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.
Friedrich Nietzsche - 12 ↩︎
William Wordsworth - 63 ↩︎
Samuel Beckett - 28 ↩︎
Jean-Paul Sartre - 202 ↩︎
Umberto Eco - 390 ↩︎
John Ruskin - 212 ↩︎
Gabriel García Márquez - 24 ↩︎
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 13 ↩︎
Bill Maher - 11 ↩︎
Marcel Proust - 54 ↩︎
John Dewey - 47 ↩︎
Flannery O'Connor - 154 ↩︎
Geoffrey Chaucer - 162 ↩︎
J.M. Barrie - 186 ↩︎
Alfred Tennyson - 73 ↩︎
Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 205 ↩︎
Adolf Hitler - 65 ↩︎
Leo Tolstoy - 25 ↩︎
Oscar Wilde - 56 ↩︎
Henry James - 181 ↩︎
Adam Smith - 19 ↩︎
Thomas Sowell - 383 ↩︎
Charles Darwin - 114 ↩︎
Richard Dawkins - 2 ↩︎
Henry David Thoreau - 180 ↩︎
Emil Cioran - 146 ↩︎
Ernest Hemingway - 22 ↩︎
Winston Churchill - 400 ↩︎
Albert Einstein - 69 ↩︎
E.O. Wilson - 142 ↩︎
John Locke - 49 ↩︎
Eudora Welty - 150 ↩︎
F. Scott Fitzgerald - 152 ↩︎
Richard Feynman - 58 ↩︎
James Joyce - 14 ↩︎
Albert Camus - 9 ↩︎
Victor Hugo - 60 ↩︎
George W. Bush - 167 ↩︎
Gore Vidal - 170 ↩︎
John Steinbeck - 215 ↩︎
Virginia Woolf - 393 ↩︎
James Madison - 193 ↩︎
Thomas Paine - 382 ↩︎
Henri Poincare - 179 ↩︎
Jane Austen - 44 ↩︎
William F. Buckley Jr. - 397 ↩︎
Stephen Hawking - 59 ↩︎
Walt Whitman - 394 ↩︎
Arthur Conan Doyle - 88 ↩︎
John Milton - 50 ↩︎
Immanuel Kant - 42 ↩︎
Jonathan Swift - 52 ↩︎
Mark Twain - 26 ↩︎
Franz Kafka - 23 ↩︎
Carl Sagan - 20 ↩︎
Denis Diderot - 36 ↩︎
Noam Chomsky - 4 ↩︎
Benjamin Franklin - 99 ↩︎
Arthur Schopenhauer - 91 ↩︎
Frederick the Great - 158 ↩︎
Gustave Flaubert - 175 ↩︎
Bertrand Russell - 10 ↩︎
Edgar Allan Poe - 21 ↩︎
David Hume - 35 ↩︎
John Berger - 206 ↩︎
James Anthony Froude - 190 ↩︎
André Malraux - 76 ↩︎
André Gide - 75 ↩︎
Douglas Adams - 37 ↩︎
George Eliot - 164 ↩︎
Toni Morrison - 387 ↩︎
George Orwell - 40 ↩︎
William Faulkner - 62 ↩︎
Elizabeth I of England - 145 ↩︎
Jack Kerouac - 187 ↩︎
Baruch Spinoza - 98 ↩︎
John Stuart Mill - 51 ↩︎
Ludwig Wittgenstein - 53 ↩︎
Isaac Newton - 43 ↩︎
Charles Dickens - 6 ↩︎
José Saramago - 219 ↩︎
William James - 398 ↩︎
Dante Alighieri - 127 ↩︎
George Bernard Shaw - 163 ↩︎