Archive

Quotes

In the society of men, the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.

—R.D. Laing, 1967

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.

—Albert Einstein, 1930

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching toward him and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

—Elias Canetti, 1960

To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.

—Dai Vernon, 1994

Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

—Robert Southey, 1809

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

—Woody Allen, 1979

Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.

—Roald Dahl, 1990

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985