The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
Linus Pauling (1901-1994) American chemist and pacifist
(Attributed)
This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.
[Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!]
Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) American physicist
(Attributed)
Quoted by R. Peierls in “Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, 1900-1958,″ Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (1960): “... a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. Pauli remarked sadly ‘That’s not right. It’s not even wrong.’” More discussion here.
Pacifists would do well to study the Siegfried and Maginot Line, remembering that these defenses were forced; that Troy fell; that the wall of Hadrian succumbed; that the Great Wall of China was futile. In war, the only sure defense is offense.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.
[Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement, que quand on le fait par un faux principe de conscience.]
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist and philosopher
Pensées, ch. 14, Appendix: Polemical Fragments #895 (1669) [tr. Trotter (1910)]
(Source)
Also labeled as Part 2, Article 17, # 53. Sometimes also shown in slightly shorter French as "Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement que quand on le fait par conscience."
(Source (French)). Alternate translations:
- "We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience." [#813 (#895), tr. Krailsheimer]
- "We never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience." [Miscellaneous Thoughts 7: Sellier #658/Lafuma #813, tr. Ariew]
- "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it conscientiously."
When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist and philosopher
Pensées #139 “Diversion” (1670)
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room."
Alt. trans.: "All the trouble in the world is due to the fact that a man cannot sit still in a room."
It appears from this, that whatever it may be of which we wish to persuade men, it is necessary to have regard to the person whom we wish to persuade, of whom we must know the mind and the heart, what principles he acknowledges, what things he loves
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.
[Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. On le sent en mille choses. C’est le cœur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. Voilà ce que c’est que la foi parfaite, Dieu sensible au cœur.]
Candy smiled at me a little. “Look,” she said. “You’re a good guy. I know you care about me, but you’re a white male, you can’t understand a minority situation. It’s not your fault.”
[…] When the beer came, I drank about a quarter of it and said to Candy, “Extend that logic, and we eventually have to decide that no one can understand anyone. Maybe the matter of understanding has been overrated. Maybe I don’t have to understand your situation to sympathize with it, to help you alter it, to be on your side. I’ve never experienced starvation either, but I’m opposed to it. When I encounter it, I try to alleviate it. I sympathize with its victims. The question of whether I understand it doesn’t arise.”
She shook her head. “That’s different,” she said.
“Maybe it isn’t. Maybe civilization is possible, if at all, only because people can care about conditions they haven’t experienced. Maybe you need understanding like a fish needs a bicycle.”
“You’re quite thoughtful,” she said, “for a man your size.”
“You’ve never been my size,” I said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
I hadn’t smoked in ten or twelve years, but I wished then I’d had a cigarette that I could have taken a final drag on and flipped still burning into the river as I turned and walked away. Not smoking gains in the area of lung cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures.
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American writer
“Comment,” New York World (16 Aug 1925)
(Source)
Reprinted in Enough Rope (1926)
If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom He gives it.
Maurice Baring (1874-1945) English man of letters, writer, essayist, translator
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted by Dorothy Parker in "The Art of Fiction," interview by Marion Capron, The Paris Review #13 (Summer 1956) (reprinted in The Portable Dorothy Parker (1944)). Not found in Baring's writings. The quotation is often attributed to Parker, especially in simpler forms, e.g., "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have the money.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) American writer
(Attributed)
First attributed in this form in Robert E. Drennan, ed., The Algonquin Wits (1968). No actual source material has been found by Parker using this quip, and it appears to have been first attributed to her by Bennett Cerf in his "Try and Stop Me" syndicated column (1962-10-10).
The Quote Investigator site attributes the quote to a faked, humorous review blurb in the book To You I Tell It! by Bill Miller (1929). Further examination of the quotation's origins: Quote Origin: Not a Book To Be Lightly Thrown Aside. Should Be Thrown with Great Force – Quote Investigator®.
Let none, then, take it in bad part of me, that I myself have loved this truth and pursued it. I was forced to seek it, for it did not seek me. If a man wishes to see a foreign city, it is no good for him to stay at home with his head on his pillow.
Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus (1493-1541) German alchemist and physician [Bombast von Hohenheim]
A Treatise Concerning the Medicinal Philosophic Stone, Preface
Reprinted in Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, Part 2, by Arthur Edward Waite (2002).
It may be doubtful, at first,
Whether a person is an enemy or friend.
Meat, if not properly digested, becomes poison;
But poison, if used rightly, may turn medicinal.Saskya Pandita (1182-1251) Tibetan Grand Lama
(Attributed)
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
Common Sense (14 Feb 1776)
Source essay
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
“The American Crisis” #1 (19 Dec 1776)
Source essay
Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
Common Sense (14 Feb 1776)
Source essay
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
“Dissertation on the First Principles of Government” (Jul 1795)
Source essay
I am persuaded that some have scarce any better or more forcible argument to satisfy their own minds that they are in the right in religion than the inclination they find in themselves to hate and persecute them whom they suppose to be in the wrong.
Common experience declares how momentary and how useless are those violent fits and gusts of endeavours which proceed from fear and uncertainty, both in things spiritual and things temporal, or civil. Whilst men are under the power of actual impressions from such fears, they will convert to God, yea, they will turn in a moment, and perfect their holiness in an instant; but so soon as that impression wears off (as it will do on every occasion, and upon none at all) such persons are as dead and cold towards God as the lead or iron, which but now ran in a fiery stream, is now when the heat is departed from it.
Prisca juvent alios; ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor.
[Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.]
Ill Habits gather by unseen Degrees —
As Brooks make Rivers, Rivers run to Seas.Ovid (43 BC-AD 17) Roman poet [Publius Ovidius Naso]
Metamorphosis, Book 15 “The Worship of Aesculapius,” l. 155 [tr. Dryden]
(Source)
Sometimes cited as Dryden's Abslolam and Achitophel (1681)
We may look into a church, almost any church, and discover someone who, though he is offered a gospel of love, must subtly convert it into a gospel of hate before he can receive it. The gospel of love — with its emphasis upon brotherhood, equality before God, the dignity of every human being, and man’s social responsibility toward man — does not satisfy the lack that he urgently feels. That calls for something altogether different, for an assurance that he is superior, that he is right where others are wrong — a kind of cosmic teacher’s pet.
Bonaro W. Overstreet (1902-1985) American poet, psychologist
(Attributed)