Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Collection of previously unused quotes from #139

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #139 (10.23.24 to 12.22.24). There are 10 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996, poet)
"By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman, or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential." (Open Remarks as U.S. Poet Laureate, 1991)

Elias Canetti (1905-1994, writer)
"You keep taking note of whatever confirms your ideas - better to write down what refutes and weakens them!" (The Secret Heart of the Clock, 1987)

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014, writer)
"I like the idea of a literary patchwork, novel by novel, poem by poem, by different writers, mapping out an era, 'a continent' more and more thoroughly. No one writer can do it." (Conversations with Nadine Gordimer, edited by Nancy Topping Bazin Marilyn Dallman Seymour)

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013, poet)
"Debate doesn't really change things. It gets you bogged in deeper. If you can address or reopen the subject with something new, something from a different angle, then there is some hope." (AZQuotes.com)

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006, writer)
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." (Quoted in Thinking for a Change by Michael Gelb)

Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004, poet)
"Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that alas, does not alter the fact that they exist." (The Captive Mind, 1953)

Alice Munro (1931-2024, writer)
"People are curious... You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish." (AZQuotes.com)

Kenzaburō Ōe (1935-2003, writer)
"Literature must be written from the periphery towards the center, and we can criticize the center. Our credo, our theme, or our imagination is that of the peripheral human being." (Conversation with Kenzaburō Ōe by Harry Kreisler 1999)

Thomas Tranströmer (1931-2015, poet)
"The scientific method I was closest to was the Linnaean: discover, collect, examine." (For the Living and the Dead, 1996)

Derek Wolcott (1930-2017, poet)
"Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole." (What the Twilight Says: Essays)
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Thursday, July 9, 2026

Collection of previously unused quotes from #138

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #138 (8.17.24 to 10.23.24). There are 7 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Donald Knuth (1938-now, computer programmer)
"...the designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual." (AZQuotes.com)

Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957, poet)
"The great artists are the ones who dare to entice to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful." (The Immoralist, 1902)

Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903, historian)
"To create order amidst this chaos did not require either brilliance of conception or a mighty display of force, but it required a clear insight into the interests of Rome and of her subjects, and vigor and consistency in establishing and maintaining the institutions recognized as necessary." (The History of Rome, 1854-1856)

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953, playwright)
"A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself... So long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe." (Quoted in Conversations with Eugene O'Neill by Mark Estrin)

Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974, writer)
"What would life be like if it were not futile? Futility is the foundation upon which it rests. On what other foundation could it have been based which would have held and never given way?" (The Dwarf, 1944)

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960, writer)
"The most extraordinary discoveries are made when the artist is overwhelmed by what he has to say." (My Sister, Life and Other Poems)

Władysław Reymont (1867-1925, writer)
"It is only our expectations of life that are terrible. It is only our impossible conceptions of beauty and good and justice that are terrible - because they never are realized, and at the same time they prevent us taking life as it is. That is the real source of all our sorrow and suffering." (AZQuotes.com)
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Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Collection of previously unused quotes from #137

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #137 (6.1.24 to 8.16.24). There are 5 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Everett Dean Martin (1880-1941, writer)
"The thinking of the crowd is dogmatic as a result of causes which are similar to those which render compulsive that of certain neurotics." (The Mystery of Religion, 1924)

Deborah Meier (1931-now, educator)
"There's a radical - and wonderful - new idea here... That all children could and should be innovators of their own theories, critics of other people's ideas, analyzers of evidence, and makers of their own personal marks on the world. It's an idea with revolutionary implications. If we take it seriously." (The Power of Their Ideas, 2002)

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952-now, video game designer)
"A good idea is something that does not solve one single problem, but rather can solve multiple problems at once." (Quoted in Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, interview with Eurogamer.net, 2010)

Michael Oakescott (1901-1990, philosopher)
"Like Midas, the rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience." (AZQuotes.com)

Ralph Barton Perry (1876-1957, philosopher)
"I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all." (AZQuotes.com)
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Collection of previously unused quotes from #121

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #121 (10.17.21 to 12.11.21). There are 18 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867, poet)
"Genius is only childhood recovered at will, childhood now gifted to express itself with the analytic mind that allows him to give order to the heap of unwittingly hoarded material." (Le peintre de la vie moderne, 1863)

Annie Besant (1847-1933, activist)
"The soul grows by reincarnation in the bodies provided by nature, more complex, more powerful, as the soul unfolds greater and greater faculties. And so the soul unfolds greater and greater faculties. And so the soul climbs upward into the light eternal. And there is no fear for any child of man, for inevitably he climbs towards God." (The Immediate Future, 1913)

Edgar Cayce (1877-1945, clairvoyant)
"It is the 'try' that is more often counted for righteousness and not the success or failure." (AZQuotes.com)

Milton William Cooper (1943-2001, conspiracy theorist)
"Listen to everyone, read everything; believe absolutely nothing unless you can prove it in your own right." (AZQuotes.com)

Benjamin Creme (1922-2016, mystic)
"Take sharing as your guide into the future. Release your brothers from the grip of poverty and pain. Open yourselves to the impulses of the soul and establish in your midst the will of God." (The Art of Co-operation, 2002)

Peter Deunov (1864-1944, mystic)
"Do not look for happiness outside yourself. The awakened seek happiness inside." (AZQuotes.com)

Dion Fortune (1890-1946, occultist)
"We live in the midst of invisible forces whose effects alone we perceive. We move among invisible forms whose actions we very often do not perceive at all, though we may be profoundly affected by them." (AZQuotes.com)

William Quan Judge (1851-1896, mystic)
"To the worldly man karma is a stern nemesis, to the spiritual man karma unfolds itself in harmony with his highest aspirations." (AZQuotes.com)

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986, spiritual figure)
"Just observe what you are. What you are is the fact: the fact that you are jealous, anxious, envious, brutal, demanding, violent. That is what you are. Look at it, be aware; don't shape it, don't guide it, don't deny it, don't have opinions of it. By looking at it without comparison, you observe; out of that observation, out of that awareness comes affection." (Collected Works, Vol. XIV)

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854-1934, writer)
"It is one of the commonest of our mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all that there is to perceive." (AZQuotes.com)

Eliphas Levi (1810-1875, occultist)
"A good teacher must be able to put himself in the place of those who find learning hard." (AZQuotes.com)

Nostradamus (1503-1566, astrologer)
"Nothing in the world can one imagine beforehand, not the least thing, everything is made up of so many unique particulars that cannot be foreseen." (AZQuotes.com)

Paracelsus (1493-1541, physician)
"Practice humility at first with man and only then before God. He who despises man, has also no respect for God." (Quoted in Paracelsus - Doctor of Our Time by Frank Geert)

Albert Pike (1809-1891, lawyer)
"A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all the commonplace of life." (Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, 1871)

Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688- 1772, mystic)
"A life of kindness is the primary meaning of divine worship." (New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, 1758)

Tzvetan Todorov (1939-2017, literary theorist)
"Pride is not a wise counselor. People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world." (Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century, 2003)

Samuel Aun Weor (1917-1977, writer)
"Only by realizing what selfishness and lack of generosity really are can the delicious fragrance of true love and effective generosity, which is not of the mind, burst forth in our hearts." (AZQuotes.com)

Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007, writer)
"That's what guerrilla ontology is - breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective." (Searching for Cosmic Intelligence, interview with Jeffery Elliot, 1980)
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Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Collection of previously unused quotes from #136

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #136 (5.4.24 to 6.1.24). There are 7 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849, composer)
"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art." (Quoted in If Not God, Then What? by Joshua Fost)

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911, philosopher)
"No real blood flows in the veins of the knowing subject constructed by Locke, Hume and Kant, but rather the diluted extract of reason as a mere activity of thought." (Introduction to the Human Sciences, 1883)

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803, philosopher)
"With the greatest possible solicitude avoid authorship. Too early or immoderately employed, it makes the head waste and the heart empty..." (Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betressend, 1780-1781)

Hans Hofmann (18801966, artist)
"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." (Quoted in Keys to Manifesting Your Destiny by Craig Sanders)

Max Horkheimer (1895-1973, philosopher)
"A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professional wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief." (AZQuotes.com)

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835, philosopher)
"The more a man acts on his own, the more he develops himself. In large associations he is too prone to become merely an instrument." (AZQuotes.com)

Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746, philosopher)
"All out ideas, or the materials of our reasoning or judging, are received by some immediate powers of perception internal or external, which we may call senses..." (An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, 1728)
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Monday, July 6, 2026

Collection of previously unused quotes from #122

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #122 (12.12.21 to 1.2.22). There are 5 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, wrier)
"Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false..." (Brave New World Revisited, 1958)

Arthur Koestler (1905-1983, writer)
"Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious disease." (AZQuotes.com)

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935, rabbi)
"An epiphany enables you to sense creation not as something completed, but as constantly becoming, evolving, ascending. This transports you from a place where there is nothing new to a place where everything renews itself, where heaven and earth rejoin at the moment of creation." (AZQuotes.com)

Arthur Machen (1863-1947, mystic)
"There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corners of the newspaper." (AZQuotes.com)

André Maurois (1885-1967, writer)
"Style is the outcome of restraint." (The Art of Writing, 1960)
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Collection of previously unused quotes from #135

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #135 (3.4.24 to 5.4.24). There are 7 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472, humanist)
"There is no art which has not had its beginnings in things full of errors. Nothing is at the same time both new and perfect." (AZQuotes.com)

Robert Audi (1941-now, philosopher)
"One is never just a teacher: one is always - even if not consciously - and advocate of a point of view, a critic of certain positions..." (AZQuotes.com)

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706, philosopher)
"Reason is like a runner who doesn't know that the race is over..." (Reply to the Question of a Provincial, 1703)

Erasmus (1466-1536, humanist)
"A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant." (Letter to Christian Northoff, 1497)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940, novelist)
"...the test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." (The Crack-Up, 1936)

Paulo Freire (1921-1997, philosopher)
"Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students." (Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968)

Haruki Murakami (1949-now, novelist)
"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." (Norwegian Wood, 1987)
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Sunday, July 5, 2026

List of previously unused quotes from notebooks posts

This post is a list of previously unused quotes from notebooks post. There are 16 posts listed below chronologically by notebook date.
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Collection of previously unused quotes from #134

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #134 (12.31.23 to 3.3.24). There are 10 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Charles Babbage (1791-1871, inventor)
"Long intervals frequently elapse between the discovery of new principles in science and their application... Those intellectual qualifications, which gave birth to new principles or to new methods are of quite a different order from those which are necessary for their practical application." (Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of its Causes, 1830)

Pete Cashmore (19850-now, entrepreneur)
"We're living at a time when attention is the new currency: with hundreds of TV channels, billions of websites, podcasts, radio shows, music downloads and social networking, out attention is more fragmented than ever before." (Privacy is dead and social media is holding the smoking gun, CNN, 2009)

Caterina Fake (1969-now, entrepreneur)
"I love participatory media, collective knowledge systems, user-generated content and the like, and spent much of my life and career participating in them and making them." (Brainyquote.com)

Jeff Jarvis (1954-now, journalist)
"I'd like to see every news organization large and small, newspaper and blog, sponsor FOIA clubs in their communities to get scores, hundreds, thousands of citizens helping to open up data." (Geeks Bearing Gifts, 2014)

Rebecca MacKinnon (1969-now, journalist)
"Human freedom increasingly depends on who controls what we know and, therefore, how we understand our world. It depends on what information we are able to create and disseminate: what we can share, how we can share it, and with whom we can share it." (Consent of the Networked, 2012)

Ben Silbermann (1982-now, entrepreneur)
"I was obsessed with this idea that these things that you collect, they just say so much about who you are." (AZQuotes.com)

Biz Stone (1974-now, entrepreneur)
"Even the simplest tools can empower people to do great things." (Things a Little Bird Told Me, 2014)

Eugene Thacker (professor)
"A new ignorance is on the horizon, an ignorance borne not of a lack of knowledge but of too much knowledge, too much data, too many theories, too little time." (Tentacle Longer Than Night: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 3, 2015)

Larry Wall (1954-now, computer programmer)
"Somebody out there is going to do something that's far more surprising than anything that I would do. I was surprised by the whole web thing in the first place." (Brainyquote.com)

Fred Wilson (1961-now, businessman)
"I'm really interested in the intersection between reputation, identity and knowledge." (AZQuotes.com)
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Friday, July 3, 2026

Collection of previously unused quotes from #123

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #123 (1.3.22 to 1.20.22). There are 10 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Augustine of Hippo (342 - 430 AD, philosopher)
"You are thinking to construct some mighty fabric in height; first think of the foundation of humility. And how great soever a mass of building one may wish and design to place above it, the greater the building is to be, the deeper does he dig his foundation." (Sermons)

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002, sociologist)
"The point of my work is to show that culture and education aren't simply hobbies or minor influences." (The Intellectual Class Struggle, 2001)

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600, philosopher)
"There are countless suns and countless Earths all rotating round their suns in exactly the same way as the seven planets of our system... Take comfort, the time will come when all men will see as I do." (Quoted in The Discovery of Nature by Albert W. Bettex)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955, priest)
"...love is the threshold of another universe. Beyond the vibrations with which we are familiar, the rainbow-like range of its colors is still in full growth." (The Evolution of Chastity, 1934)

Claude von Clausewitz (1780-1831, army officer)
"Thus it has come about that our theoretical and critical literature, instead of giving plain, straightforward arguments in which the author at least always knows what he is saying and the reader what he is reading, is crammed with jargon ending at obscure crossroads where the author loses its readers." (On War, 1831)

Donald Davidson (1917-2003, philosopher)
"In quotation not only does language turn on itself, but it does so word by word and expression by expression, and this reflexive twist is inseparable from the convenience and universal applicability of the device. Here we already have enough to draw the interest of the philosopher of language." (Quotation, 1979)

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962, novelist)
"It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect." (Siddhartha, 1922)

Marcel Proust (1871-1922, novelist)
"The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of eternal youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is." (In Search of Lost Time, Vol. V: The Captive, 1923 posthumous)

George Santanyana (1863-1952, philosopher)
"On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and good, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices." (The Sense of Beauty, 1896)

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859, diplomat)
"We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country." (The Old Regime and the Revolution, 1858) 
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Thursday, July 2, 2026

Collection of previously unused quotes from #124

This post is a collection of previously unused quotes from notebook #124 (1.20.22 to 2.21.22). There are 22 quotes listed below alphabetically by last name.

Theodor Adorno (1903-1969, philosopher)
"Order, however, is not good in itself. It would be so only as a good order." (Culture Industry Reconsidered, 1963)

Antisthenes (c. 446 - 366 BC, philosopher)
"The investigation of the meaning of words is the beginning of education." (Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus)

Kenneth Burke (1897-1993, poet)
"You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his." (A Rhetoric of Motives, 1969)

Cicero (106 - 43 BC, statesman)
"For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions." (On the Laws)

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758, theologian)
"Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead." (Quoted in Burning Words of Brilliant Writers by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814, philosopher)
"Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent..." (The Vocation of the Scholar, 1794)

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948, activist)
"Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between two communities in South Africa can be removed." (Indian Opinion, 1903)

Gorgias (c. 483 - 375 BC, philosopher)
"Speech is a powerful master and achieves the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body. It can stop fear, relieve pain, create joy, and increase pain." (AZQuotes.com)

R. M. Hare (1919-2002, philosopher)
"What the principle of utility requires of me is to for each man affected by my actions what I wish were done for me in the hypothetical  circumstances that I were in precisely his situation..." (Ethical Theory and Utilitarianism, 1982)

Hypatia (c. 350 - 415 AD, philosopher)
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." (AZQuotes.com)

Isocrates (436 - 338 BC, rhetorician)
"For just as we see the bee settling on the all the flowers, and sipping the best from each, so also those who aspire to culture ought not to leave anything untasted, but should gather useful knowledge from every source." (To Demonicus)

Jesus (c. 6 BC - 33 AD, religious leader)
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40, KJV)

Laozi (c. 6th - 4th centuries BC, philosopher)
"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is." (Tao Te Ching)

Jeremy Lent (writer)
"If you think other humans are inherently cooperative, you'll approach a person differently than if you think that, ultimately, everyone is selfish and competitive." (Adopting a New Worldview That Is Intellectually Sound, 2021)

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013, activist)  
"If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." (Long Walk to Freedom, 1995)

Protagoras (490 - 420 BC, philosopher)
"There are two sides to every question." (Quoted in The Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius)

Mother Teresa (1910-1997, saint)
"The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted." (Quoted in Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge)

Muhammad (570 - 632 AD, religious leader)
"Do not turn away a poor man... Even if you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you... God will bring you near him on the Day of Resurrection." (Al-Timidhi, Sunni Hadith)

Philo (c. 20 BC - 50 AD, philosopher)
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." (AZQuotes.com)

Xenophanes (c. 570 - 478 BC, philosopher)
"Even if a man should chance to speak the most complete truth, yet he himself does not know it; all things are wrapped in appearances." (AZQuotes.com)

Sextus Empiricus (2nd century BC)
"To every argument, an equal argument is opposed." (AZQuotes.com)

Zeno of Citium (c. 334 - 262 BC, philosopher)
"That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason; there is nothing more excellent than the universe, therefore the universe exercises reason." (Quoted in De Nature Deorum by Cicero)
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