The acknowledged legislators of the world take the world as given. They dislike mysteries, for mysteries cannot be coded, or legislated, and wonder cannot be made into law. And so these legislators police the accepted frontiers of things.
Ben Okri
The important thing is to not stop questioning
Albert Einstein
We shall go nowhere until we start by recognising that political behaviour is largely non-rational, that the world is suffering from some kind of mental disease.
George Orwell
What luck it is for governments that the people they rule do not think.
Adolf Hitler
Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force.
George Washington
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
Bernard Baruch.
Democracy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
Wynn Catlin
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Bertrand Russell
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose to obtain the largest amount of feathers, with the least possible amount of hissing.
Jean-Baptist Colbert Treasurer to Louis XIV
The Drug War is fuelled by the fact that at this historic moment.our politicians are suffering from enemy deprivation. Faced with the real problems of urban decay, slipping global competitiveness, and a deteriorating education system, the government has decided instead to turn its energies toward the sixty million Americans who use illegal psychoactive drugs.
Timothy Leary
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
George Bernard Shaw
What politics is really about is a lot of mirrors and blue smoke. People have power when other people think they have power. If they don't think that, then you're an empty vessel.
Whych Fowler
So this was the dope that woolied the cad that kinked the ruck that noised the rape that tried the sap that hugged the mort? That legged in the hoax that joke bilked.
James Joyce
Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you.
Luke 6.27
True and False are attributes of speech, not things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.
Thomas Hobbes
There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
T.H. Huxley
Everything flows and nothing stays.
Heraclitus
Rules and models destroy genius and art.
William Hazlitt
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.
Robspierre
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, they are wise they are foolish - so am I.
Sam Walters Foss
It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves.
Carl Jung
There is more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.
Tennyson
When nature's way was lost, honesty was invented. When honesty was lost, laws were invented.
Lao-Tse
You can't have everything. Where would you keep it?
Adam Weishaupt
Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers. Even his idea of his limitations is based on experience of the past. There is therefore no reason to assign theoretical limits to what he may be, or what he may do.
Aleister Crowley
.
GP: Is Eris true?
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don't know man, I didn't do it.
All I know is that the Ancient Romans believed that the Dog Star, Sirius, rising with the sun - though one can't see the star in the daylight - adds to the sun's heat and makes the weather specially warm.
Pongo in 'The Starlight Barking'
"I meant, listen to the silence. I've never heard it so loud."
Missis in 'The Starlight Barking'
My brain understands so little that it loves things it's not supposed to understand. Anyway, I've taken to metaphysical.
Missis in 'The Starlight Barking'
Perhaps there may be worries ahead of us, but don't let's meet them half way.
Missis in 'The Starlight Barking'
"Everyone should be on the same side always," said Missis. "Think how much time it would save." "But I've heard there's a catch in it," said Cadpig. "You see, sometimes everyone gets on the wrong side."
From 'The Starlight Barking'
Mushrooms of virtue? Or toadstools of vice? They taste the same.
Philip Larkin 'At 31, when some are rich'
We should sit still in our deep selves and dream good new things for humanity. We should try and make those dreams real.
Ben Okri
I think we need more of the wordless in our lives. We need more stillness, more of a sense of wonder, a feeling for the mystery of life.
Ben Okri
We began before words, and we will end beyond them.
Ben Okri
Poets are set against the world because they cannot accept that all there seems to be is all there is.
Ben Okri
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
Nietsche
The universe will always be greater than us.
Ben Okri
Better a complex mind behind a seemingly simple thought, than a simple mind behind a seemingly complex thought.
Ben Okri
Do not disdain the idle, strange, ordinary, nonsensical, or shocking thoughts which the mind throws up. Hold them. Look at them. Play with them. See where they lead.
Ben Okri
There is no such thing as a powerless people. There are only those who have not seen and have not used their power and will.
Ben Okri
Human history is hundreds of thousands of years old and still we look at one another with superficial eyes - as if we haven't learnt in all these millennia of interacting that we are all merely human, that beneath our skins there are continents of similar desires and eruptive dreams, swirling universes of thoughts, prehistoric urges, lightning flashes, and an eternal bloom of flowers.
Ben Okri
Shamans and African image-makers know that we contain the universe inside us, that the sea is in the fish much as the fish is in the sea; that birds breathe their own flight; that forces in the human frame can interpenetrate matter, extends the bounds of time and space, enter the dreams of lions, and travel through the private histories of rivers and mountains.
Ben Okri
The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend to remember.
Harold Pinter
We are all in the gutter - but some of us are looking at the stars
Oscar Wilde
Even a small star shines in the darkness
Danish Proverb
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
Albert Einstein
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once (s)he grows up
Pablo Picasso
I shut my eyes in order to see
Paul Gauguin
Man is what he believes
Anton Chekhov
Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic
Arthur C Clarke
Everybody complains of his memory but none of his judgement
La Rochefoucauld (1665)
To be known well things must be known in detail, but as detail is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect
La Rochefoucauld (1665)
Like plants, most men have hidden properties that chance alone reveals
La Rochefoucauld (1665)
Nature, it seems, has buried deep in our minds skill and talents of which we are unaware; the passions alone have the function of bringing them to light and thereby sometimes giving us a clearer and more comprehensive vision than ingenuity could ever do
La Rochefoucauld (1665)