thought-provoking

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
26fd653	We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.	science thought-provoking	Carl Sagan
46bee04	According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people	inspirational thought-provoking	Haruki Murakami
88128ae	According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people. In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half.	thought-provoking	Haruki Murakami
8952db8	We do not remember days, we remember moments.	inspirational thought-provoking	Cesare Pavese
f5eaac9	The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.	insight life life-lessons living motivation thought-provoking	Chuck Palahniuk
8a7055e	While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story--their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done.	inspirational thought-provoking	Alyson Noel
1a72914	We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.	religion thought-provoking	Richard Bach
ae0a77a	Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.	act acting actor actors adage adages animal animals aphorism aphorisms audacity axiom axioms balls be-yourself boldness brave bravery cojones conform conforming conformity courage courageous courageousness daring dead death deep dictum dictums die epigram epigrams facade façades fear fearful fearlessness fit-in fitting-in fruit fruits gallantry gnome gnomes grit guts hardihood heroism herself himself human human-being human-beings humans humor humour insightful inspiration inspirational inspire inspired intrepidity kill killed lemon lemons made-me-think make-you-think maxim maxims motivated motivational motive moxie murder murdered nerve nonconformity oneself orange people peoples person persons plant plants pluck pluckiness pretend pretender pretenders pretending produce profound proverb proverbs provoke-thought quotation quotations quote quotes satire satirical saying sayings self spunk standing-out standout themselves thought-provoking thoughtful tree trees true-grit valour words-to-live-by yourself	Mokokoma Mokhonoana
73f4ba4	Some men because they're afraid to .	thought-provoking	George R.R. Martin
d25b59e	Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.	life thought-provoking	Tom Robbins
f2cf317	Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this. Socrates: How so, Plato? Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a sculptor. Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have no need to be reminded. Plato: That is correct. Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.	catholic-author christian citizens civil-liberty free-country freedom freedom-of-thought gadfly liberty philosophers philosophical philosophy plato socrates thought-provoking wisdom words-of-wisdom	E.A. Bucchianeri
00bddd0	If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?	life thought-provoking inspirational	Jonathan Safran Foer
65b0b6e	It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.	thought-provoking	Haruki Murakami
3c72f64	If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?	inspirational sad thought-provoking	Jodi Picoult
4e55ee5	I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.	richard-feynmann self-value thought-provoking values-in-life	Richard P. Feynman
3c3032b	If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die	sad thought-provoking	Natsuo Kirino
7237662	"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height."	profound thought-provoking	Umberto Eco
9464f53	God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insensible influence on his character - his life.	thought-provoking	Elizabeth Gaskell
4c02114	All dreams continue in the beyond.	thought-provoking	Tom Robbins
c41ca60	Everyone who's born has come from the sea. Your mother's womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they're born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean -- walking on the land.	thought-provoking	Timothy Findley
b5f79e9	We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.	thought-provoking	Sam Harris
8b39223	The party in Alobar's head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.	life thought-provoking	Tom Robbins
45b02e1	On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.	inspirational sleep thought-provoking writing	Tom Robbins
6d119bb	That's the worst thing they do to you, to any of you. Whatever those brain lesions are all about, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: You're all brainwashed into believing you're ugly.	beauty brainwash pretty think-on thought thought-provoking ugly	Scott Westerfeld
07b4a70	Of course, I am interested, but I would not dare to talk about them. In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other.	learning self-awareness specialization thought-provoking	Richard P. Feynman
f816897	At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?	thought-provoking	John Steinbeck
b85f1d0	The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?	mystery thought-provoking	Milan Kundera
6462af9	If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.	thought-provoking	Cormac McCarthy
c0c8fdb	It's tempting to ask why if you fed your neighbors during the time of the earthquake and fire, you didn't do so before or after.	inspirational thought-provoking utopia	Rebecca Solnit
9b5ab8b	"Hasn't stopped us before. And besides, if they wanted to kill us, we'd be dead by now and would be having an entirely different conversation. I wonder if I'd still be mad at you, or if we would talk in words or pictures. Maybe in smells. That would be cool." -Janco"	afterlife-speculation funny-and-random funny-but-true funny-quotes humor thought-provoking	Maria V. Snyder
bea78d3	Without language, they have no lies. Thus they have no future.	lying philosophy thought-provoking truth	Ursula K. Le Guin
f627f06	Show me a hero and I'll show you a man enslaved by his competence.	thought-provoking	Janny Wurts
1e8b974	And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.	thought-provoking writing	Lawrence Lessig
71b98ee	while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.	future life past present thought-provoking thoughts-on-life	Monica Ali
b83315a	Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were not guilty of any sin?	thought-provoking	Donna Woolfolk Cross
dd3348d	Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.	on-kissing thought-provoking	Flannery O'Connor
f470103	I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing.	personification thought-provoking	Flannery O'Connor
fec1234	Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they have only what the past chose to leave behind-- for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it's a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper...No, the fault lies with the artists...The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It's them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king...Liars?...or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?	philosophy thought-provoking	Diana Gabaldon
88e3df3	So, is it harder to dream about what you don't have than to live in fear of losing what you do?	thought-provoking	Barbara Delinsky
d613777	It's better to lose something than never to have had	thought-provoking	Jonathan Safran Foer
a2bd3c6	Then sense. Use your sense. Not all of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think long and well.	philosophical thought-provoking	Richard Llewellyn
a8bfbf9	Only the artistic will to transform the future into a space of unlimited art-elevating chances enables us to understand the core of the procreation rule: 'a creator shall you create [...] a self-propelling wheel, a first movement'. This rule contains no less than Nietzsche's theology after the death of God: there will continue to be a God and gods, but only humanity-immanent ones, and only to the extent that there are creators who follow on from what has been achieved in order to go higher, faster and further.	artistry creation death-of-god god humanity immanence nietzsche thought-provoking	Peter Sloterdijk

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

Carl Sagan

46bee04

According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people

inspirational thought-provoking

Haruki Murakami

88128ae

According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people. In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half.

thought-provoking

Haruki Murakami

8952db8

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

inspirational thought-provoking

Cesare Pavese

f5eaac9

The voice says, maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.

insight life life-lessons living motivation thought-provoking

Chuck Palahniuk

8a7055e

While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story--their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done.

inspirational thought-provoking

Alyson Noel

1a72914

We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.

religion thought-provoking

Richard Bach

ae0a77a

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

act acting actor actors adage adages animal animals aphorism aphorisms audacity axiom axioms balls be-yourself boldness brave bravery cojones conform conforming conformity courage courageous courageousness daring dead death deep dictum dictums die epigram epigrams facade façades fear fearful fearlessness fit-in fitting-in fruit fruits gallantry gnome gnomes grit guts hardihood heroism herself himself human human-being human-beings humans humor humour insightful inspiration inspirational inspire inspired intrepidity kill killed lemon lemons made-me-think make-you-think maxim maxims motivated motivational motive moxie murder murdered nerve nonconformity oneself orange people peoples person persons plant plants pluck pluckiness pretend pretender pretenders pretending produce profound proverb proverbs provoke-thought quotation quotations quote quotes satire satirical saying sayings self spunk standing-out standout themselves thought-provoking thoughtful tree trees true-grit valour words-to-live-by yourself

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

73f4ba4

Some men because they're afraid to .

thought-provoking

George R.R. Martin

d25b59e

Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.

life thought-provoking

Tom Robbins

f2cf317

Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this. Socrates: How so, Plato? Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is a sculptor. Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they have no need to be reminded. Plato: That is correct. Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.

catholic-author christian citizens civil-liberty free-country freedom freedom-of-thought gadfly liberty philosophers philosophical philosophy plato socrates thought-provoking wisdom words-of-wisdom

E.A. Bucchianeri

00bddd0

If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?

life thought-provoking inspirational

Jonathan Safran Foer

65b0b6e

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me.

thought-provoking

Haruki Murakami

3c72f64

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take?

inspirational sad thought-provoking

Jodi Picoult

4e55ee5

I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

richard-feynmann self-value thought-provoking values-in-life

Richard P. Feynman

3c3032b

If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die

sad thought-provoking

Natsuo Kirino

7237662

"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height."

profound thought-provoking

Umberto Eco

9464f53

God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insensible influence on his character - his life.

thought-provoking

Elizabeth Gaskell

4c02114

All dreams continue in the beyond.

thought-provoking

Tom Robbins

c41ca60

Everyone who's born has come from the sea. Your mother's womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they're born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean -- walking on the land.

thought-provoking

Timothy Findley

b5f79e9

We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.

thought-provoking

Sam Harris

8b39223

The party in Alobar's head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged.

life thought-provoking

Tom Robbins

45b02e1

On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges.

inspirational sleep thought-provoking writing

Tom Robbins

6d119bb

That's the worst thing they do to you, to any of you. Whatever those brain lesions are all about, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: You're all brainwashed into believing you're ugly.

beauty brainwash pretty think-on thought thought-provoking ugly

Scott Westerfeld

07b4a70

Of course, I am interested, but I would not dare to talk about them. In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself. In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other.

learning self-awareness specialization thought-provoking

Richard P. Feynman

f816897

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

thought-provoking

John Steinbeck

b85f1d0

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

mystery thought-provoking

Milan Kundera

6462af9

If he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.

thought-provoking

Cormac McCarthy

c0c8fdb

It's tempting to ask why if you fed your neighbors during the time of the earthquake and fire, you didn't do so before or after.

inspirational thought-provoking utopia

Rebecca Solnit

9b5ab8b

"Hasn't stopped us before. And besides, if they wanted to kill us, we'd be dead by now and would be having an entirely different conversation. I wonder if I'd still be mad at you, or if we would talk in words or pictures. Maybe in smells. That would be cool." -Janco"

afterlife-speculation funny-and-random funny-but-true funny-quotes humor thought-provoking

Maria V. Snyder

bea78d3

Without language, they have no lies. Thus they have no future.

lying philosophy thought-provoking truth

Ursula K. Le Guin

f627f06

Show me a hero and I'll show you a man enslaved by his competence.

thought-provoking

Janny Wurts

1e8b974

And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.

thought-provoking writing

Lawrence Lessig

71b98ee

while she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.

future life past present thought-provoking thoughts-on-life

Monica Ali

b83315a

Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were not guilty of any sin?

thought-provoking

Donna Woolfolk Cross

dd3348d

Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.

on-kissing thought-provoking

Flannery O'Connor

f470103

I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing.

personification thought-provoking

Flannery O'Connor

fec1234

Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they have only what the past chose to leave behind-- for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it's a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper...No, the fault lies with the artists...The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It's them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king...Liars?...or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?

philosophy thought-provoking

Diana Gabaldon

88e3df3

So, is it harder to dream about what you don't have than to live in fear of losing what you do?

thought-provoking

Barbara Delinsky

d613777

It's better to lose something than never to have had

thought-provoking

Jonathan Safran Foer

a2bd3c6

Then sense. Use your sense. Not all of us are born for greatness, but all of us have sense. Make use of it. Think. Think long and well.

philosophical thought-provoking

Richard Llewellyn

a8bfbf9

Only the artistic will to transform the future into a space of unlimited art-elevating chances enables us to understand the core of the procreation rule: 'a creator shall you create [...] a self-propelling wheel, a first movement'. This rule contains no less than Nietzsche's theology after the death of God: there will continue to be a God and gods, but only humanity-immanent ones, and only to the extent that there are creators who follow on from what has been achieved in order to go higher, faster and further.

artistry creation death-of-god god humanity immanence nietzsche thought-provoking

Peter Sloterdijk