world is to
convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove
it for himself if he'd just spend a little time
practicing? Why should that be so hard?
- J.L. Seagull
If all the power in the world could grant every wish in
the world, it would show exactly how cheap and gaudy all
of them could be. The most powerful wish is the
one that hasn't come true.
- B. Wayne
People fear anything or anyone that becomes too
powerful.
- C. Kent
There comes a time in your life when you realize who
matters, who never did, and who always will. Don't
worry about people from your past... there's a reason
they didn't make it to your future.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our
enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- M.L. King Jr.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has
a chance to get its pants on.
- W. Churchill
:::NEW:::
Accept
the things to which fate binds you, and love the people
with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all
your heart.
Marcus
Aurelius
Forward,
as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any
shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the
smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no
trifle.
Marcus
Aurelius
Here
is the rule to remember in the future, When anything
tempts you to be bitter: not, ''This is a misfortune''
but ''To bear this worthily is good fortune.''
Marcus
Aurelius
If
you are pained by external things, it is not they that
disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in
your power to wipe out that judgment now.
Marcus
Aurelius
Let
it be your constant method to look into the design of
people's actions, and see what they would be at, as
often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the
more significant, practice it first upon yourself.
Marcus
Aurelius
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he
was meant to live.
Marcus
Aurelius
Nowhere
can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than
in his own soul.
Marcus
Aurelius
The
happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your
thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care
that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and
reasonable nature.
Marcus
Aurelius
We
ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or
a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after
season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
Marcus
Aurelius
When
you arise in the morning, think of what a precious
privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to
enjoy, to love.
Marcus
Aurelius
You
have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize
this, and you will find strength.
Marcus
Aurelius
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