This quote is the closest thing I have to a guiding principle. It is succinct but philosophically profound and has layers of complexity. It summarizes Deleuze’s ethical thought, in the context of his work on Spinoza.
- “Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation.” – Gilles Deleuze
Here is a compilation of other quotes I like.
- “Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.” – Robinson Jeffers
- “Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites who never meet.” – Andy Warhol
- “Love is not for the faint-hearted, or for the self-possessed” – I think Rumi (Persian poet)
- “Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.” – un attributed internet meme. (This is a corollary of Clarke’s law, I guess. )
- “Live each day as if you will live forever.” – Unknown (to me, anyway)
- “Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.” – William E. Gladstone
- “Long live freedom and damn the ideologies” – Robinson Jeffers
- “But two Kwakiutls in the same blanket…” – Tony Curtis (as the Great Leslie, in The Great Race)
- “If they can get here, they have God’s right to come.” – Herman Melville
- “So unprincipled are judges and lawyers that they will even tell the truth if it serves their purposes.” – Robert C. Black
- “I think we all agree, the past is over.” – George W. Bush
- “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard Feynman
- “we are the world’s first adolescent civilization.” – David Brin (in a comment on his blog, regarding our own civilization)
- “With enemies like libertarians, the state doesn’t need friends.” – Robert C. Black
- “Life is dangerous. No one has survived it yet.” – Unnamed Siberian tour guide quoted in The Economist, Mar 24, 2007.
- “la vida es un río que pasa y que deja sólo la tierra húmeda” – Augusto Pinochet (en su autobiografia Camino Recorrido, book 1)
- “La vida es corta… pero ancha” – autor del blog “futuroperfecto”
- “Pero la vida es un rio / Que te moja con la edad” – Synteks Aleks (musical group) song: La historia de un hombre
- “nuestras vidas son los rios que van a dar a la mar, que es el morir” – Jorge Manrique (poeta s. XVI).
- “Mundus Vult Decipi [the world wishes to be deceived]” – James Branch Cabell
- “The time of your life is the one commodity you can sell but never buy back.” – Robert C. Black
- “the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future.” – George Orwell
- “The global economy is like a zebra roller-skating through a Volkswagen factory in China on the Fourth of July and it’s snowing.” – Max Eichler (parodying Thomas Friedman)
- “Life is a partial, continuous, progressive, multiform and conditionally interactive self-realization of the potentialities of atomic electron states.” – John Desmond Bernal
- “So many words, and so often I grope for them knowing that there’s a correct one but lacking the nous to bring it to articulation. Fearing senile decay. Errrrgh.” – Ann Gillidette
- “En el fondo el cínico es un cartesiano y un kantiano derrotado: le gustaría disponer de un conocimiento absoluto y una voluntad recta, pero lo considera imposible.” – D. Innerarity (filósofo español – en Dialéctica de la modernidad)
- “Me get it, cookie is sometimes food. You know what? Right now is sometime!” – Cookie Monster
- “Good bye, New York. Howdy, East Orange.” – Bob Dylan
- “Oprah is transcendent; she is a cultural treasure.” – David Letterman.
- “when the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” – J. M. Keynes.
- “Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.” – Mark Twain.
- “With only 300 bits, you could assign a unique barcode to each of the ten-to-the-ninetieth elementary particles in the universe.” – Seth Lloyd.
- “It is possible to serve honorably in a dishonorable war.” – Unknown (to me, anyway)
- “Boredom is your ‘fuller life’ calling you, and your fear of hearing that call.” – Gary Zukav
- “Religion is like a penis. It’s fine to have one. It’s fine to be proud of it. But please don’t whip it out in public and start waving it around. And PLEASE don’t try to shove it down my children’s throats.” – Unattributed internet meme
- “no existe la seguridad, solo existe el amor” – overheard in a trance track
- “A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs.” – Robert C. Black
- “It’s a good deal, but some poor people remain, oddly, un-fucked.” – Jon Stewart
- “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” – James Madison
- “…doors open to anyone with the will and heart to get here.” – Ronald Reagan (on immigration)
- “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Cake’s existence is have eat cake.” – One of my middle-school students in 2007
- “There is great chaos under heaven, and the situation is excellent.” – Mao Tse-tung