Quotations

I’m going to quote some people now; if anything is wrongly-attributed or if you know to whom something should be attributed, let me know!

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Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option

– Maya Angelou (1924-2014)

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 To the world you are just one person, but to one person you may be the world.

– unknown

Contentment is not the fulfilment of what you want, it is the realisation of how much you already have.

– unknown

Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

– unknown

Fur coats are worn by beautiful animals and ugly people.

– unknown

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Better to be deprived of food for three days, than of tea for one

– Chinese Proverb

A mighty pain to love it is, and ’tis a pain that pain to miss but of all the pains, the greatest pain is to love, but love in vain.

– Abraham Cowley

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things

– Terry Pratchett

I fall in love with myself, and I want someone to share it with me

– Eartha Kitts

We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light

The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together

– Carl Sagan

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored

– Aldous Huxley

If you go through life with your head in the sand, all people will see is an arse

– Susan, My Family

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are

– Benjamin Franklin

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. 

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light…
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

– W.B. Yeats

Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone.

– Vincent van Gogh

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind

– Anon, Dr. Seuss, or someone else

We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love

– Dr. Seuss

If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice

– Davan, to Seldon (Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov, 1988)

It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilisation is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy

– Pelorat, to Golan (Foundation’s Edge, Isaac Asimov, 1982)

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it

– Henry Ford

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.

Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.

Ending is better than mending.

– Aldous Huxley

Unfortunately most criticism is by poseurs. They use their comments about someone else’s work as a platform on which to strike poses. What they’re really saying is: “Look at me! Look at me!”

– Frank Herbert (1965)

Where knowledge ends, religion begins

– Benjamin Disraeli

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful

– Seneca the Younger (4BCE- 65CE)

If science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts.

– Dalai Lama

To see through the eye of faith is to shut the eye of reason

– Benjamin Franklin

I’m not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful

Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things

– Christopher Hitchens

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion

– Steven Weinberg

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself

– Richard Burton (same birthday as me!)

You should just get a van. With a van, it’s like you’ve got an MBA, but you’ve also got a fucking van. You’re not just a man anymore – you are a man with a van. You get a van, Jez, we could be men with ven.

– Super Hans, Peep Show