Eleanor Roosevelt
- From "You Learn By Living"
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.
Joseph Campbell
- From "The Power of Myth"
I have bought this wonderful machine - a computer. Now I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine. It seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy.
Carl Sagan
- From The Burden of Skepticism
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas... If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you... On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.
Igor Stravinsky
- Subject: Music
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.
Aaron Copland
- from Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music
I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights?
Douglas Adams
- From "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency"
"What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?" The question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table. Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas..."
John Stuart Mill
Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its suffering, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character.
Douglas Adams
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk...
Immanuel Kant
Enlightenment is man's leaving self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by a lack of intelligence, but by a lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. "Have the courage to use your own intelligence!" is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- From "The Brothers Karamazov"
People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
- From "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"
Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history", but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.
