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.	living motivation life-lessons life thought-provoking insight	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.	be-yourself acting adage adages aphorisms audacity axiom axioms balls cojones conforming courageousness dictum dictums fit-in hardihood heroism herself human-being intrepidity made-me-think make-you-think maxims motivated moxie murder murdered oneself persons pluckiness pretender pretenders profound provoke-thought quotation spunk standout themselves true-grit daring humour bravery courage inspired people human fear quote inspiration inspire death motivational humor inspirational fearful actor saying lemons conform animal pluck courageous lemon plants nerve boldness motive plant words-to-live-by killed gnomes nonconformity orange maxim tree brave actors façades act grit epigram epigrams gnome produce deep fitting-in valour proverbs facade aphorism pretending quotations sayings pretend conformity gallantry peoples guts standing-out trees animals satire satirical self thought-provoking person himself yourself quotes human-beings thoughtful insightful proverb humans kill fearlessness dead fruit fruits die	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.	words-of-wisdom philosophical freedom philosophy wisdom catholic-author citizens civil-liberty free-country gadfly philosophers plato socrates liberty christian freedom-of-thought thought-provoking	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 inspirational thought-provoking	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 thought-provoking sad	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 values-in-life thought-provoking	Richard P. Feynman
3c3032b	If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die	thought-provoking sad	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.	sleep writing inspirational thought-provoking	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 think-on thought-provoking pretty thought 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?	thought-provoking mystery	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
bea78d3	Without language, they have no lies. Thus they have no future.	lying philosophy truth thought-provoking	Ursula K. Le Guin
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"	humor afterlife-speculation funny-and-random funny-but-true funny-quotes thought-provoking	Maria V. Snyder
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.	writing thought-provoking	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.	present future past life thoughts-on-life thought-provoking	Monica Ali
f627f06	Show me a hero and I'll show you a man enslaved by his competence.	thought-provoking	Janny Wurts
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
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
f470103	I like to walk in the woods and see what Mother Nature is wearing.	personification thought-provoking	Flannery O'Connor
dd3348d	Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.	on-kissing thought-provoking	Flannery O'Connor
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.	humanity god artistry death-of-god immanence nietzsche thought-provoking creation	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.

living motivation life-lessons life thought-provoking insight

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.

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

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.

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

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 inspirational thought-provoking

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 thought-provoking sad

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 values-in-life thought-provoking

Richard P. Feynman

3c3032b

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

thought-provoking sad

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.

sleep writing inspirational thought-provoking

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 think-on thought-provoking pretty thought 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?

thought-provoking mystery

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

bea78d3

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

lying philosophy truth thought-provoking

Ursula K. Le Guin

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"

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

Maria V. Snyder

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.

writing thought-provoking

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.

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

Monica Ali

f627f06

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

thought-provoking

Janny Wurts

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

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

f470103

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

personification thought-provoking

Flannery O'Connor

dd3348d

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

on-kissing thought-provoking

Flannery O'Connor

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.

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

Peter Sloterdijk