“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
- Muriel Rukeyser
“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order; and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.”
- Douglas Hostadter
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd.”
- Voltaire
“Religion is not the opiate of the masses. Religion is the placebo of the masses.”
- Hugh Laurie as Gregory House in House MD
“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”
- Albert Einstein
“A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. ”
- Mohandas Gandhi
“You know what the chain of command is? It’s the chain I go get and beat you with ’til you understand who’s in ruttin’ command here.”
- Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb in Firefly
“Wise people, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same life.”
- Aristophanes
“‘Make lots of money’, ‘enjoy the work’, ‘operate within the law’: choose two.”
- Brian Anderson
“Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.”
- Hebrews 11:1
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”
- Bertrand Russell
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
- Bertrand Russell
“Nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.”
- Jonathan Swift
“We shape the clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.”
- Lao Tzu
“You wish to think all the world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of any body … There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.”
- Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
“They weren’t cows inside. They were waiting to be, but they forgot. Now they see sky and they remember what they are.”
- Summer Glau as River Tam in Firefly
“I’d rather be insanely happy than sanely miserable.”
- K. S.
“No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.”
- Albert Einstein
“Humility does not mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less.”
- Ken Blanchard
“A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.”
- Lee Segall
“We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and.’”
- Arthur Stanley Eddington
“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition and not our circumstances.”
- Martha Washington
“Not all who wander are lost.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien
“To be wronged or robbed is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”
- Confucius
“Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.”
- Art Linkletter
“When all else is lost the future still remains.”
- Christian Bovee
“A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is by saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.”
- Alexander Pope
“If you lend money, it is uncertain whether you shall be repaid; but if you bestow alms, although they may be small, your return will be a hundred fold.”
- Saskya Pandita
“When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”
- Lucius Seneca
“Even the wise cannot see all ends.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien
“A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”
- Alexandre Dumas