Favourite Quotations (Moderator: Frederique)

C'est avec la logique que nous prouvons et avec l'intuition que nous trouvons

Started by spiros

Douter de tout ou tout croire sont deux solutions également commodes, qui l’une et l’autre nous dispensent de réfléchir.

Started by spiros

To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.

Started by spiros

Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.

Started by spiros

Any honest assessment of humanity’s previous performance on those fronts reads like a particularly brutal annual review from a boss who hates you. We imagine patterns where they don’t exist. Our communication skills are, uh, sometimes lacking. And we have an extraordinarily poor track record of failing to realise that changing this thing will also lead to the other thing, and that even worse thing, and oh God no now this thing is happening how do we stop it.

Started by spiros

If instead of having wars, we just sent large groups of people to each other’s countries to drink loads of their wine and aimlessly wander around their towns on a regular basis, then the world would probably be a much, much happier place. Although now I’ve written that, it occurs to me that’s essentially what the EU is.

Started by spiros

In a list of ‘moves designed to piss lots of people off’, banning coffee in Turkey probably ranks somewhere alongside banning cheese in France, banning guns in America and … well, banning national stereotyping in Britain.

Started by spiros

More people were killed by lawnmowers than by terrorism in the USA in the decade between 2007 and 2017, but at the time of writing, the US government has yet to launch a War on Lawnmowers. (Although, let’s be honest, given recent events you wouldn’t rule it out.)

Started by spiros

Our minds are capable of imagining concertos and cities and the theory of relativity into existence, and yet apparently incapable of deciding which type of crisps we want to buy at the shop without five minutes’ painful deliberation.

Started by spiros

Many of the worst man-made events that ever occurred were not the product of evil geniuses. Instead they were the product of a parade of idiots and lunatics, incoherently flailing their way through events, helped along the way by overconfident people who thought they could control them.

Started by spiros

Evolution gets results not by planning ahead, but rather by simply hurling a ridiculously large number of hungry, horny organisms at a dangerous and unforgiving world and seeing who fails least.

Started by spiros

Κακόμοιρε άνθρωπε, γιατί φωνάζεις; Γιατί μου δημιουργείς προβλήματα; Σταμάτα να ξεριζώνεις τα μαλλιά σου και να κάνεις γρατσουνιές στο δέρμα του προσώπου σου. Γιατί με κακολογείς και με αποκαλείς καημένο και κακότυχο, ενώ είμαι πολύ καλύτερα από σένα και σε πολύ μεγαλύτερη ευδαιμονία;

Started by spiros

Taking you own life. Interesting expression — taking it from who? Once it’s over, it’s not you who’ll miss it. Your own death is something that happens to everybody else. Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it. Keep your hands off it.

Started by spiros

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Started by spiros

We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

Started by spiros

Making the decision to have a baby is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Started by spiros

Το να είσαι αριστερός σήμερα, σημαίνει να σε ενδιαφέρουν τα προβλήματα όλων. Σημαίνει να συγκρούεσαι με τα μέγιστα των προβλημάτων που δεν αντιμετωπίζει μονάχα το χωριό σου, η γειτονιά σου, η συνοικία σου ή το μικρό σου το περιβάλλον, αλλά που αντιμετωπίζει όλος ο κόσμος.

Started by spiros

When people have an ideology, they could use that ideology to justify anything. And they should be feared.

Started by spiros