Quotes

A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.

Hard choices →

Published October 23, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 23  ·  ,

Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices means never retiring, because the brain has to be engaged in finding new solutions in the moment, not just remembering old formulas. Hard choices makes us wiser, smarter, stronger, and wealthier, and easy choices reverse our progress, focusing our energies on comfort or entertainment. In every difficult moment ask yourself, “What is a hard choice, and what is an easy choice?” and you will know instantly what is right.

~ Jerzy Gregorek

Elsewhere, this is 4a621. — slipbox

The game →

Published October 22, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 22  ·  

If you must play, decide on three things at the start: The rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.

~ Chinese proverb

Elsewhere, this is 4a620. — slipbox

A little less arrogant →

Published October 22, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 22  ·  , ,

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.

~ David Foster Wallace

Elsewhere, this is 4a804. — slipbox

Being alive →

Published October 21, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 21  ·  

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.

~ Joseph Campbell

Elsewhere, this is 4a619. — slipbox

Pseudo-knowledge →

Published October 20, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 20  ·  

Zeal, dogmatism and idealism exist only because we are forever committing intellectual sins. We sin by attributing concrete significance to meaningless pseudo-knowledge; We sin in being too lazy to think in terms of multiple causation and indulging instead in over-simplification, over-generalization and over-abstraction; And we sin by cherishing the false but agreeable notion that conceptual knowledge and, above all, conceptual pseudo-knowledge are the same as understanding.

~ Aldous Huxley

Elsewhere, this is 4a615. — slipbox

Frenzy and distraction →

Published October 19, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 19  ·  ,

True fortitude is seen in great exploits, that justice warrants and that wisdom guides. All else is towering phrensy and distraction.

~ Joseph Addison

Elsewhere, this is 4a617. — slipbox

Concrete ignorance →

Published October 18, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 18  ·  

Living amphibiously, half in fact and half in words, half in immediate experience and half in abstract notions, we contrive most of the time to make the worst of both worlds. We use language so badly that we became the slaves of our clichés and are turned either into conforming Babbits or into fanatics and doctrinairs. And we use immediate experience so badly that we become blind to the realities of our own nature and insensitive to the universe around us. The abstract knowledge which words bring us is paid for by concrete ignorance.

~ Aldous Huxley

Elsewhere, this is 4a614. — slipbox

Fruit of these teachings →

Published October 18, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 18  ·  ,

What is the fruit of these teachings? Only the most beautiful and proper harvest of the truly educated—tranquility, fearlessness, and freedom. We should not trust the masses who say that only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free.

~ Epictetus

Elsewhere, this is 4a591. — slipbox

On advice →

Published October 17, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 17  ·  

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; Had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Elsewhere, this is 4a613. — slipbox

Not fortuitous →

Published October 16, 2021  ·  All posts on Oct 16  ·  ,

If [the gods] had made philosophic knowledge also a common attribute and we were all born wise, then wisdom would have forfeited its principal quality, which is that it is not fortuitous. What is precious and magnificent about it is that it does not merely happen to people but that the individual is himself responsible for it and cannot obtain it from others.

~ Seneca

Elsewhere, this is 4a584. — slipbox