Isaias Javier > Isaias's Quotes

“¨La igualdad de condiciones no han existido jamas, merced a nuestras pasiones y nuestra ignorancia, pero nuestra oposición a esta ley demuestra mas y mas su necesidad; La historia es un constante testimonio de ello. La sociedad avanza de ecuación en ecuación; Las revoluciones de los imperios ofrecen a los ojos del observador economista que los números son la providencia de la historia. El Progreso de la humanidad ha contado con un sinnúmero de causas ocultas que conmueven a los pueblos, pero no hay una tan potente, regular, ni mas significativa que las explosiones periódicas del proletariado contra la propiedad, actuando simultáneamente por la eliminación y la ocupación a medida que la población se multiplica. Ha sido el principio generador y la causa determinante de todas las revoluciones. Las guerras de religión y de conquista, cuando no llegaron a la exterminación de las razas, fueron solamente perturbaciones accidentales, cuyo inmediato restablecimiento procuró el progreso natural de la vida de los pueblos. Este es el poder de acumulación de la propiedad, esta es la ley de degradación y muerte de propiedades¨.”
― Pierre Joseph Proudhon

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“Prisons are universities of crime, maintained by the state.”
― Peter Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons

“The fixed idea may also be perceived as 'maxim', 'principle', 'standpoint', and the like. Archimedes,86 to move the earth, asked for a standpoint outside it. Men sought continually for this standpoint, and every one seized upon it as well as he was able. This foreign standpoint is the world oj mind, of ideas, thoughts, concepts, essences; it is heaven. Heaven is the 'standpoint' from which the earth is moved, earthly doings surveyed and - despised. To assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly standpoint firmly and for ever - how painfully and tirelessly humanity struggled for this!”
― Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own

“Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

“The worst sickness of men tends to originate in the sentimental way they try to combat their sicknesses. What seems like an easy cure, in the long run produces something worse than what it's supposed to overcome. Fake consolations always have to be paid for with a general and profound worsening of the original complaint.”
― Frederick Nietzsche

“Be a man!... What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent.”
― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

“We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams.”
― H.G. Wells

“Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!

Loosely translated:

It is heavenly, when I overcome
My earthly desires
But nevertheless, when I'm not successful,
It can also be quite pleasurable.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“The Church says: the body is a sin.
Science says: the body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The Body says: I am a fiesta.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Walking Words

“For many great deeds are performed in petty combats. There are instances of bravery ignored and obstinate, which defend themselves step by step in that fatal onslaught of necessities and turpitudes. Noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye beholds, which are requited with no renown, which are saluted with no trumpet blast. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have their heroes; obscure heroes, who are, sometimes, grander than the heroes who win renown.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

“Have these historians of hearts and souls duties at all inferior to the historians of external facts? Does any one think that Alighieri has any fewer things to say than Machiavelli? Is the under side of civilization any less important than the upper side merely because it is deeper and more sombre? Do we really know the mountain well when we are not acquainted with the cavern?”
― Victor Hugo

“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind. Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“There is nothing more remarkable than the timidity of ignorance, unless it be its temerity. When ignorance becomes daring, she has sometimes a sort of compass within herself—the intuition of the truth, clearer oftentimes in a simple mind than in a learned brain. Ignorance invites to an attempt. It is a state of wonderment, which, with its concomitant curiosity, forms a power. Knowledge often enough disconcerts and makes over–cautious. Gama, had he known what lay before him, would have recoiled before the Cape of Storms. If Columbus had been a great geographer, he might have failed to discover America.”
― Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea

“From a liberal perspective, it is perfectly all right that one person is a billionaire living in a sumptuous chateau, whereas another is a poor peasant living in a straw hut. For according to liberalism, the peasant’s unique experiences are still just as valuable as the billionaire’s. That’s why liberal authors write long novels about the experiences of poor peasants – and why even billionaires read such books avidly. If you go to see Les Misérables in Broadway or Covent Garden, you will find that good seats can cost hundreds of dollars, and the audience’s combined wealth probably runs into the billions, yet they still sympathise with Jean Valjean who served nineteen years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving nephews.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow”
― Yuval Noah Harari

“And that is the very thing that alarms me,”
returned Dantes. “Man does not appear to me to be intended to enjoy felicity so unmixed; happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach; and monsters of all shapes and kinds, requiring to be overcome ere victory is ours. I own that I am lost in wonder to find myself promoted to an
honor of which I feel myself unworthy–that of being the husband of Mercedes.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo