Quotes

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. – Hunter S. Thompson

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. – Martin Fowler

Compassion must be rational to be effective. – Peter Hitchens

A society that competes with biology is bound to lose. – Lamberto Maffei

Creativity is the union of existing elements with new useful connections. – Lamberto Maffei

For the Left, the rational should be real, for the Right, the real was the rational. – Jaime Nogueira Pinto

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana

The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. – Herbert Simon

After their final retirement from office or factory, people increasingly drop out of the consciousness of friends who only knew them because of what they did, rather than because of who they are. – Peter Hitchens

A person who extracts income and status from his own human capital places himself at the disposal of others: he uses himself up. – Daniel Markovits

Let’s defend one of our most precious liberties, the right to say: “Sorry, I just don’t know”. – Lara Prendergast

The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well. – Andrés Segovia

We all have to be used up by something. – Wendell Berry

He is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy. – Viktor Frankl

Know your potential weaknesses so that you can anticipate and develop compensating controls. – unknown author

A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. – John A. Shedd

A person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one. – J. Pierpont Morgan

A man without a smiling face must not open a shop. – Old Chinese proverb

Life is what we make of it. Travels are travelers. What we see is not what we see but what we are. – Fernando Pessoa

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels. – Tennessee Williams

If they had lacked the opportunity, the virtue of their spirit would have been sapped; if they had lacked virtue, the opportunity would have been wasted. – Machiavelli

Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible. – Kenneth Clark

Work and action are the precondition for developing a meaningful identity. – Frank Furedi

One of the most common forms of laziness is staying busy. – Robert Kiyosaki

For when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you. – Nietzsche

Eighty percent of success is showing up. – Woody Allen

For Homer, life, this small, ephemeral and so common a thing, has no value in itself. It becomes worth something only because of its intensity, its beauty, and the breath of greatness that everyone can give it — above all in his own eyes. – Dominique Venner

Punk Rock should mean freedom, liking and accepting anything that you like, playing whatever you want, as sloppy as you want, as long it is good and has passion. – Kurt Cobain

The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. – Fernando Pessoa

Scientism is rarely explicit about its political objectives, which is why its role as an ideology is so rarely visible and recognized. – Frank Furedi

I love it when people say that they’d stand up to the Nazis if they were living in Germany in the 1940s. I always think to myself “mate you can’t even tell 10 year olds to turn their music down when you’re on the bus”. – Francis Foster

Please stop referring to yourselves as Consumers. Consumers are different than Citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings. – James Kunstler

O tempo é sempre percebido interiormente. Não temos uma noção calendarizada do tempo que passou. Há textos em que a mudança interior é percebida pela mudança dos sítios. Alguém pode pensar que não mudou assim tanto, mas vendo a mudança do lugar pensa que também deve ter mudado alguma coisa. – Pedro Mexia

He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. – George Orwell

No doubt some who deserved to be asked were overlooked, and some who did not were invited by mistake; for that is the way of things, however careful those who arrange such matters may try to be. – J. R. R. Tolkien

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

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. – Oscar Wilde

Not that there weren’t drones that could do what he did, but they were so expensive to purchase and operate that it was cheaper to pay Rob. – Will McIntosh

Canada has been blessed with an abundance of natural resources, and also has been very fortunate to have people with the ability to convert these resources from potential assets into useful products at a price others are willing to pay. – Canadian Mining Hall of Fame

The brain cannot be in two places at once, so what people are referencing as multitasking is actually what neuroscientists call task switching and that means rapidly moving back and forth between different tasks. – Devora Zack

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state. – A. J. P. Taylor

Here Phaeton lies who in the sun god’s chariot fared. And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared. – Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 AD)

The Big Bang does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it. Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve. – Pope Francis

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. – Aldous Huxley

Guys make more money because their movies make more money… It makes sense. Instead of sitting around and complaining about that, do something. Go write something, go do something. But that subject is just so prevalently everywhere right now, and it’s boring. – Kristen Stewart

You see, Willem, he admits he doesn’t know the law, and at the same time claims he’s innocent. – Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925)

I’m all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius. – Leó Szilárd

But it felt like somebody had to exercise a little realism, maybe even a little healthy cynicism. – Iain M. Banks

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. – Kahlil Gibran

I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away. – Vincent van Gogh

I hate this system, but love the opportunities it creates. – In a polish bookstore

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. – Jean-Paul Sartre

I only interpret dreams. I don’t know how to turn them into reality. That’s why I have to live off what my daughters provide me with. – The Alchemist (1988), Paulo Coelho

It is much easier to criticise anyone identifying a problem than it is to deal with the problem. – Douglas Murray

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of every day life until they are indistinguishable from it. – Mark Weiser

And must they fall — the young, the proud, the brave — To swell one bloated chief’s unwholesome reign? No step between submission and a grave? – Lord Byron

Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old. – Cixin Liu

Any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong. – Cixin Liu

Mas fiquei em silêncio, assustado, como as pessoas que evitam cuidadosamente a mínima alusão a uma incerteza que lhes pode prejudicar a tranquilidade. – Orhan Pamuk

His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weaknes was the cause of his grief. – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)