Week 2020-13

"The sublime must always be great; the beautiful can also be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful can be adorned or ornamented. A great height is just as sublime as a great depth, except that the latter is accompanied with the sensation of shuddering, the former with one of wonder. Hence the latter feeling can be the terrifying sublime, and the former the noble." (Immanuel Kant, "Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime", 1764)

"Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves." (William Hazlitt, "Criticisms on Art", 1844)
 
"Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change." (Herbert G Wells, "The Time Machine", 1895)

"Given a fair chance, human beings can govern themselves, and govern themselves better." (Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World Revisited", 1932)

"The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare state it so simply, is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two." (Ken Wilber, "No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth", 1979)

"In everyday life, you will find that your boss, your lover, or your government often try to manipulate you. They propose to you a ‘game’ in the form of a choice in which one of the alternatives appears definitely preferable. Having chosen this alternative, you are faced with a new game, and very soon you find that your reasonable choices have brought you to something you never wanted: you are trapped. To avoid this, remember that acting a bit erratically may be the best strategy. What you lose by making some suboptimal choices, you make up for by keeping greater freedom." (David Ruelle, "Chance and Chaos", 1991)

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it. " (Terry Pratchett, "Monstrous Regiment", 2004)

"There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised." (Gordon Livingston, "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now", 2009)

"Learn to limit yourself, to content yourself with some definite thing and some definite work; dare to be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all you are not, and to believe in your own individuality." (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)

"We are generally more effectually persuaded by reasons we have ourselves discovered than by those which have occurred to others."(Blaise Pascal)

Week 2020-12

"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken." (Benjamin Disraeli, "Contarini Fleming", 1832)

"Every human perfection is linked to an error which it threatens to become." (Arthur Schopenhauer, "Parerga and Paralipomena", 1851)

"We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance." (Friedrich Nietzsche, "Untimely Meditations", 1873)

"[The] restoration of the past is one of the most astonishing adventures of the human mind." (Herbert G Wells, "The Grisly Folk", Storyteller Magazine, 1921)

"There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long-desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped toward new ends." (Arthur C Clarke, "The City And The Stars", 1956)

"The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is [...]" (Aldous Huxley, "Island", 1962)

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

"Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances." (Benjamin Franklin)

"Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image." (Bruce Lee)

"Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquility and peace." (Cicero Marcus Tullius)