Quotes

Herta Müller photo
B. W. Powe photo

“The Trojan War without Homer was nothing more than a battle over trade routes.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

Interlude, p. 113
Towards a Canada of Light (2006)

Sam Harris photo

“Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

2000s, The End of Faith (2004)

“Very early, I understood that women were required to be other than what they were.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

Of Robin Hood and Womanhood.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Democritus photo

“He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giant's shoulders to mount on.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

The Friend; A Series of Essays (1812), No. 15 (30 November 1809), p. 228
Cf. Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676): "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants".

Dante Alighieri photo

“Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.”
Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.

Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter I (tr. Barbara Reynolds); of love.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 162

Samuel Johnson photo

“Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.”

"The Bravery of the English Common Soldiers" http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5L9GAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA306&dq=%22Liberty+is%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=QMMqU_f7MMPMhAeAwoC4DA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Liberty%20is%22&f=false. Note: This essay was "added to some editions of The Idler, when collected into volumes, but not by Dr. Johnson" — vide The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 2 (London, 1806), footnote http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uYPfXTOfTTsC&pg=PA427&dq=%22This+short+paper%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=DcgqU_PlN_Ha0QXQyoDoAw&ved=0CGIQ6AEwBjgU#v=onepage&q=%22This%20short%20paper%22&f=false on p. 427

Warren Buffett photo

“We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: An Owner's Manual (1999)
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Jaron Lanier photo

“There is nothing more gray, stultifying, or dreary than life lived inside the confines of a theory.”

Jaron Lanier (1960) American computer scientist, musician, and author

"One Half of a Manifesto," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Arthur Ponsonby photo

“The defilement of the human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body. A fuller realization of this is essential.”

Arthur Ponsonby (1871–1946) British Liberal and later Labour politician and pacifist

Falsehood in Wartime (1928), Introduction
Context: In calm retrospect we can appreciate better the disastrous effects of the poison of falsehood, whether officially, semi-officially, or privately manufactured. It has been rightly said that the injection of the poison of hatred into men's minds by means of falsehood is a greater evil in war-time than the actual loss of life. The defilement of the human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body. A fuller realization of this is essential.

John Steinbeck photo

“Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well as of human weakness.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)
Context: Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion. My great predecessor, William Faulkner, speaking here, referred to it as a tragedy of universal fear so long sustained that there were no longer problems of the spirit, so that only the human heart in conflict with itself seemed worth writing about.
Faulkner, more than most men, was aware of human strength as well as of human weakness. He knew that the understanding and the resolution of fear are a large part of the writer's reason for being.
This is not new. The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.

“Many have pursued honor, and in the pursuit lost more of it than ever they could gain.”

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book IV: Taran Wanderer (1967), Chapter 21
Context: “When I was a child I dreamed of adventure, glory, honor in feats of arms. I think now that these things are shadows.”
“If you see them as shadows then you see them for what they are,” Annlaw agreed. “Many have pursued honor, and in the pursuit lost more of it than ever they could gain.”

George Soros photo

“It's more difficult, you know, to bring about positive change than it is to make money.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Interview with Mark Shapiro (2000)
Context: It's more difficult, you know, to bring about positive change than it is to make money. It's much easier to make money, because it's a much easier way to measure success — the bottom line. When it comes to social consequences, they've got all different people acting in different ways, very difficult to even have a proper criterion of success. So, it's a difficult task. Why not use an entrepreneurial, rather than a bureaucratic, approach. As long as people genuinely care for the people they're trying to help, they can actually do a lot of good.

“Print, in even more revolutionary ways than writing, changed the very form of civilization.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: Print, in even more revolutionary ways than writing, changed the very form of civilization.... the Protestant Revolution was contemporaneous with the invention of moving type.... the printing and distribution of millions of Bibles made possible a more personal religion, as the Word of God rested on each man's kitchen table. The book, by isolating the reader and his responses, tended to separate him from the powerful oral influences of his family, teacher, and priest. Print thus created a new conception of self as well as of self-interest. At the same time, the printing press provided the wide circulation necessary to create national literatures and intense pride in one's native language. Print thus promoted individualism on one hand and nationalism on the other.

Noam Chomsky photo

“State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Tony Jones on Lateline, April 8, 2002 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20020408.htm.
Quotes 2000s, 2002
Context: [Q: do you think the Palestinian suicide bombers are freedom fighters or terrorists? ] They're terrorists - they're both, actually. They're trying to fight for freedom, but doing it in a totally unacceptable immoral way. Of course they're terrorists. And there's been Palestinian terrorism all the way through. I have always opposed it, I oppose it now. But it's very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism. Quite typically, violence reflects the means of violence. It's not unusual. State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception.

Black Elk photo

“They had forgotten that the earth was their mother. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

After joining the Wild West Show in 1886 and traveling to Chicago and New York to learn from the Whites, citing Neihardt in Peter Farb, Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: I did not see anything to help my people. I could see that the Wasichus [Whites] did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation's hoop was broken. They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth was their mother. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"The Elderly Lady", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Context: The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.

“Government has no more to do with the religions opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics.”

John Leland (Baptist) (1754–1841) American Baptist minister

The Rights of Conscience Inalienable (1791)
Context: Government has no more to do with the religions opinions of men, than it has with the principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i. e., see that he meets with no personal abuse, or loss of property, from his religious opinions. (p. 184)