Quote collection
427 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."
"Ready comprehension is often a knee-jerk response and the most dangerous form of understanding. It blinks an opaque screen over your ability to learn. The judgmental precedents of law function that way, littering your path with dead ends. Be warned. Understand nothing. All comprehension is temporary."
"Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken."
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities."
"All men seek to be enlightened. Religion is but the most ancient and honorable way in which men have striven to make sense out of God's universe. Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness."
"If we define Futurism as an exploration beyond accepted limits, then the nature of limiting systems becomes the first object of exploration."
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man."
"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy."
"When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them"
"There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story."
"Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words."
"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."
"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."
"Justice belongs to those who claim it, but let the claimant beware lest he create new injustice by his claim and thus set the bloody pendulum of revenge into its inexorable motion"
"The best contribution one can make to humanity is to improve oneself."
"The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger."
"Question: Who governs the governors? Answer: Entropy"
"Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible."
"Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's execution that counts."