Favorite quotes

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There used to be a hotel in Paris popular with arty / bohemian types.

At the desk downstairs there was a sign: "Please leave values at reception".

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
-George Orwell

"People who are brutally honest generally enjoy the brutality more than the honesty."

- Richard Needham

"I don't believe in passive smoking, but I do believe in aggressive smoking" - Alexanderplatz

"thank you for not breathing while I smoke." [mr. aggressive smoker]

"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." (Joseph Stalin)

“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it's okay to be a boy; for girls it's like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.”

― Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden

"...And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations.

Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. - George Carlin

Sometimes surrender means
giving up trying to understand,
and becoming comfortable with not knowing

-e t

To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world

-Freya Stark

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. [St. Francis]

"Not everything that steps out of line, and thus "abnormal", must necessarily be "inferior".
- Hans Asperger

"We are convinced, then, that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfil their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers."
- Hans Asperger

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
― George Orwell

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
― George Orwell

“The only 'ism' that has justified itself is pessimism.”
― George Orwell, The Limit to Pessimism (1940)

“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

"Ideology is the science of idiocy. And a very profound, abstruse, & mysterious science it is...taught in the school of folly"
— John Adams

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
― Henry Ford

“All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”
— "Hazard Circular" 1865 London Times

“I am not a graceful person. I am not a Sunday morning or a Friday sunset. I am a Tuesday 2 a.m., gunshots muffled by a few city blocks, I am a broken window during February. My bones crack on a nightly basis. I fall from elegance with a dull thud, and I apologize for my awkward sadness. I sometimes believe that I don’t belong around people, that I belong to all the leap days that didn’t happen. The way light and darkness mix under my skin has become a storm. You don’t see the lightning, but you hear the echoes.”
[anna peters]