Nico Macdonald > Nico's Quotes

“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”
― E.M. Forster

“Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”
― Voltaire, Traité sur la tolérance, à l'occasion de la mort de Jean Calas

“School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.”
― Ivan Illich

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

“The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”
― George Orwell

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”
― Henry Ford

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”
― Steve Jobs

“Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)”
― René Descartes

“The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
― Robert F. Kennedy

“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“What a phoney sense of belonging all this is, this which is offered by the public pals of this publicly gregarious age; it would be better to feel anonymous; one might then be moved to some useful action to improve matters.”
― Hoggart, Richard

“Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.”
― George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such

“Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses.”
― Brian Tracy

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs

“Silence does not always mark wisdom.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“What's the use of complaining about something you have no intentions of changing it?”
― Mario L Castellanos

“When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?”
― John Maynard Keynes

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
― John Wanamaker

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
― Peter Drucker

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
― Steve Jobs

“All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy.”
― Spike Milligan

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
― Mark Twain

“The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back.”
― Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“A choice architect has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.”
― Richard H. Thaler, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

“Protection, therefore, against tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays

“Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal”
― Pablo Picasso

“Human beings are members of a whole
In creation of one essence and soul
If one member is afflicted with pain
Other members uneasy will remain
If you have no sympathy for human pain
The name of human you cannot retain”
― Saadi, گلستان سعدی

“Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain”.

*Gulistan ("The Rose Garden") is a landmark literary work in Persian literature. Written in 1259 A.D, it is one of two magna opera of the Persian poet Saadi, considered one of the best medieval Persian poets. The Gulistan is a collection of poems and stories, just as a rose-garden is a collection of roses. It is widely quoted as a source of wisdom.
**The entrance to the United Nations' Hall of Nations’ carries the above inscription culled from Gulistan.” Muslih Al-Din Mushrif Ibn Abd Allah Al Saadi 1184 1283”
― Muslih Al-Din Mushrif Ibn Abd Allah Al Saadi 1184 1283