Search

Topics

Quotes

“Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

II, 11
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book II

“Death is sweeter than continued life under tyranny. … Retaliation is a prescription from God. … We must rise up and kill those who kill us... Let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling.”

Louis Farrakhan (1933) leader of the Nation of Islam

August 15, 2015 http://www.wnd.com/wnd_video/farrakhan-retaliation-we-must-rise-up-and-kill-those-who-kill-us/ (15 August 2015)

“Life has little breathing time; and, even when we do for a moment reflect, it is rather on our present than our past : the pains and pleasures of memory are put aside as quickly as the poem which celebrates them.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

“The cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

The War On Drugs Is Lost (1995)

“Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 476 (5 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Now you're my whole life;
Now you're my whole world.
I just can't believe
The way I feel about you girl.
Like a river meets the sea,
Stronger than it's ever been.
We've come so far since that day,
And I thought I loved you then.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Then, written by Chris DuBois, Ashley Gorley, and Brad Paisley.
Song lyrics, American Saturday Night (2009)

“When a person screams in pain, the actual pain is only half the noise they make. The other half is the terror at being forced to accept that they exist.”

Noah Cicero (1980) American writer

Source: The Condemned

“For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her feel alive, because it was worth feeling.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

“Sure it will hurt. But so what? Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of anything, even pain.”

Rodman Philbrick book Freak the Mighty

Variant: Pain is just a state of mind. You can think your way out of everything, even pain.
Source: Freak the Mighty

“Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain,
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding
the first one again.”

Piet Hein (1905–1996) Danish puzzle designer, mathematician, author, poet

Consolation Grook, his first grook, published in Politiken (April 1940) as translated in Grooks (1966)
Grooks

“His face was tense with pain. But then, who notices when they meet a theatre critic whose face is tense with pain? It is one of the marks of the profession.”

Robertson Davies book Murther and Walking Spirits

Part 1, section 2.
Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)

“Shutting down inquiry is evil. Causing pain purposefully for no reason is evil. Enjoying causing pain by shutting down inquiry is an absolute evil.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: The Inquisition, by defining and limiting knowledge, was evil. The Taliban, by defining truth and refusing girls an education, is evil. Any religion that says it knows the one and only truth is evil, because it limits knowledge. Any political body that says it owns the truth is evil. Same reason.
Any repressive regime that seeks to control exploration and experimentation is evil. Same reason. Any regime that defines truth as a set of beliefs and occurrences that cannot be questioned, that can neither be demonstrated nor proven is not only evil but ridiculous. This includes all mythologies, miracles, etc. because, if creation happened for a reason, if it was done by God, you'd better believe every part of it, including intelligence, was done for a reason ascertainable, eventually, by intelligence. We would not follow and adore a ruler who lied and tortured. Why would we worship a God who did either? God doesn't lie and he/she/it doesn't fool around!
Shutting down inquiry is evil. Causing pain purposefully for no reason is evil. Enjoying causing pain by shutting down inquiry is an absolute evil.

“Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)
Context: But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

“Pain is not the real problem; the real problem is our thinking about pain, our resistance to it, our attempt to escape it and get to an (imaginary) future.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/shockingly-simple-principles-of-spiritual-awakening/

“Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.”

Philip Pullman book The Subtle Knife

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 15 : Bloodmoss
Context: "You fought for the knife?"
"Yes, but — "
"Then you're a warrior. That's what you are. Argue with anything else, but don't argue with your own nature."
Will knew that the man was speaking the truth. But it wasn't a welcome truth. It was heavy and painful. The man seemed to know that, because he let Will bow his head before he spoke again.
"There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit."
"And now those two powers are lining up for battle. And each of them wants that knife of yours more than anything else. You have to choose, boy. We've been guided here, both of us — you with the knife, and me to tell you about it."

“The pursuit of philosophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if what is known is painful.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1940s, Philosophy for Laymen (1946)
Context: The pursuit of philosophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if what is known is painful. A man imbued with the philosophic spirit, whether a professional philosopher or not, will wish his beliefs to be as true as he can make them, and will, in equal measure, love to know and hate to be in error. This principle has a wider scope than may be apparent at first sight.

“Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane. … Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. Most spend their last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animals and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational – and capable of logical thought – than six-week-old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children.”

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Twenty One Reasons For Being A Vegetarian" (2007), in vernoncoleman.com http://www.vernoncoleman.com/twentyoner.htm.

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Twenty One Reasons For Being A Vegetarian" (2007), in vernoncoleman.com http://www.vernoncoleman.com/twentyoner.htm.

“Undoubtedly there are bourgeois who from a feeling of justice and humanity place themselves upon the side of the laborers and socialists, but these are only the exceptions; the mass of the bourgeoisie has class consciousness, a consciousness of being the ruling and exploiting class. Indeed, the mass of the bourgeoisie, just because they are a ruling class, have a much sharper and stronger class consciousness than the proletariat.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“I know you have a heavy heart, I can feel it when we kiss
So many men stronger than me
Have thrown their backs out trying to lift it
But me I'm not a gamble
You can count on me to split
The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lua
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)