Chapter 2 - You are reading Chapter 2 right now!
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Chapter 2

Friedrich Nietzsche

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. [1]

William Wordsworth

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. [2]

Samuel Beckett

We are all born mad. Some remain so. [3]

Jean-Paul Sartre

When the rich wage war it's the poor who die. [4]

Umberto Eco

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. [5]

John Ruskin

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece. [6]

Gabriel García Márquez

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it. [7]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. [8]

Bill Maher

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities. [9]

Marcel Proust

We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full. [10]

Christopher Hitchens

To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?' [11]

John Dewey

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. [12]

Flannery O'Connor

To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. [13]

Geoffrey Chaucer

Time and tide wait for no man. [14]

J.M. Barrie

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. [15]

Alfred Tennyson

Theirs is not to make reply: Theirs is not to reason why: Theirs is but to do and die. [16]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. [17]

Adolf Hitler

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. [18]

Leo Tolstoy

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. [19]

Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. [20]

Henry James

The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have. [21]

Adam Smith

The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. [22]

Joe Rogan

The only time I commit to conspiracy theories is when something way retarded happens. Like Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. [23]

Thomas Sowell

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department. [24]

Charles Darwin

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic. [25]

Richard Dawkins

The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry. [26]

Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. [27]

Emil Cioran

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one. [28]

Ernest Hemingway

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. [29]

Winston Churchill

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. [30]

Albert Einstein

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. [31]

E.O. Wilson

Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science. [32]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. [33]

John Locke

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. [34]

Eudora Welty

Never think you've seen the last of anything. [35]

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. [36]

Richard Feynman

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. [37]

James Joyce

Mistakes are the portals of discovery. [38]

Albert Camus

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. [39]

William Shakespeare

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. [40]

Victor Hugo

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. [41]

George W. Bush

It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it. [42]

Gore Vidal

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. [43]

John Steinbeck

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. [44]

Virginia Woolf

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. [45]

James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. [46]

Thomas Paine

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. [47]

Henri Poincare

If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. [48]

Jane Austen

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. [49]

William F. Buckley Jr.

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive. [50]

Stephen Hawking

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road. [51]

Walt Whitman

I exist as I am, that is enough. [52]

Arthur Conan Doyle

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place, for where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be. [53]

John Milton

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. [54]

Immanuel Kant

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. [55]

Jonathan Swift

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. [56]

Aristotle

Happiness depends upon ourselves. [57]

Mark Twain

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. [58]

Franz Kafka

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached. [59]

Carl Sagan

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. [60]

Voltaire

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. [61]

Denis Diderot

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to. [62]

Noam Chomsky

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune. [63]

Benjamin Franklin

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. [64]

Arthur Schopenhauer

Each day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth; every fresh morning a little youth; every going to rest and sleep a little death. [65]

Frederick the Great

Don't forget your great guns, which are the most respectable arguments of the rights of kings. [66]

Gustave Flaubert

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. [67]

Bertrand Russell

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. [68]

Edgar Allan Poe

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. [69]

David Hume

Be a philosopher but, amid all your philosophy be still a man. [70]

John Berger

Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form. [71]

James Anthony Froude

As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities. [72]

André Malraux

Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate. [73]

André Gide

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. [74]

Douglas Adams

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. [75]

George Eliot

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. [76]

Toni Morrison

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. [77]

George Orwell

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. [78]

William Faulkner

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. [79]

Elizabeth I of England

All my possessions for a moment of time. [80]

Jack Kerouac

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life. [81]

Baruch Spinoza

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love. [82]

John Stuart Mill

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality. [83]

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push. [84]

Isaac Newton

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding. [85]

Charles Dickens

A loving heart is the truest wisdom. [86]

José Saramago

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction. [87]

William James

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. [88]

Dante Alighieri

A great flame follows a little spark. [89]

George Bernard Shaw

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. [90]

In Order of Appearance

Each chapter features the same authors in the same order! Different quotes.


  1. Friedrich Nietzsche - 12 ↩︎

  2. William Wordsworth - 63 ↩︎

  3. Samuel Beckett - 28 ↩︎

  4. Jean-Paul Sartre - 202 ↩︎

  5. Umberto Eco - 390 ↩︎

  6. John Ruskin - 212 ↩︎

  7. Gabriel García Márquez - 24 ↩︎

  8. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - 13 ↩︎

  9. Bill Maher - 11 ↩︎

  10. Marcel Proust - 54 ↩︎

  11. Christopher Hitchens - 1 ↩︎

  12. John Dewey - 47 ↩︎

  13. Flannery O'Connor - 154 ↩︎

  14. Geoffrey Chaucer - 162 ↩︎

  15. J.M. Barrie - 186 ↩︎

  16. Alfred Tennyson - 73 ↩︎

  17. Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 205 ↩︎

  18. Adolf Hitler - 65 ↩︎

  19. Leo Tolstoy - 25 ↩︎

  20. Oscar Wilde - 56 ↩︎

  21. Henry James - 181 ↩︎

  22. Adam Smith - 19 ↩︎

  23. Joe Rogan - 46 ↩︎

  24. Thomas Sowell - 383 ↩︎

  25. Charles Darwin - 114 ↩︎

  26. Richard Dawkins - 2 ↩︎

  27. Henry David Thoreau - 180 ↩︎

  28. Emil Cioran - 146 ↩︎

  29. Ernest Hemingway - 22 ↩︎

  30. Winston Churchill - 400 ↩︎

  31. Albert Einstein - 69 ↩︎

  32. E.O. Wilson - 142 ↩︎

  33. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - 15 ↩︎

  34. John Locke - 49 ↩︎

  35. Eudora Welty - 150 ↩︎

  36. F. Scott Fitzgerald - 152 ↩︎

  37. Richard Feynman - 58 ↩︎

  38. James Joyce - 14 ↩︎

  39. Albert Camus - 9 ↩︎

  40. William Shakespeare - 8 ↩︎

  41. Victor Hugo - 60 ↩︎

  42. George W. Bush - 167 ↩︎

  43. Gore Vidal - 170 ↩︎

  44. John Steinbeck - 215 ↩︎

  45. Virginia Woolf - 393 ↩︎

  46. James Madison - 193 ↩︎

  47. Thomas Paine - 382 ↩︎

  48. Henri Poincare - 179 ↩︎

  49. Jane Austen - 44 ↩︎

  50. William F. Buckley Jr. - 397 ↩︎

  51. Stephen Hawking - 59 ↩︎

  52. Walt Whitman - 394 ↩︎

  53. Arthur Conan Doyle - 88 ↩︎

  54. John Milton - 50 ↩︎

  55. Immanuel Kant - 42 ↩︎

  56. Jonathan Swift - 52 ↩︎

  57. Aristotle - 31 ↩︎

  58. Mark Twain - 26 ↩︎

  59. Franz Kafka - 23 ↩︎

  60. Carl Sagan - 20 ↩︎

  61. Voltaire - 61 ↩︎

  62. Denis Diderot - 36 ↩︎

  63. Noam Chomsky - 4 ↩︎

  64. Benjamin Franklin - 99 ↩︎

  65. Arthur Schopenhauer - 91 ↩︎

  66. Frederick the Great - 158 ↩︎

  67. Gustave Flaubert - 175 ↩︎

  68. Bertrand Russell - 10 ↩︎

  69. Edgar Allan Poe - 21 ↩︎

  70. David Hume - 35 ↩︎

  71. John Berger - 206 ↩︎

  72. James Anthony Froude - 190 ↩︎

  73. André Malraux - 76 ↩︎

  74. André Gide - 75 ↩︎

  75. Douglas Adams - 37 ↩︎

  76. George Eliot - 164 ↩︎

  77. Toni Morrison - 387 ↩︎

  78. George Orwell - 40 ↩︎

  79. William Faulkner - 62 ↩︎

  80. Elizabeth I of England - 145 ↩︎

  81. Jack Kerouac - 187 ↩︎

  82. Baruch Spinoza - 98 ↩︎

  83. John Stuart Mill - 51 ↩︎

  84. Ludwig Wittgenstein - 53 ↩︎

  85. Isaac Newton - 43 ↩︎

  86. Charles Dickens - 6 ↩︎

  87. José Saramago - 219 ↩︎

  88. William James - 398 ↩︎

  89. Dante Alighieri - 127 ↩︎

  90. George Bernard Shaw - 163 ↩︎