Chapter 1 - You are reading Chapter 1 right now!
| Preface | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |
| Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 |

Chapter 1

Friedrich Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. [1]

William Wordsworth

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. [2]

Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. [3]

Jean-Paul Sartre

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. [4]

Umberto Eco

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. [5]

John Ruskin

There is no wealth but life. [6]

Gabriel García Márquez

A person doesn't die when he should but when he can. [7]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If there is no God, everything is permitted. [8]

Bill Maher

Religion, to me, is a bureaucracy between man and God that I don't need. [9]

Marcel Proust

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. [10]

Christopher Hitchens

To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid. [11]

John Dewey

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. [12]

Flannery O'Connor

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location. [13]

Geoffrey Chaucer

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire. [14]

J.M. Barrie

The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings. [15]

Alfred Tennyson

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. [16]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. [17]

Adolf Hitler

Words build bridges into unexplored regions. [18]

Leo Tolstoy

There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. [19]

Oscar Wilde

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [20]

Henry James

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. [21]

Adam Smith

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience? [22]

Joe Rogan

To me, comedy is a great occupation because I don't really worry that much about what other people think of me. [23]

Thomas Sowell

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win. [24]

Charles Darwin

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them. [25]

Richard Dawkins

One of the things that is wrong with religion is that it teaches us to be satisfied with answers which are not really answers at all. [26]

Henry David Thoreau

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. [27]

Emil Cioran

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility. [28]

Ernest Hemingway

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. [29]

Winston Churchill

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. [30]

Albert Einstein

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. [31]

E.O. Wilson

There is no better high than discovery. [32]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words. [33]

John Locke

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. [34]

Eudora Welty

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life. [35]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say. [36]

Richard Feynman

I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile! [37]

James Joyce

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead. [38]

Albert Camus

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. [39]

William Shakespeare

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. [40]

Victor Hugo

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age. [41]

George W. Bush

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test. [42]

Gore Vidal

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for [43]

John Steinbeck

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals. [44]

Virginia Woolf

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. [45]

James Madison

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home. [46]

Thomas Paine

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection. [47]

Henri Poincare

It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. [48]

Jane Austen

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. [49]

William F. Buckley Jr.

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ’Stop!’ [50]

Stephen Hawking

Women. They are a complete mystery. [51]

Walt Whitman

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. [52]

Arthur Conan Doyle

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. [53]

John Milton

A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. [54]

Immanuel Kant

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. [55]

Jonathan Swift

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. [56]

Aristotle

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. [57]

Mark Twain

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. [58]

Franz Kafka

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places. [59]

Carl Sagan

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. [60]

Voltaire

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him. [61]

Denis Diderot

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs. [62]

Noam Chomsky

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people. [63]

Benjamin Franklin

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. [64]

Arthur Schopenhauer

After your death you will be what you were before your birth. [65]

Frederick the Great

An educated people can be easily governed. [66]

Gustave Flaubert

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. [67]

Bertrand Russell

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. [68]

Edgar Allan Poe

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? [69]

David Hume

He is happy whom circumstances suit his temper; but he Is more excellent who suits his temper to any circumstance. [70]

John Berger

One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man. [71]

James Anthony Froude

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes. [72]

André Malraux

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides. [73]

André Gide

Be faithful to that which exists within yourself. [74]

Douglas Adams

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. [75]

George Eliot

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. [76]

Toni Morrison

Bit by bit, at 124 and in the Clearing, along with others, she had claimed herself. Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another. [77]

George Orwell

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. [78]

William Faulkner

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. [79]

Elizabeth I of England

A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing. [80]

Jack Kerouac

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. [81]

Baruch Spinoza

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak. [82]

John Stuart Mill

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. [83]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. [84]

Isaac Newton

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. [85]

Charles Dickens

We need never be ashamed of our tears. [86]

José Saramago

There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything. [87]

William James

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. [88]

Dante Alighieri

Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always [89]

George Bernard Shaw

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. [90]

In Order of Appearance

Each chapter features the same authors in the same order! Different quotes.


  1. Friedrich Nietzsche - 12 ↩︎

  2. William Wordsworth - 63 ↩︎

  3. Samuel Beckett - 28 ↩︎

  4. Jean-Paul Sartre - 202 ↩︎

  5. Umberto Eco - 390 ↩︎

  6. John Ruskin - 212 ↩︎

  7. Gabriel García Márquez - 24 ↩︎

  8. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 13 ↩︎

  9. Bill Maher - 11 ↩︎

  10. Marcel Proust - 54 ↩︎

  11. Christopher Hitchens - 1 ↩︎

  12. John Dewey - 47 ↩︎

  13. Flannery O'Connor - 154 ↩︎

  14. Geoffrey Chaucer - 162 ↩︎

  15. J.M. Barrie - 186 ↩︎

  16. Alfred Tennyson - 73 ↩︎

  17. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 205 ↩︎

  18. Adolf Hitler - 65 ↩︎

  19. Leo Tolstoy - 25 ↩︎

  20. Oscar Wilde - 56 ↩︎

  21. Henry James - 181 ↩︎

  22. Adam Smith - 19 ↩︎

  23. Joe Rogan - 46 ↩︎

  24. Thomas Sowell - 383 ↩︎

  25. Charles Darwin - 114 ↩︎

  26. Richard Dawkins - 2 ↩︎

  27. Henry David Thoreau - 180 ↩︎

  28. Emil Cioran - 146 ↩︎

  29. Ernest Hemingway - 22 ↩︎

  30. Winston Churchill - 400 ↩︎

  31. Albert Einstein - 69 ↩︎

  32. E.O. Wilson - 142 ↩︎

  33. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 15 ↩︎

  34. John Locke - 49 ↩︎

  35. Eudora Welty - 150 ↩︎

  36. F. Scott Fitzgerald - 152 ↩︎

  37. Richard Feynman - 58 ↩︎

  38. James Joyce - 14 ↩︎

  39. Albert Camus - 9 ↩︎

  40. William Shakespeare - 8 ↩︎

  41. Victor Hugo - 60 ↩︎

  42. George W. Bush - 167 ↩︎

  43. Gore Vidal - 170 ↩︎

  44. John Steinbeck - 215 ↩︎

  45. Virginia Woolf - 393 ↩︎

  46. James Madison - 193 ↩︎

  47. Thomas Paine - 382 ↩︎

  48. Henri Poincare - 179 ↩︎

  49. Jane Austen - 44 ↩︎

  50. William F. Buckley Jr. - 397 ↩︎

  51. Stephen Hawking - 59 ↩︎

  52. Walt Whitman - 394 ↩︎

  53. Arthur Conan Doyle - 88 ↩︎

  54. John Milton - 50 ↩︎

  55. Immanuel Kant - 42 ↩︎

  56. Jonathan Swift - 52 ↩︎

  57. Aristotle - 31 ↩︎

  58. Mark Twain - 26 ↩︎

  59. Franz Kafka - 23 ↩︎

  60. Carl Sagan - 20 ↩︎

  61. Voltaire - 61 ↩︎

  62. Denis Diderot - 36 ↩︎

  63. Noam Chomsky - 4 ↩︎

  64. Benjamin Franklin - 99 ↩︎

  65. Arthur Schopenhauer - 91 ↩︎

  66. Frederick the Great - 158 ↩︎

  67. Gustave Flaubert - 175 ↩︎

  68. Bertrand Russell - 10 ↩︎

  69. Edgar Allan Poe - 21 ↩︎

  70. David Hume - 35 ↩︎

  71. John Berger - 206 ↩︎

  72. James Anthony Froude - 190 ↩︎

  73. André Malraux - 76 ↩︎

  74. André Gide - 75 ↩︎

  75. Douglas Adams - 37 ↩︎

  76. George Eliot - 164 ↩︎

  77. Toni Morrison - 387 ↩︎

  78. George Orwell - 40 ↩︎

  79. William Faulkner - 62 ↩︎

  80. Elizabeth I of England - 145 ↩︎

  81. Jack Kerouac - 187 ↩︎

  82. Baruch Spinoza - 98 ↩︎

  83. John Stuart Mill - 51 ↩︎

  84. Ludwig Wittgenstein - 53 ↩︎

  85. Isaac Newton - 43 ↩︎

  86. Charles Dickens - 6 ↩︎

  87. José Saramago - 219 ↩︎

  88. William James - 398 ↩︎

  89. Dante Alighieri - 127 ↩︎

  90. George Bernard Shaw - 163 ↩︎