Akshay > Akshay's Quotes

Showing 1-30 of 273

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 next »

#1

“The story so far:
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 Restaurant at the End of the Universe

tags: humor, scifi

23425 likes

#2

“I am not responsible for actions of the imaginary version of me you have inside your head.”
― John Scalzi

143 likes

#3

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

tags: humor, open-mind, thinking

21396 likes

#4

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

tags: intelligence, self-deprecation

71567 likes

#5

“I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

tags: books, infinite-jest

4205 likes

#6

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

tags: first-lines

921 likes

#7

“My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state, for two reasons. For one thing, because it happens to be the larger component of international violence. But also for a much more important reason than that; namely, I can do something about it. So even if the U.S. was responsible for 2 percent of the violence in the world instead of the majority of it, it would be that 2 percent I would be primarily responsible for. And that is a simple ethical judgment. That is, the ethical value of one's actions depends on their anticipated and predictable consequences. It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.”
― Noam Chomsky

tags: activism, anti-war, colonialism, ethics, imperialism, noam-chomsky, terrorism, war

31 likes

#8

“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?”
― Italo Calvino

tags: literature

183 likes

#9

“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

tags: clock, future, past, possibilities, ticking, time

2574 likes

#10

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

tags: books, humor

150603 likes

#11

“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
― Terry Pratchett

4282 likes

#12

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

4288 likes

#13

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

tags: aliteracy, attributed-no-source, literacy

40951 likes

#14

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

tags: books, classics, literature, meaning, reading, words

4762 likes

#15

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

tags: memories

16590 likes

#16

“For the powerful, crimes are those that others commit.”
― Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World

tags: crime, double-standards, hypocrisy, politics, power, war-crimes

705 likes

#17

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: bene-gesserit, fear, litany-against-fear, motivational, scifi

16585 likes

#18

“O young girl, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us!" A second time, eh, what imprudence! Suppose, dear sir, someone actually took our word for it? It would have to be fulfilled. Brr...! the water is so cold! But let's reassure ourselves. It's too late now, it will always be too late. Fortunately!”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

tags: death, irony, salvation, selfishness

53 likes

#19

“The book itself is a curious artifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: a really neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle, that can last decades, even centuries. It doesn't have to be plugged in, activated, or performed by a machine; all it needs is light, a human eye, and a human mind. It is not one of a kind, and it is not ephemeral. It lasts. It is reliable. If a book told you something when you were fifteen, it will tell it to you again when you're fifty, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you're reading a whole new book."

(Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading, Harper's Magazine, February 2008)”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

tags: books

357 likes

#20

“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

tags: philosophy

989 likes

#21

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

tags: attributed-no-source, books, simile, soul

135109 likes

#22

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: accomplishment, attributed-no-source, be-yourself, conformity, individuality

69529 likes

#23

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

tags: individuality, majority, minority, pause, reflect, wisdom

43849 likes

#24

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

tags: books, reading

325 likes

#25

“If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”
― Noam Chomsky

tags: belief, believe, despise, expression, freedom, freedom-of-expression

2159 likes

#26

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

tags: 1998

1491 likes

#27

“That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.”
― Noam Chomsky

tags: anarchism, anarchy, authority, politics

427 likes

#28

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
― Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda

tags: democracy, mass-media, propaganda, repression, totalitarianism

335 likes

#29

“We still name our military helicopter gunships after victims of genocide. Nobody bats an eyelash about that: Blackhawk. Apache. And Comanche. If the Luftwaffe named its military helicopters Jew and Gypsy, I suppose people would notice.”
― Noam Chomsky, Propaganda and the Public Mind

tags: apache, blackhawk, comanche

108 likes

#30

“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”
― Italo Calvino

tags: dictionary, inadequacy-of-words, language, literature, writing

156 likes

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 next »

All Quotes

Akshay > Akshay's Quotes

Tags From Akshay’s Quotes