quotes eggplant favorited
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It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.
The further you run away from your sins, the more exhausted you are when they catch up to you, and they do.
Movie: Inside Man
Shared happiness is double happiness. Shared sorrow is half sorrow.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
We will be at “peace,” as it is called, if we tolerate everyone who disagrees with us, provided he returns the compliment. If there are those unwilling to do so, we think we can “defend” ourselves against them in order that we can discuss or dialogue about the differences. This is a noble effort. But what we cannot do is to fail to come to terms with ideas that claim to be true and seek to expand themselves into the world by means other than ideas. The solution to the problem is not to say that all ideas are fanatical or wrong. The solution is to take ideas seriously enough to state them properly and to have a philosophy that itself is sufficiently realistic to comprehend why error is attractive—again, almost always because it has some truth to it. The idea that there is no truth is itself an origin of war, an idea that denies that it too is an idea.
Essay: On Wars…and Wars of Ideas
Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.
The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
If you don’t wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don’t have the time or resources to do ‘em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you’ll get to later.
Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed. And they imagine it on a beautiful platter with glitter and rose petals. And everyone’s clapping for them. But the bummer is most ideas kinda suck when you do ‘em. And no matter how much you plan you still have to do something for the first time. And you’re almost guaranteed the first time you do something it’ll blow. But somebody who does something bad three times still has three times the experience of that other person who’s still dreaming of all the applause.
Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed. And they imagine it on a beautiful platter with glitter and rose petals. And everyone’s clapping for them. But the bummer is most ideas kinda suck when you do ‘em. And no matter how much you plan you still have to do something for the first time. And you’re almost guaranteed the first time you do something it’ll blow. But somebody who does something bad three times still has three times the experience of that other person who’s still dreaming of all the applause.
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Don’t let other people belittle your ambitions. Only small people do that. Truly great people make you feel that you, too, can also become great.
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
Winners forget they are in a race, they just love to run.
Movie: With Honors
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow them.
What would you do if you were stuck in the elevator with the president, just you and him?
Would you scream? Would you laugh? Would you offer him gum? Would you say things to make him your friend?
What would you do if you were stuck for ten hours? Would you listen? Ask questions? And how?
What would it be that you’d say to the president? And why aren’t you saying it now?
Would you scream? Would you laugh? Would you offer him gum? Would you say things to make him your friend?
What would you do if you were stuck for ten hours? Would you listen? Ask questions? And how?
What would it be that you’d say to the president? And why aren’t you saying it now?
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
I think we have to go to the young people, right from the very beginning. The whole structure of how we learn about science has been warped and is getting more warped by the testing requirements that are put in place now because science is being taught as a set of facts instead of being portrayed as a process or a trajectory, and the trajectory is what really matters. Knowledge is plastic and is always evolving, and ideas mature and take on different shapes. The only way that you are going to distinguish between an immature idea and a mature idea is if you have a better understanding of how science works. So that is why I focused that book on young people. Kids are the only chunk of society left that is open to new ways of thinking. The more I learned over the years, the more rigid and entrenched people get the older they are, in terms of the way they feel the world works.
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.
You cannot sell a blemished apple in the supermarket, but you can sell a tasteless one provided it is shiny, smooth, even, uniform, and bright.
You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.
What’s really important in life? Sitting on a beach? Looking at television eight hours a day? I think we have to appreciate that we’re alive for only a limited period of time, and we’ll spend most of our lives working. That being the case, I believe one of the most important priorities is to do whatever we do as well as we can. We should take pride in that.
The trouble with many plans is that they are based on the way things are now. To be successful, your personal plan must focus on what you want, not what you have.
Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.
Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
People who want to share their religious or political views with you almost never want you to share your’s with them.
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended—civilizations are built up—excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.
If you have to love something, you could do worse than to give your heart to a college.
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Seriously, the House of Representatives is filled with insane jackasses.
TV: The Daily Show: 21 Jun 2006
Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
If religion was based on scientific evidence, it would be called science, and no one would believe it.
TV: Colbert Report
With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae wasp with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.
Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can…
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae wasp with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.
Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can…
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
This is a free country. Folks have the right to send me letters, and I have the right not to open them.
The SCO lawsuit was inevitable: Everyone knows that you su to get control of Linux.
Don’t bother about genius. Don’t worry about being clever. Trust to hard work, perseverance and determination.
We must get rid of the talking painters—those who talk but do not paint, who teach in our art schools—and replace them with practicing painters who have proved by their work that they have something to teach.
A ‘spec’ is close to useless. I have never seen a spec that was both big enough to be useful and accurate. And I have seen lots of total crap work that was based on specs. It’s the single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality.
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
Outside of a dog, books are man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
Bart: “Look at me I’m a grad student. I’m 30 years old and made $600 last year.”
Marge: “Bart don’t make fun of grad students. They just made a terrible life choice.”
Marge: “Bart don’t make fun of grad students. They just made a terrible life choice.”
TV: The Simpsons
I think you should live your life so that the maximum number of people will attend your funeral.
I’m a visualization of my DNA’s API.
I like the stars. It’s the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they’re always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend… I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don’t last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle lke fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
Book: Sandman #48
What flavor of crazy Kool-aid do they make you drink when you join the physics department?
TV: Numb3rs - 2x17
Friendship is like peeing in your pants. Everyone can see it, but only you can feel the warmth.
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