Quotable Quotes

Thomas Merton 1915-1968

I confess that I am sitting under a pine tree doing absolutely nothing. I have done nothing for one hour and firmly intend to continue to do nothing for an indefinite period. I have taken my shoes off. I confess that I have been listening to a mockingbird. I hear him singing in those cedars, and I am very sorry. It is probably my fault. He is singing again. This kind of thing goes on all the time. Wherever I am, I find myself the center of reactionary plots like this one. A Signed Confession of Crimes Against the State It is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction.... No one suspects the sane, and the sane have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons .... Raids on the Unspeakable

Samuel Coleridge

He who begins by loving Christianity better than Truth will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end by loving himself better than all. Aids to Reflection: Moral and Religious Aphorisms, XXV

Michael Montaigne

Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen.

David Hume

The errors of religion are dangerous; those of philosophy only ridiculous. Treatise, Bk I, Part IV, Section VII

Jean Paul Sartre

Hell is: other people.

Mark Twain

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.

Flash qFiasco

I am a dyslexic agnostic insomniac: I lie awake at night wondering if there is a dog.

John Milton

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mold me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me? Paradise Lost

Henry David Thoreau 1817-62

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior. Walden Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Walden The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. Walden A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. Walden Our life is frittered away by detail. Walden It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. Civil Disobedience

Flash qFiasco

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he has the wrong companions.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. Joyful Wisdom #116

G.B. Shaw

Forgive him, for he is a savage and believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature.

Oscar Wilde

To be really Greek, one should have no clothes. To be really medieval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Flash qFiasco

To be really post-modern, one shouldn't have a clue. A thing is not true (necessarily or contingently) because a man kills for it.

Ralf Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

To stand in true relations to men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? Friendship It is a low benefit to give me something; it is a high benefit to enable me to make somewhat of myself. The Divinity School Address

William S. Burroughs

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. Everything is permitted because nothing is true.

H.L. Mencken 1880 - 1956

For every problem there is a solution which is simple, neat, and wrong. The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught. The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first. Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Flash qFiasco

"What is truth?" How long is a piece of string? "What is The Truth?" How long is The Piece of String? Give me a piece of string and I will show you a truth --but you will find that you cannot hold up your trousers with a truth.

Thomas Mann

In our time the destiny of man presents itself in political terms.

The gravest long-term threat to liberty is not terrorism, but the overzealous measures governments are taking to combat it. Europe and America succumb to paranoia; every email, phone call, and web site visit is tracked by governments. Wake up, people! When governments spy on ordinary people, gulags are not far off. --FqF

James Baldwin

The real tragedy of prejudice is that the victims themselves eventually believe it. The Fire Next Time

John Steinbeck 1902-1968

Our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. Travels With Charley This prize business is only different from the Lettuce Queen of Salinas in degree. [Letter to a friend upon receiving the Nobel Prize in 1962.]

Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889-1951

The raisons may be the best part of a cake, but that doesn't mean that a bag of raisons is better than a cake. Culture and Value It is only by thinking more crazily than philosophers that you can solve their problems. Culture and Value A man can be imprisoned in a room with an unlocked door which opens inwards, so long as it does not occur to him to pull it rather than push it. Culture and Value

Flash qFiasco

The mind is an unlocked door which opens inwards. (By the way, there is no room--there is just entering and leaving.) A philosopher is a person who defines the world as a box & proves it by deducing the geometrical properties of a cube.

Cicero 106-43 b.c.

There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.

M.K. Gandhi 1869-1948

Curbing the mind is more difficult than to curb the wind. Autobiography, My Experiments With Truth We must become the change we want to see.

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Wittgenstein, misc info

not the Tractatus

not Philosophical Investigations either