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I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is. - Strong Opinions.
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
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Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there. - The Tempation to Exist.
Author: E. M. Cioran
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A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
Author: John Barrymore
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A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.
Author: Susan Sontag
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Beauty is not diminished by being shared.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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...brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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Men never do evil so fully and so happily as when they do it for conscience's sake.
Author: Blaise Pascal
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If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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Avoid making irrevocable decisions when tired or hungry.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as at least a misdemeanor.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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The three-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with these three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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There are in fact four very different stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.
Author: Roger Bacon
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Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future.
Author: Euripides
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Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it's more sanitary.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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To think is to differ.
Author: Clarence Darrow
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Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run, these are the only people who count.
Author: Robert Heinlein
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When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.
Author: Leo Burnett
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You want to hear about insanity? I was found running naked through the jungles in Mexico. At the Mexico City airport, I decided I was in the middle of a movie and walked out on the wing on takeoff. My body... my liver... okay, my brain... went.
Author: Dennis Hopper
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You've got to watch your mind all the time or you'll awaken and find a strange picture on your press.
Author: Lord Buckley
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A man without force, is without the essential dignity of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot honor a helpless man, although it can pity him.
Author: Frederick Douglass
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The burning of an author's books, imprisonment for opinion's sake, has always been the tribute that an ignorant age pays to the genius of its time.
Author: Joseph Allen
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The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe.
Author: Lin Yutang
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The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection- or even to seek the "best possible" result in each separate instance.
Author: Thomas Sowell
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Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember. - Aenid.
Author: Virgil
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The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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To be aware how fruitful the playful mood can be is to be immune to the propaganda of the alienated, which extols resentment as a fuel of achievement.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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It is a juvenile notion that a society needs a lofty purpose and a shining vision to achieve much. Both in the marketplace and on the battlefield men who set their hearts on toys have often displayed unequal initiative and drive. And one must be ignorant of the creative process to look for a close correspondence between motive and achievement in the world of thought and imagination.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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It is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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The well-adjusted make poor prophets.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes.Children, savages, and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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...there is no alienation that a little power will not cure.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering and humbling of the self breeds pride and arrogance.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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Take man's most fantastic invention- God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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We usually see only the things we are looking for- so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or our worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter worthlessness can be a source of courage.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet.
Author: Eric Hoffer
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