Justin Kubas > Justin's Quotes

“We live as we dream--alone....”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud”
― Carl Sandburg

“The truth was, each side understood they were in a war for communal survival. One side had knives and pistols; the other had secret agents and courts. While each constantly cried out to the world how evil the other was, when they looked one another in the eye . . . they said something different: I will do whatever I have to to survive.”
― Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem

“Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.”
― Plato, The Republic

“The worst type of man behaves as badly in his waking life as some men do in their dreams.”
― Plato, The Republic

“Back in the twentieth century, they had established to everybody’s satisfaction that ‘I was just following orders’ was an inadequate excuse for inhuman contact … but what can you do when the orders come from deep down in that puppet master of the unconscious?”
― Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

“IF you remember every word in this book, your memory will have recorded about two million pieces of information: the order in your brain will have increased by about two million units. However, while you have been reading the book, you will have converted at least a thousand calories of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat that you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. This will increase the disorder of the universe by about twenty million million million million units - or about ten million million million times the increase in order in your brain - and that's if you remember everything in this book.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“...one of the roles of man is to shut his eyes and keep them shut to see if he can continue into the night of his old age the dream curtailed in the night of his youth.”
― Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“It's because I haven't courage,' said Samuel. 'I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name - but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.'

'I'd think there are degrees of greatness,' Adam said.

'I don't think so,' said Samuel. 'That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other - cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn't that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“My father, I'm sorry. I can't help it. You over-estimated me. You were wrong. I wish I could justify the love and the pride you squandered on me. Maybe you could figure a way out, but I can't.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try to live so that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Can you think that whatever made us—would stop trying?”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“In old days, young men had to study; they didn't want to be called dunces, so they had to work hard whether they liked it or not. But now, they need only say, 'Everything in the world is foolery!' and the trick's done.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me — a long, long road without a goal...”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“He's a wild animal, and you and I are tame.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“While believers in the unconstrained vision seek the special causes of war, poverty, and crime, believers in the constrained vision seek the special causes of peace, wealth, or a law-abiding society.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“Adam Smith's entire economic doctrine of laissez-faire implicitly assumed the same lack of correspondence between intention and effect, for the systemic benefits of capitalism were no part of the intention of capitalists.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“...loyalty, seen as an abandonment of impartiality in future behavior by those with the unconstrained vision, was viewed very differently by those with the constrained vision... the alternative to loyalty is not impartiality but pure selfishness. The kinds of emotional attachments which lead to loyalty are thus seen as beneficial social ties, essential to the functioning of the whole society.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“...the constrained vision does not defend existing inequalities... as just. According to Hayek, "the manner in which the benefits and burdens are apportioned by the market mechanism would in many instances have to be regarded as very unjust if it were the result of a deliberate allocation...”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“Whenever A can get B to do what A wishes, then A has "power" over B, according to the results-oriented definition of the unconstrained vision... But if B is in a process in which he has at least as many options as he had before A came along, then A has not "restricted" B's choices, and so has no "power" over him, by the process definition... characteristic of the constrained vision.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I had rather be a thing than an angel.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre