Linda Huang > Linda's Quotes

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
― Voltaire

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV

“The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.”
― Voltaire

“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
― Voltaire

“Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.”
― Voltaire

“Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.”
― Orson Scott Card

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
― Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell

“There can't be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem”
― Henry Kissinger

“Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Each of us is dealt a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes, like curiosity, ambition, empathy, a thirst for novelty or for security, a comfort level with the social or the mechanical or the abstract. Some opportunities we come across click with our constitutions and set us along a path in life.”
― Steven Pinker

“The typical imperative from biology is not "Thou shalt... ," but "If ... then ... else.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin.
"And what happened?" pressed Ford.
"It committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.” “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.” “I did,” said Ford. “It is.” “So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?” “It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.” “You mean they actually vote for the lizards?” “Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.” “But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?” “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“And it occurred to him that there were two parts to being a better person. One part was thinking about other people. The other part was not giving a toss what other people thought.”
― Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother

“If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like another, I could part without a pang with every possession I have. We live in uncertain times and our all may yet be taken from us. With enough plain food to satisfy my small appetite, a room to myself, books from a public library, pens and paper, I should regret nothing.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Summing Up

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.”
― W.Somerset Maugham

“I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil