"Nature abhors a vacuum. When a head lacks brains, nature fills it with conceit."

Unknown, Source on mind
3 fans of this quote   

"Don't mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it; if unfair, keep from irritation; if it is ignorant, smile; if it is justified it is not criticism, learn from it."

Unknown, Source on criticism   

"Knowledge in the form of an informational commodity indispensable to productive power is already, and will continue to be, a major --perhaps the major --stake in the worldwide competition for power. It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control over access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor."

Lyotard, Jean Francois on information   

"Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works."

Lyotard, Jean Francois on culture   

"Rock and roll doesn't necessarily mean a band. It doesn't mean a singer, and it doesn't mean a lyric, really. It's that question of trying to be immortal."

Mclaren, Malcolm on rock and roll   

"Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It's become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute."

Mclaren, Malcolm on culture   

"Good and bad men are less than they seem."

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor on goodness
4 fans of this quote   

"Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience."

Cervantes, Miguel De on proverbs
6 fans of this quote   

"Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?"

Brown, Jerry on punishment   

"The government is becoming the family of last resort."

Brown, Jerry on family   

"Do not tell a friend anything you would conceal from an enemy."

Proverb, Arabian on friends and friendship
5 fans of this quote   

"Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so."

Dworkin, Andrea on women
9 fans of this quote   

"It is fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashions."

Voltaire on fashion   

"I learned very early in my life in Whitehall, the acid test of any political question is; What is the Alternative?"

Trent, Lord on questions   

"No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious."

Shaw, George Bernard on questions
4 fans of this quote   

"It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question."

Decouvertes on questions
5 fans of this quote   

"By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all."

Santayana, George on questions
3 fans of this quote   

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"Intolerance is a form of egotism, and to condemn egotism intolerantly is to share it."

Santayana, George on intolerance
5 fans of this quote   

"Can it be that chance has made me one of those women so immersed in one man that, whether they are barren or not, they carry with them to the grave the shriveled innocence of an old maid?"

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on infatuation   

"But just as delicate fare does not stop you from craving for saveloys, so tried and exquisite friendship does not take away your taste for something new and dubious."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on friends and friendship   

"The worst solitude is to have no real friendships."

Bacon, Francis on friends and friendship
35 fans of this quote   

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

Shaw, George Bernard on truth
5 fans of this quote   

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"It is always good policy to tell the truth unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar. Jerome K. Jerome It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth. and so it goes away. Puzzling."

Pirsig, Robert M. on truth   

"Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food."

Pirsig, Robert M. on physics   

"What a heavy burden is a name that has become famous too soon."

Voltaire on fame   

"The best is the enemy of the good."

Voltaire on excellence
5 fans of this quote   

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"In my life, I have prayed but one prayer: oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it."

Voltaire on enemies
14 fans of this quote   

"I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age."

Voltaire on doctors
7 fans of this quote   

"Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create."

Voltaire on doctors   

"Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing."

Voltaire on doctors
11 fans of this quote   

"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."

Voltaire on death
10 fans of this quote   

"Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is."

Voltaire on physics   

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea."

Bacon, Francis on discovery
4 fans of this quote   

"We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings."

Einstein, Albert on humankind
8 fans of this quote   

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."

Paine, Thomas on value
4 fans of this quote   

"Life begins at 40 -- but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times."

Feather, William on age and aging
4 fans of this quote   

"One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person."

Feather, William on happiness
8 fans of this quote   

"It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone that can make anyone happy or miserable."

L'Estrange, Sir Roger on happiness
9 fans of this quote   

"In hell, the Devil is God."

Joshi, Kedar on evil
4 fans of this quote   

"The devil helps his servants for a season; but when they get into a pinch; he leaves them in the lurch."

L'Estrange, Sir Roger on evil