unless otherwise noted, 
Changed 15 February 2010
Quotes
Action precedes motivation.
Brain candy is the most dangerous thing there is for a thriving mind.
12thCandidate. Zen and the Art of Hacking
I think nobody should be certain of anything. If you're certain, you're certainly wrong, because nothing deserves certainty, and so one ought always to hold all one's beliefs with a certain element of doubt and one ought to be able to act vigorously in spite of this doubt.
Bertrand Russell
Take complete responsibility for your life, because nobody else will.
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
fortune
Life is NP-hard, and then you die.
fortune
No words in his head but the ones he put there himself.
Terry Pratchett: Vimes. Feet of Clay.
I'm my me.
Terry Pratchett: Brutha. Small Gods.
If you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Adam. Good Omens.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell. Marriage and Morals.
Dogmatism is an enemy to peace, and an insuperable barrier to democracy. In the present age, at least as much as in former times, it is the greatest of the mental obstacles to human happiness.
Bertrand Russell. Philosophy for Laymen.
It seems to me like nowadays there's two kinds of issues in America. There's the kind that's too Byzantine and boring for the average Joe to even know what's going on. You know, the environment and the filibusters and the gerrymandering and what did Tom DeLay do on vacation. And then the really stupid issues that they can understand like Terri Schiavo and gay marriage. And it seems to me the American people have become completely irrelevant.
Real Time with Bill Maher, 29 April 2005
Callahan's Law: Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased - thus do we refute entropy.
Spider Robinson
He who lives without folly is less wise than he believes.
fortune
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
fortune
It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy - Let's go exploring!
Bill Watterson: Calvin. Calvin and Hobbes
A car, a blue convertible, sleek and desirable, came sweeping west out of Beverly Hills along the, as I understand it, gracious curves of Sunset Boulevard. Anybody seeing such a car would have wanted it. If people had turned out not to want it very much, the makers would have redesigned it and redesigned it until they did. The world is now full of things like this, which is, of course, why everybody is in such a permanent state of want.
Douglas Adams. The Salmon of Doubt
Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
fortune
We know to fear what others fear is nonsense.
The Books. A Little Longing Goes Away
Abstractions are fine, but I think people also have to breathe air and eat bread.
Herman Hesse. The Glass Bead Game (translated)
If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.
Ken Robinson. TED 2006.
Too often we give our children answers to remember, rather than problems to solve.
Roger Lewin.
A workable definition of spirituality is one's emotional relationship with unanswerable questions. It's possible to find joy in them.
Computers can be used rather too easily to improve the efficiency with which we lie to ourselves.
Jaron Lanier.
As lawyers love to forget, our system for defending rights such as fair use is astonishingly bad. [...] It costs too much, it delivers too slowly, and what it delivers often has little connection to the justice underlying the claim. The legal system may be tolerable for the very rich. For everyone else, it is an embarrassment to a tradition that prides itself on the rule of law.
Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture, p 187
The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness.
Kurt Vonnegut: Palm Sunday.
But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends; as works fair and wonderful, while still they endure for eyes to see, are their own record, and only when they are in peril or broken for ever do they pass into song.
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion.
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White
If you take common sense and rigorously apply it, through multiple inferential steps, to areas outside everyday experience, successfully avoiding many possible distractions and tempting mistakes along the way, then it often ends up as a minority position and people give it a special name.
Art is the solution of a problem which cannot be expressed explicitly until it is solved.
Piet Hein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
Promoting less than maximally accurate beliefs is an act of sabotage. Don't do it to anyone unless you'd also slash their tires, because they're Nazis or whatever. Specifically, don't do it to yourself.
unless otherwise noted,
Changed 15 February 2010