Against Quotes (page 101)
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We're not obsessed by anything, you see," insisted Ford."..."And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."I care about lots of things," said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty."Such as?"Well," said the old man, "life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords."Would you die for them?"Fjords?" blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. "No."Well then."Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.
Douglas Adams
But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the...
Charles Darwin
.... it is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that...
Ayn Rand
Time is like a river flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours wasted minutes years of repetition and time that has been killed.
Harlan Ellison
Germans grew reluctant to stay in communal ski lodges, fearing they might talk in their sleep. They postponed surgeries because of the lip-loosening effects of anesthetic. Dreams reflected the ambient anxiety. One German dreamed that an SA man came to his home and opened the door to his oven, which then repeated every negative remark the household had made against the government.
Erik Larson
Tis true my garments threadbare are, And sorry poor I seem; But inly I am richer far. Than any poet's dream. For I've a hidden life no one. Can ever hope to see; A sacred sanctuary none. May share with me. Aloof I stand from out the strife, Within my heart a song; By virtue of my inner life. I to myself belong. Against man-ruling I rebel, Yet do not fear defeat, For to my secret citadel. I may retreat. Oh you who have an inner life. Beyond this dismal day. With wars and evil rumours rife, Go...
Robert W. Service
At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry’s language, entering Henry’s world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness.
Anais Nin
After all, the task of the humanists
is surely not that of pitting their slogans against the slogans of the oppressors, with the oppressed as the testing ground, "housing" the slogans of first one group and then the other. On the contrary,
the task of the humanists is to see that the oppressed become aware of the fact that as dual beings, "housing" the oppressors within them
selves, they cannot be truly human.
Paulo Freire