Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

Charles Dickens

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.

Charles Caleb Colton

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Alan Watts

As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.

Chogyam Trungpa

Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.

Chogyam Trungpa

When you drop your unnecessary things, you finally can swoop and fly in vast space. It is so blue, so bright, and so nice, so airy and fresh. You can stretch your wings and breathe the air. You can do anything you want. You have experienced cheerfulness and joy, and finally the bliss of freedom occurs in you.

Edward Gibbon

A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprise of an aspiring prince

Arnold J. Toynbee

We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a determinist. But I also believe that the decisive choice is seldom the latest choice in the series. More often than not, it will turn out to be some choice made relatively far back in the past.

Arnold J. Toynbee

The last stage but one of every civilisation, is characterised by the forced political unification of its constituent parts, into a single greater whole.

Charles Dickens

It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.

Charles Caleb Colton

Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.

Charles Caleb Colton

There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains.

Charles Dickens

"People can't die, along the coast," said Mr. Peggotty, "except when the tide's pretty nigh out. They can't be born, unless it's pretty nigh in - not properly born, till flood. He's a going out with the tide. It's ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he'll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide."

Charles Stross

My favourite movie is: "Dr Strangelove". (I haven't seen any films released in the past 2-5 years, I'm afraid: I don't do TV/cinema).

Alanis Morissette

Society, magazines, posters, music videos, investment bankers. A lot of times, in my past anyway, looking within wasn't overly encouraged. Pretty much everybody proclaimed that fame would give me power and fortune.

Alan Watts

The world is in an extremely dangerous situation, and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure like the Pasteur serum for rabies.

Alan Watts

If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.

Alan Watts

Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Every President reconstructs the Presidency to meet his own psychological needs.

Nicky Oppenheimer

Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill.

Werner Erhard

Transformation is the shift of the principle which orients the person’s life, which is ordinarily the principle of gaining satisfaction. Essentially what organizes life for most of us is an attempt to gratify our needs; our psychological needs, our material needs, our personal needs … Individuals transform when there’s a shift in the principle which orients their life from one of gaining satisfaction to one of expressing the satisfaction they’ve already got...