Reader > Reader's Quotes

“War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“Most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
― Otto von Bismarck

“After all, no one is stupid enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their sons.”
― Herodotus

“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
― Anonymous Greek Proverb

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
― Theodore Kaczynski

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“What kind of dining set defines me as a person?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club