Quotes

This page contains a list of curated quotations, aphorisms, and proverbs that I have collected over the years.

• The aspects you are willing to ignore are more important than the aspects you are willing to accept.
  —Erik Naggum

• The moment you think you know everything is the moment you stop learning.
  —Yeontabal, JuMong

• Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
  —H.H. Williams

• Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.
  —Will Rogers

• You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
  —Albert Einstein.

• A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
  —Lao Tzu

• One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.
  —Pablo Picasso

• Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
  —Alan Kay

• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
  —Charles Darwin

• Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
  —Mark Twain

• However little television you watch, watch less.
  —David McCullough

• It’s not at all important to get it right the first time. It’s vitally important to get it right the last time.
  —Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

• Learning is not compulsory; neither is survival.
  —W. Edwards Deming

• Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
  —Fred Brooks

• One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
  —E.M. Forster

• Just because it isn’t done doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be.
  —Barry Glasford

• Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
  —Dali Lama

• All the good ideas never lie under one hat.
  —Dale Turner

• Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
  —G.K. Chesterton

• Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
  —Robert J. Hanlon

• Supposing is good, but finding out is better.
  —Samuel Clemens

• Planning is essential, but plans are useless
  —Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Ron’s first law: All extreme positions are wrong.
  —Ron Garret

• We laugh at that which we cannot bear to face.
  —Aristotle

• With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.
  —Steven Weinberg

• If you want to pass, cheat. If you want to learn, research.
  —Raganwald

• In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
  —Carl Sagan

• I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
  —Carl Sagan

• What I cannot create, I do not understand.
  —Richard P. Feynman

• Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.
  —Richard P. Feynman

• The intellectual level needed for system design is in general grossly underestimated. I am convinced more than ever that this type of work is very difficult and that every effort to do it with other than the best people is doomed to either failure or moderate success at enormous expense.
  —Edsger Dijkstra

• Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
  —James J. Ling

• There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in both. Life may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly’s wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.
  —Arthur C. Clarke

• The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
  —Arthur C. Clarke

• The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
  —Arthur C. Clarke

• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
  —Albert Einstein

• You have teenagers thinking they’re going to make millions as NBA stars when that’s not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.
  —Dean Kamen

• You wanna make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs.
  —Tyler Durden, Fight Club

• If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission.
  —Eddie Colla

• Worry is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere.
  —Erma Bombeck

• If you live for money, that is all you will get out of it.
  —Anonymous

• Chance favors the prepared mind.
  —Louis Pasteur

• Obsessed is a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated.
  —Russell Warren

• Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity.
  —Erik Christopher Zeeman

• You will not do quickly, what you cannot do with control.
  —Kino MacGregor

• Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.
  —Stephen Fry

• In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.
  —Bruce Lee

• When you’re screwing up, and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up.
  —Randy Pausch

• Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
  —Randy Pausch

• The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.
  —Qui-gon Jinn

• Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
  —Lao Tzu

• If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
  —Spock

• The only limits you have are the limits you believe.
  —Wayne Dyer

• You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.
  —Wayne Dyer

• Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.
  —Jonathan Lockwood Huie

• Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
  —C.S. Lewis

• There is no thrill like that felt by the inventor as he sees his creation unfolding to success. Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.
  —Nikola Tesla

• Don’t rely on someone else for your self-worth; only you can be responsible for that.
  —Stacey Charter

• The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.
  —J.P. Morgan

• Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
  —Albert Einstein

• One day they’ll realize they lost a diamond while playing with worthless stones.
  —Turcois Ominek

• Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
  —M. Kathleen Casey

• We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
  —Joseph Campbell

• I’m thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn’t have stumbled across my strength.
  —Alex Elle

• It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
  —Anthony Robbins

• You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
  —Gandhi

• The best way out is always through.
  —Robert Frost

• Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
  —Charles Kettering

• The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
  —Jimmy Johnson

• When you’ve hit rock bottom before and survived, there are very few things in life that can scare you.
  —Anonymous

• What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others remains forever.
  —Albert Pike

• Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.
  —Theodore Roosevelt

• What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
  —Tim Ferriss

• If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all.
  —Joe Namath

• You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
  —Wayne Gretzky

• It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.
  —Vince Lombardi

• When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
  —Alexander Graham Bell

• If you’re going through hell, keep going.
  —Winston Churchill

• It’s better to be alone rather than being with someone who makes you feel like you’re alone.
  —Ivan Junius

• Your ability to achieve something largely depends on how much you believe you can achieve it.
  —Anonymous

• The people who take risks are often the ones who end up being the happiest.
  —Anonymous

• If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
  —Anthony Robbins

• If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.
  —Thomas Jefferson

• The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
  —Ernest Hemingway

• You can’t have a better tomorrow, if you’re still thinking about yesterday.
  —Charles Kettering

• Catch a fish once and if it gets away, it’s a lot harder to catch the second time.
  —Will Graham

• A life without regret would be no life at all.
  —Hannibal Lecter

• Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed.
  —Bedelia Du Maurier

• You’re capable of righteous violence because you are compassionate.
  —Bedelia Du Maurier

• Extreme acts of cruelty require a high level of empathy. The next time you have an instinct to help someone, you might consider crushing them instead. It will save you a great deal of trouble.
  —Bedelia Du Maurier

• Never, ever give up.
  —Diana Nyad

• Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
  —Benjamin Franklin

• Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.
  —Ray Bradbury

• First, decide. And then do it. It’s the only way to achieve anything.
  —Lacus Clyne, Gundam SEED Destiny

• When something impossible happens, there are two possibilities: either your assumptions are wrong, or you have gone crazy.
  —Kogami Shinya, Psycho-Pass

• I think the only time people really have value is when they act according to their own will.
  —Makishima Shougo, Psycho-Pass

• It is not society that determines people’s futures. It is people who determine society’s future.
  —Akane Tsunemori, Psycho-Pass

• Do not forget that you will surely die someday, and as such, that is all the more reason to live now.
  —Decim, Death Parade

• If not me, who? And if not now, when?
  —Mikhail Gorbachev

• A common man marvels at uncommon things; a wise man marvels at the commonplace.
  —Confucius

• You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
  —Eric Hoffer

• The answers you seek you will never find until you stop looking outside and start looking for them within yourself.
  —Memory gatekeeper, Ergo Proxy

• A universe without perception is much like an enormous stack of rotting books—forever unopened and unread.
  —Ergo Proxy, Ergo Proxy

• The white noise that beats within the white darkness is the rhythm of life; it is that pulse which never truly left the stage.
  —Ergo Proxy, Ergo Proxy

• In my desperate attempts to become a fellow citizen, I’ve constantly suppressed myself and tried to be the person I thought they wanted.
  —Vincent Law, Ergo Proxy

• Admiration is happy self-surrender; envy is unhappy self-assertion.
  —Søren Kierkegaard

• The greatest danger occurs at the moment of victory.
  —Napoleon Bonaparte

• The laws that govern circumstances are abolished by new circumstances.
  —Napoleon Bonaparte

• A military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.
  —Sun-tzu

• The man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
  —Elbert Hubbard

• The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
  —Neil deGrasse Tyson

• The faster you become strong, the easier you’ll get injured.
  —Ahmad Taufiq Muhammad

• If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start.
  —Charles Bukowski

• Never send a rabbit to kill a fox.
  —Chief Daisuke Aramaki, Ghost in the Shell (2017)

• It is the destiny of stars to collapse.
  —Neil deGrasse Tyson

• For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
  —Carl Sagan

• One physical test is worth a thousand expert opinions.
  —Rick Seifarth

• Life’s very existence requires destruction.
  —Hugh Derry, Life (2017)

• Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.
  —Henry Ford

• The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.
  —Theodore Roosevelt

• You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.
  —Eames, Inception (2010)

• An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.
  —Dominick Cobb, Inception (2010)

• Whilst ironically, those who aren’t willing to break will break first.
  —MindSmash, YouTube

• This is what I did in order to preserve my life. I am a different species from you, but we are in a partnership which demands mutual respect. On that premise, the common purpose that binds us is survival.
  —Migi, Parasyte -the maxim- (2014)

• You all underestimate humans. Individually, they may appear weak, but that is not the case. What we need to recognize is that humans are a single life form comprised of millions of individuals. Besides their individual brains, humans possess a different ‘brain’ of enormous magnitude. The moment we act in opposition to that brain, we will lose.
  —Reiko Tamura, Parasyte -the maxim- (2014)

• Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?
  —Andrew Laeddis, Shutter Island (2010)

• The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.
  —Dr. Eldon Tyrell, Blade Runner (1982)

• If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.
  —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Content is king.
  —Bill Gates

• Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.
  —James Mattis

• Everything changes with time.
  —Tamina, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

• A point of view is worth 80 IQ points.
  —Alan Kay

• For me it’s not a question of whether we will become an interstellar species, but only a question of when.
  —Stephen Hawking

• One ant is no ant.
  —E. O. Wilson

• Don’t worry about now. The present is the least interesting time to live in.
  —Alan Kay

• There are two kinds of people in the world: people who think there are two kinds of people in the world, and people who don’t.
  —Unknown

• You can’t invent the future by using vendor stuff.
  —Alan Kay

• Try and think of which ones where the world will be very different if you made different assumptions.
  —Alan Kay

• All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.
  —Susan Sontag

• Difficulty is what wakes up the genius.
  —Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• The three most important days of your life are the day you were born, the day you find out why you were born, and the day you discover how to contribute the gift that you were born to give.
  —Taylor Hartman

• Progress, not perfection.
  —Robert McCall

• When you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud, too.
  —Robert McCall

• I can’t tell you a story that does not exist.
  —The Doll, Serial Experiments Lain

• It is reasonable to see the Wired as an upper layer of the real world. In other words, physical reality is nothing but a hologram of the information that flows through the Wired.
  —Miho Iwakura, Serial Experiments Lain

• This is because the body, the activity of the human brain, is merely a physical phenomenon caused by synapses delivering electrical impulses.
  —Miho Iwakura, Serial Experiments Lain

• The body exists only to verify one’s existence.
  —Miho Iwakura, Serial Experiments Lain

• The real world isn’t real after all.
  —Lain Iwakura, Serial Experiments Lain

• It is no longer about ‘Can I do that?’ It is now about ‘Should I do that?’
  —Raymund Martinez

• People only have substance within the memory of others.
  —Lain Iwakura, Serial Experiments Lain

• If you don’t remember something, it never happened.
  —Arisu Mizuki

• Information functions by being always in motion.
  —Lain Iwakura, Serial Experiments Lain

• A man who knows four languages is worth four men.
  —Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

• The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it.
  —William H. Whyte

• A woman who knows a man who knows four languages, is worth five men.
  —Jeanne Marie G. Ciño-Martinez

• We have to learn, in Computer Science, to stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, not their toes.
  —Dr. Daniel G. Bobrow

• The past is just a story we tell ourselves.
  —Samantha, Her (2013)

• Slow and steady against hard problems.
  —Chamath Palihapitiya

• If you love it, you’ll teach yourself. If you don’t love it, others teach you.
  —Yukitaka Yamaguchi

• Well, we look at people who’ve been shattered and different as less than. What if they’re more than us?
  —Dr. Karen Fletcher, Split (2016)

• You can accomplish anything if you’re never in a hurry.
  —Chesley Sullenberger, Sully (2016)

• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
  —Henry David Thoreau

• The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
  —Edsger Dijkstra

• It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
  —Edsger Dijkstra

• Thinking differently is the engine of creation, wealth, and new economy.
  —Kevin Kelly

• The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
  —Harrington Emerson

• Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.
  —Malcolm Muggeridge

• The world loves to be deceived.
  —Sebastian Franck, Paradoxa Ducenta Octoginta

• No wise man ever wished to be younger.
  —Jonathan Swift

• When arguing with a fool, first make sure the other person isn’t doing the same thing.
  —Old proverb

• First, you must consider the situation from the enemy’s viewpoint.
  —Baron Zeppeli, JoJo no Kimyou na Boukenm

• Each blind man describes the nearby elephant differently.
  —Old Indian proverb

• Some of the most crucial steps in mental growth are based not simply on acquiring new skills, but on acquiring new administrative ways to use what one already knows.
  —Marvin Minsky

• I will never say anything that couldn’t stand as the last thing I ever say.
  —Auschwitz survivor via Benjamin Zander

• One of the things we know about comparison: that when we compare one thing to the other, it changes its value.
  —Dan Gilbert

• Opportunity costs subtract from the satisfaction we get out of what we choose, even when what we choose is terific.
  —Barry Schwartz

• In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
  —Erasmus

• There are huge numbers of people who are getting involved in completely useless things because they are so attracted and the social networks are so easy to operate.
  —Marvin Minsky

• Some problems are hard because they’re just terribly complicated. Some problems are hard just because it’s not in the nature of the thing that it can be done at all.
  —Marvin Minsky

• As empty vessels make the loudest sounds, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.
  —Plato

• Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
  —Arthur C. Clarke

• Some people are really afraid of artificial intelligence; whereas I’m more afraid of natural stupidity.
  —Eugenia Cheng

• Conversely, those with persistence can ignore what others think. They can press on in their own world, oblivious to the opinions of those around them.
  —Daigo Umehara

• If you ever find yourself getting self-conscious about something, just think of what you’d do if people’s opinions didn’t matter.
  —Daigo Umehara

• Pressure is a privilege.
  —Billie Jean King

• Ultimately, you can’t win if you don’t play.
  —Douglas Conant

• When you blow something up by a factor of a hundred, it gets about a factor of a hundred weaker.
  —Alan Kay

• There is no idea so simple and powerful, that you can’t get zillions of people to misunderstand it.
  —Alan Kay

• Keeping great talent really can mean the difference between a business succeeding or failing.
  —Brigette Hyacinth

• If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
  —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

• If you’re in a manic episode, it’s like “It’s time to get everything good right now.” Fine, but you won’t sleep for a week, and then you die because you’ve burned yourself to a crisp.
  —Jordan Peterson

• Mutation is not bad. Bad mutation is bad.
  —Gwang-Jin Kim

• All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
  —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

• Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
  —Benjamin Franklin

• There are two contradictory slogans: One is that continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. On the other hand, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. I prefer the latter because I don’t want to be remembered as the guy who didn’t.
  —Ted Nelson

• Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
  —Arthur C. Clarke

• In many ways, it’s easier to start a hard company than an easy company.
  —Sam Altman

• Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
  —Lillet Walters

• Clarity of thought precedes clarity of language.
  —Ali Rowghani

• We thrive by the collective activity of people supplying their individual talents.
  —Robert Greene

• Only some inner drive—pleasure, love—can help us overcome obstacles, prepare a path, and lift us out of the narrow circle in which others tread out their anguished, miserable existences!
  —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Play to your strengths.
  —proverb

• If you’ve known pain and hardship it’s easier to be kind to others. Being kind isn’t a weakness.
  —Ryoji Ikaji, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• People really can’t understand themselves, much less each other. Understanding 100% of anything is impossible. That’s why we spend so much time trying to understand our own motivations and those of others.
  —Ryoji Ikaji, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• You have something that you can do; that only you can do. Nobody is forcing you. Think for yourself and make that decision by yourself. Think about what you have to do now. Think about no longer having any regrets.
  —Ryoji Ikaji, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• A bell that doesn’t ring has no purpose.
  —Keel Lorenz, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Anywhere can be heaven as long as you try to live; and because he’s alive, for as long as he lives, he will have a chance to attain happiness.
  —Yui Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• A successful marriage is a union between two forgiving people.
  —Norma Reynoso Reyes

• There is an emptiness at the very core of our souls—a fundamental incompleteness that has haunted all beings since the very first epoch. On a primal level, man has always been aware of the darkness that resides at the core of his mind. We have seeked to escape from this void and the fear it causes, and all of men’s accomplishments were made in the hope of filling it.
  —Ritsuko Akagi, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• The one who deserves to survive is the one who has the will to make it happen.
  —Misato Katsuragi, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Truth is subjective, therefore, you can barely tell that which you can feel as fact.
  —Ritsuko Akagi, Neon Genesis Evangelion

• You have to throw away a lot of rocks in order to find diamonds.
  —David Bethune

• The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
  —John F. Kennedy

• Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.
  —John Taylor Gatto

• You can take the man out of the woods, but you can’t take the woods out of the man.
  —Gary Paulsen

• One always dies too soon—or too late.
  —Jean-Paul Sartre

• Anything that goes into the record speaks directly to the future.
  —Priya, Tenet (2020)

• If you can make it through your day and still sleep at night, you’re doin’ better than most.
  —Migs Mayfeld, The Mandalorian (2019)

• You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.
  —Jane Marczweskie (Nightbirde)

• Don’t raise your voice; improve your argument.
  —Desmond Tutu

• If history demonstrates anything at all it is the fact that there is no direct relationship between mode of production and the form society will take.
  —W. Cleon Skousen

• Man is by nature social and political being, and therefore the creation of governments to direct the members of the community toward their common welfare is simply an inherent expression of the very nature of man.
  —W. Cleon Skousen

• You choose your own sacrifice because the sacrifice is inevitable but at least you get to choose it.
  —Jordan Peterson

• The problem of humanity has not been the right to own private property but how to provide an equitable distribution of property rights so that many people could enjoy them.
  —W. Cleon Skousen

• Environment only conditions man, it does not change his very nature.
  —W. Cleon Skousen

• Fortune favors the bold.
  —Latin proverb

• No, you should be a monster—an absolute monster, and then you should learn how to control it. Because if you are not capable of cruelty you are absolutely a victim to anyone who is.
  —Jordan Peterson

• If you’re creative, and you’re graded by someone who isn’t a creative person, they are not gonna think that you’re creative. They are just gonna think you’re wrong.
  —Jordan Peterson

• We are inherently conflictual. The human condition is conflict among peoples because they could just never agree on values.
  —Steven Pinker

• We don’t matter, and there’s the good news.
  —Jim Carrey

• If you were teaching a child how to open a door, you wouldn’t open the door for him and then describe at length how the door looked when it was open. No, you would teach how to turn the doorknob so that he could open the door himself.
  —Ben Hogan

• The qualitative experiential subjective character of consciousness is the defining feature of consciousness and our problem is to figure out how the hell does the brain do that.
  —John Searle

• What we know about how the world works, we know that consciousness is caused by brain processes. If we knew in detail exactly how the brain does it, then we ought to be able to do it artificially.
  —John Searle

• I think a lot of this actually comes down to the weaknesses of language, both scientific and traditional. Nothing can be perfectly described. Hearing about an experience is very different from experiencing it.
  —Beartooth, YouTube

• I don’t know; I think like, AI really needs to understand death deeply in order to be able to drive a car.
  —Lex Fridman

• It is important to study the brain but you will never squeeze the essence of consciousness out of gray matter. You can squeeze it like a sponge as much as you want, you will never get experience flowing out of it.
  —Giulio Tononi

• Development of programs in Lisp proceeds, I think, somewhere between 1,000 and 50,000 times faster than development in any of what you’re calling modern or improved computer languages.
  —Douglas Lenat

• I think that people have never stopped believing in anything that has no germ of sense to it.
  —Isaac Asimov

• The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
  —Latin proverb

• Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.
  —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

• Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream.
  —Eliphalet Oram Lyte

• Their exercises are unbloody battles, and their battles bloody exercises.
  —Flavius Josephus

• The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
  —Norman Schwarzkopf

• I think, therefore I am.
  —René Descartes

• We are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. So the sovereignty emanates from the people. If we are going to run our sovereignty, everything has to be done by the people and those who will vote and those who will count must be the people.
  —Edmundo Casiño

• Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?
  —Marshall Bruce Mathers III

• Countries who have more liberty are capitalistic countries. Countries who have less liberty are communists countries.
  —Verdahundo, Twitter

• Technological change which permits the most talented to lever their talent to larger audience is the key to understanding why they get so much of the take.
  —Glenn Loury

• Even if you’re intelligent and creative the probability that you’ll build a product that’s actually time for the market is extremely low. So, well what do you do? You create more.
  —Jordan Peterson

• It is a lot easy to wreck something than to improve it.
  —Jordan Peterson

• By policy, LISP has never really catered to mere mortals. And, of course, mere mortals have never really forgiven LISP for not catering to them.
  —Larry Wall

• All economic systems result in inequality.
  —Jordan Peterson

• Every rejection, every disappointment, has led you here, to this moment.
  —Alpha Waymond Wang, Everything Everywhere All at Once

• Resentment is like drinking a poison and then waiting for the other person to die.
  —Carrie Fisher

• The only thing a son can do for his father is pat him on his shoulder or kill him.
  —Misato Katsuragi, Neon Genesis Evangelion 3.0+1.01

• There is no question this world is unstable, imperfect, and irrational. It is a world where things break down if you take what people say at face value.
  —Gendoh Ikari, Neon Genesis Evangelion 3.0+1.01

• If you do not have room in your life for the playful, life is not worth living.
  —Alan Watts

• It is a lot easier to make observations about the past than to make predictions about the future.
  —Gary Smith and Jay Cordes, The Phantom Pattern Problem

• Salvation isn’t something another person can give you. It’s something you find on your own.
  —Niko, Kengan Ashura

• People by and large become what they think about themselves.
  —William James

• A person with great dreams can achieve great things. A person with small dreams, or a person without the confidence to pursue his or her dreams, has consigned himself or herself to a life of frustration and mediocrity.
  —Bob Rotella

• You cannot hit a golf ball consistently well if you think about the mechanics of your swing as you play.
  —Bob Rotella

• The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.
  —Mark Twain

• Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
  —Suzy Kassem

• When I take a lesson my teacher can say eight or ten things to me, and I’ll be saying to myself, ‘Nope. Nope. That’s not it. Nope.’ But one of those eight or ten things will appeal to me. I’ll know it will help, and I’ll incorporate it and play better.
  —David Frost

• Love is not an unalterable factory setting. It is a skill that you can train.
  —Dan Harris

• The view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass.
  —Dan Harris

• Don’t waste your miracle on your pain.
  —Ben Stone, Manifest (2018)

• A bird who flies with a bat, wakes up with its head downwards.
  —Brazilian proverb

• One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.
  —André Gide

• People try to fit into a mold. They play a role in society to attempt to find meaning in life. This is why they devote their lives to their work.
  —Joji Saiga, Psycho-Pass: The Movie

• To live is not to breathe; it is to act.
  —Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of great violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful, you’re harmless.
  —Stef Starkgaryen

• It′s better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.
  —Clarence Worley, True Romance (1993)

• Their advantage over you is experience. Your advantage over them is technique.
  —Kenneth Agaya

• If you want peace, prepare for war.
  —Latin proverb

• A stone in evil hands killed Abel. A stone in righteous hands killed Goliath.
  —John Rich

• AI should be built by humanity, for humanity. And let’s not forget that. It shouldn’t be by Moloch, for Moloch.
  —Max Tegmark

• A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition.
  —Rudyard Kipling

• Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.
  —Robert Greene, Mastery

• An infinite number of ways to arrive at the inevitable.
  —Hari Seldon, Foundation (TV series)

• The second you forget you’re playing a part, you’re lost.
  —Hari Seldon, Foundation (TV series)

• Every scientist should be delighted if they are shown to be wrong. Because the moment you are shown to be wrong, it means you’ve learned something, and that’s the way that knowledge progresses.
  —Brian Cox

• Impatience for victory guarantees defeat.
  —Louis XIV

• Passion is that flame in your belly, that no one else can light, but you. And when that flame is lit, it starts traveling from person, to person, to person, ’til you light the world all around you.
  —Dawn Zoldi

• It’s the idle hours that often lead a man to ruin.
  —The Killer, The Killer (2023)

• One man’s cruelty is another man’s pragmatism.
  —The Expert, The Killer (2023)

• The strongest sword is a blend of steel. Soft and hard. Pure and impure.
  —Mizu, Blue Eye Samurai (2023)

• Death is something that should not exonerate any sin if it wasn’t repented for.
  —Seon Jae-sun, A Killer Paradox

• We can’t really live until we’ve died a little, can we?
  —Blind Al, Deadpool 2 (2018)

• Protect it or lose it.
  —Walker’s Razor Pro

• What we believe shapes who we are. Belief can bring us salvation or destruction. But when you believe a lie for too long, the truth doesn’t set you free. It tears you apart.
  —Takeshi KOVACS, Altered Carbon

• Reality is just an agreed upon illusion
  —Jack Soul BRASIL, Altered Carbon

• They say hope begins in the dark. That faith is the bird that feels light when the sky is still dim. But with every tomorrow we carry our past. It echoes beneath our feet. There are no clean slates.
  —Dig 301, Altered Carbon

• Second chances are earned in the choices we make, in what we choose to forget, and in what we forgive.
  —Dig 301, Altered Carbon

• With each choice we make we are led somewhere new. But with every stake I take, your memory haunts.
  —Dig 301, Altered Carbon

• Without death we can’t know what a life is worth.
  —Quellcrist Falconer, Altered Carbon

• He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.
  —Paul Muad’Dib, Dune

• It’s nice knowing how every stage ends. No surprises, no twists. It always stays the same. But that’s not living.
  —Old Jubilee, X-Men ’97

• Living doesn’t get cheat codes or extra lives. But it has friends and family. Love, loss, and heapings of hope. Life’s a total risk and it’s on you. Take it.
  —Old Jubilee, X-Men ’97

• What are demons, but reflections of our fears and shame? Things we bury within us, hide from loved ones, even as they poison our hearts until we finally heal our adversary by embracing it.
  —Storm, X-Men ’97

• But every decision for something is a decision against something else.
  —H. G. Tannhaus, Dark (2017)

• My place is not in the yesterday or tomorrow. Rather, it’s right here.
  —Jonas Kahnwald, Dark (2017)

• If you let the user handle the error themselves, they have no easy way to handle the error gracefully since all of the state information is lost.
  —Michael Malis

• Rule number one, never carry anything you don’t control.
  —Luthen, Andor (2022)

• Rule number two, build your exit on your way in.
  —Luthen, Andor (2022).

• Life is boring if you avoid all competition for fear of losing. Besides, how would you get better that way?
  —Lancelot Norman, Rising Impact (2024)

• Be good enough to forgive people, but don’t be stupid enough to trust them again.
  —Anonymous

• The only mystery that’s left is women.
  —Ben Stoeger

• People don’t actually like knowing they’re living in a simulation even if they strongly believe it’s true.
  —Maggie Kim, Pantheon

• You don’t solve more with more. You solve it with less.
  —Caspian Keyes, Pantheon

• Hey! Time won’t wait for you
  —Jamiroquai, Time Won’t Wait

• Before you heal someone, ask him if he’s willing to give up the things that make him sick.
  —Hippocrates

• No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.
  —Socrates, 469–399 BC

• As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.
  —John McCarthy

• We’re investors; we’re not gamblers.
  —Matthew Greene

• One bullet well placed can be a magical thing. It’s neither good nor evil. But how a man uses it reveals his true character.
  —Ballerina (2025)

• Thus the act of programming makes us keenly aware of our errors of reasoning or unsupported conclusions.
  —Gerald Jay Sussman

• Anyone can learn Lisp in one day, except that if they already know Fortran, it will take three days.
  —Marvin Minsky

• Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features appear necessary.
  —Revised⁷ Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (R⁷RS)

• In order to express sophisticated ideas, you need to have sophisticated means of expressing them.
  —Anonymous

• Mathematics, of course, persists. And the reason why it persists is because you can’t say in natural language some of the things you can say in mathematical expressions.
  —Gerald Jay Sussman

• You have no idea what you’re trying to achieve until you’ve achieved it.
  —Gerald Jay Sussman

• Lisp is a forever language.
  —Gerald Jay Sussman

• There’s a philosophy of writing things properly rather than writing them just so that they work now.
  —Gerald Jay Sussman

• So I’m only developing now in forever languages, languages that are going to be around for 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 years from now.
  —Gerald Jay Sussman

• Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
  —Confucius

• But for entrepreneurs, we don’t focus on products. We focus on problems.
  —John Mullins

• Entrepreneurs don’t ask permission. They just get on with it.
  —John Mullins

• Those who have swords, and know how to use them, but keep them sheathed, will inherit the world.
  —Jordan Peterson

• Power, real power, doesn’t come to those who were born strongest, or fastest, or smartest. No. It comes to those who will do anything to achieve it.
  —Silco, Arcane (2025)

• I think everybody here knows that a reasonable, complete specification of a program before it is written has never happened and never will.
  —Martin Cracauer

• The only love that we all deserve, is the love that will choose us, everyday.
  —Ben&Ben

• You musn’t trust others so easily because, in the end, they can betray you. They don’t betray you because they are evil. They do these things because they are so weak. And most people are weak.
  —Lady Maeda, Gyeongseong Creature, 2023

• Every time I witness the fear of an individual, it makes me feel alive.
  —Lady Maeda, Gyeongseong Creature (2024)

• There are those who are afraid of dying but there are also those who are afraid to live.
  —Chae-ok, Gyeongseong Creature (2024)

• If you don’t have a strong preference, then you should have a strong preference for money.
  —Ben Stoeger

• You will always be smaller and at a disadvantage. He is beating you because you are alowing him to define the terms of the contest.
  —Nogi, Ballerina (2025)

• Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.
  —Siddharta Gautama

• What you think, you become.
  —Siddharta Gautama

• You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.
  —Siddhartha Gautama

• Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.
  —Siddhartha Gautama

• If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path.
  —Siddhartha Gautama

• Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle and the life of the candle will not be shortened.
  —Siddhartha Gautama

• The fact that some programs that scans extraordinary amounts of data and get something superficially similar to what a two-year-old child does basically tells us nothing.
  —Noam Chomsky

• External speech has words appearing in linear order—one word after another. There’s a very good reason to believe that the internal system—the system we use in thinking and reasoning—is on a linear order. It just deals with abstract structures.
  —Noam Chomsky

• There are no fixed relations between words, or the minimum meaning—the elements of language—than it is on the outside world. There’s so much more indirect relationship between them.
  —Noam Chomsky

• What’s the nature of arithmetic is different from how we use arithmetic.
  —Noam Chomsky

• The structure of a language still doesn’t tell us anything about the perception of time.
  —Noam Chomsky

• We need to gravitise quantum mechanics, not quantise gravity.
  —Sir Roger Penrose

• Maybe we’re the mechanism by which the universe is going to try to understand itself.
  —Demis Hassabis

• We must know. We will know.
  —David Hilbert

• Out of sight, out of mind.
  —anonymous

• A shooting competition isn’t a gunfight, but a gunfight is a shooting competition.
  —Massad Ayoob

• Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy.
  —Ms. Valerie Frizzle, The Magic School Bus

• SQL, Lisp, and Haskell are the only programming languages that I've seen where one spends more time thinking than typing.
  —Philip Greenspun

• The more mixed up things are the better the solution.
  —Ms. Valerie Frizzle, The Magic School Bus