Aging Quotes (page 101)
If it were true, that old legend about appearing before a supreme judge and naming one’s record, I would offer, with all my pride, not any act I committed, but one thing I have never done on this earth: that I never sought an outside sanction. I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful act of existence and seeking justification beyond myself. This is my pride: that now, thinking of the...
Ayn Rand
But merely accepting authoritarian truth, even if that truth has some virtue, does not bring skepticism to an end. To blindly accept a truth one has never reflected upon retards the advance of reason. Our world rots in deceit. . . . Just as a tree bears the same fruit year after year and at the same time fruit that is new each year, so must all permanently valuable ideas be continually created anew in thought. But our age pretends to make a sterile tree bear fruit by tying fruits of truth...
Albert Schweitzer
I wonder," said Graham. Ostrog stared. Must the world go this way?" said Graham, with his emotions at the speaking point. "Must it indeedgo in this way? Have all our hopes been vain?"What do you mean?" said Ostrog. "Hopes?"I came from a democratic age. And I find an aristocratic tyranny!"Well,? but you are the chief tyrant."Graham shook his head.
H. G. Wells
NexusI wrote stubbornly into the evening.At the window, a giant praying mantisrubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,begging vacantly with pale eyes;and the commas leapt at me like wormsor miniature scythes blackened with age.the praying mantis screeched louder,his ragged jaws opening into formlessness.I walked outside;the grass hissed at my heels.Up ahead in the lapping darknesshe wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,a brontosaurus, a poet.
Rita Dove
Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush. Everyone using everyone else's coattails. How are you supposed to root for the home team when you don't even have a program or know the names? For that matter, what color jersey's are they reading as they trot out to the feild?
Ray Bradbury
The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn’t absurd, e. g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We dream — it is good we are dreaming —
It would hurt us — were we awake —
But since it is playing — kill us,
And we are playing — shriek —
What harm? Men die — externally —
It is a truth — of Blood —
But we — are dying in Drama —
And Drama — is never dead —
Cautious — We jar each other —
And either — open the eyes —
Lest the Phantasm — prove the Mistake —
And the livid Surprise
Cool us to Shafts of Granite —
With just an Age — and Name —
And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian —
It's prudenter...
Emily Dickinson