Quotes

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. – Hunter S. Thompson

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. – Martin Fowler

Compassion must be rational to be effective. – Peter Hitchens

A society that competes with biology is bound to lose. – Lamberto Maffei

Creativity is the union of existing elements with new useful connections. – Lamberto Maffei

For the Left, the rational should be real, for the Right, the real was the rational. – Jaime Nogueira Pinto

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana

The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. – Herbert Simon

After their final retirement from office or factory, people increasingly drop out of the consciousness of friends who only knew them because of what they did, rather than because of who they are. – Peter Hitchens

A person who extracts income and status from his own human capital places himself at the disposal of others: he uses himself up. – Daniel Markovits

Let’s defend one of our most precious liberties, the right to say: “Sorry, I just don’t know”. – Lara Prendergast

The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well. – Andrés Segovia

We all have to be used up by something. – Wendell Berry

He is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy. – Viktor Frankl

Know your potential weaknesses so that you can anticipate and develop compensating controls. – unknown author

A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. – John A. Shedd

A person usually has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one. – J. Pierpont Morgan

A man without a smiling face must not open a shop. – Old Chinese proverb

Life is what we make of it. Travels are travelers. What we see is not what we see but what we are. – Fernando Pessoa

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels. – Tennessee Williams

If they had lacked the opportunity, the virtue of their spirit would have been sapped; if they had lacked virtue, the opportunity would have been wasted. – Machiavelli

Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible. – Kenneth Clark

Work and action are the precondition for developing a meaningful identity. – Frank Furedi

One of the most common forms of laziness is staying busy. – Robert Kiyosaki

For when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you. – Nietzsche

Eighty percent of success is showing up. – Woody Allen

For Homer, life, this small, ephemeral and so common a thing, has no value in itself. It becomes worth something only because of its intensity, its beauty, and the breath of greatness that everyone can give it — above all in his own eyes. – Dominique Venner

Punk Rock should mean freedom, liking and accepting anything that you like, playing whatever you want, as sloppy as you want, as long it is good and has passion. – Kurt Cobain

The value of things is not the time they last, but the intensity with which they occur. – Fernando Pessoa

Scientism is rarely explicit about its political objectives, which is why its role as an ideology is so rarely visible and recognized. – Frank Furedi

I love it when people say that they’d stand up to the Nazis if they were living in Germany in the 1940s. I always think to myself “mate you can’t even tell 10 year olds to turn their music down when you’re on the bus”. – Francis Foster

Please stop referring to yourselves as Consumers. Consumers are different than Citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings. – James Kunstler

O tempo é sempre percebido interiormente. Não temos uma noção calendarizada do tempo que passou. Há textos em que a mudança interior é percebida pela mudança dos sítios. Alguém pode pensar que não mudou assim tanto, mas vendo a mudança do lugar pensa que também deve ter mudado alguma coisa. – Pedro Mexia

He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. – George Orwell

No doubt some who deserved to be asked were overlooked, and some who did not were invited by mistake; for that is the way of things, however careful those who arrange such matters may try to be. – J. R. R. Tolkien

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. – Oscar Wilde

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. – Oscar Wilde

Not that there weren’t drones that could do what he did, but they were so expensive to purchase and operate that it was cheaper to pay Rob. – Will McIntosh

Canada has been blessed with an abundance of natural resources, and also has been very fortunate to have people with the ability to convert these resources from potential assets into useful products at a price others are willing to pay. – Canadian Mining Hall of Fame

The brain cannot be in two places at once, so what people are referencing as multitasking is actually what neuroscientists call task switching and that means rapidly moving back and forth between different tasks. – Devora Zack

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state. – A. J. P. Taylor

Here Phaeton lies who in the sun god’s chariot fared. And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared. – Ovid, Metamorphoses (8 AD)

The Big Bang does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it. Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve. – Pope Francis

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. – Aldous Huxley

Guys make more money because their movies make more money… It makes sense. Instead of sitting around and complaining about that, do something. Go write something, go do something. But that subject is just so prevalently everywhere right now, and it’s boring. – Kristen Stewart

You see, Willem, he admits he doesn’t know the law, and at the same time claims he’s innocent. – Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925)

I’m all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius. – Leó Szilárd

But it felt like somebody had to exercise a little realism, maybe even a little healthy cynicism. – Iain M. Banks

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. – Kahlil Gibran

I take great care of myself by carefully shutting myself away. – Vincent van Gogh

I hate this system, but love the opportunities it creates. – In a polish bookstore

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. – Jean-Paul Sartre

I only interpret dreams. I don’t know how to turn them into reality. That’s why I have to live off what my daughters provide me with. – The Alchemist (1988), Paulo Coelho

It is much easier to criticise anyone identifying a problem than it is to deal with the problem. – Douglas Murray

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of every day life until they are indistinguishable from it. – Mark Weiser

And must they fall — the young, the proud, the brave — To swell one bloated chief’s unwholesome reign? No step between submission and a grave? – Lord Byron

Anyway, my life passed day after day accompanied by this strange feeling, and before I knew it, I was old. – Cixin Liu

Any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong. – Cixin Liu

Mas fiquei em silêncio, assustado, como as pessoas que evitam cuidadosamente a mínima alusão a uma incerteza que lhes pode prejudicar a tranquilidade. – Orhan Pamuk

His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weaknes was the cause of his grief. – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)

You were learning to stop being a straitjacketed man and trying instead to be a person who could respond to the world without scripts of conflict or defense already written in your head. – Norah Vincent (2006)

They were glad enough to see me, but not glad enough to miss me if I didn't show. – Norah Vincent (2006)

The work reveals itself as you go. – Rick Rubin (2023)

He said a few words with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all will go wrong, and who is not displeased that it should be so. – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)

You are proposing new military laws? There are many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody designs laws, it is easier writing than doing. – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)

It is never worth a first-class man’s time to express a majority opinion. By definition, there are plenty of others to do that. – G. H. Hardy

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. – Jim Stockdale

The central theme of dystopian fiction is the revolt of human passions against totalitarian order. – John Gray

Most accepted that the US treated them far better, both materially and spiritually, than did the homelands they had forsaken. – Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen (2021)

For you are dust, and to dust you shall return. – Genesis 3:19

Such is the fate, not of great men, but of those rare and always solitary individuals who discerning the will of Providence submit their personal will to it. – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)

Power is merely the relation that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution of that will by others. – Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869)

We experience life as a continuity, and only after it falls away, after it becomes the past, do we see its discontinuities. – Teju Cole

I couldn't contain myself, with this phrase I launched into self-justifications, as it were, and that was all she needed, a fresh instance of my humiliation. She burst out in malicious laughter. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Meek One (1876)

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. – Nelson Mandela

What are feelings without emotions? – La Roux, In For The Kill lyrics

Failure in complex systems is, like other types of behavior in such systems, emergent. – Perrow (2011)

And treat the individual as a survival machine built by a short-lived confederation of long-lived genes. – Richard Dawkins (1976)

The best strategy for a gambler may sometimes be a wait-and-hope strategy, rather than a bull-at-a-gate strategy. – Richard Dawkins (1976)

Pierre was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was tortured — as those are who obstinately undertake a task that is impossible for them not because of its difficulty but because of its incompatibility with their natures. – Leo Tolstoy (1869), War and Peace

He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. – Leo Tolstoy (1869), War and Peace

“Ah, it’s you!” said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air. “And I, you see, am hard at it,” he pointed to his manuscript-book with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at their work. – Leo Tolstoy (1869), War and Peace

It doesn't matter how fast you're going, if you're going in the wrong direction. – Seth Godin

Eu havia muito reconhecera que nunca seria capaz de entrar na vida através da sua superfície fulgurante. Fora Kashiwagi o primeiro a apontar-me a viela escura que me permitiria entrar na vida pelas traseiras. – Yukio Mishima, O Templo Dourado (1956)

The vastness of the USA, combined with its great social mobility, has always encouraged people to uproot themselves from failed lives and start out again somewhere else. In the past, Britain’s smallness and its settled class system have compelled us to be polite, restrained and repressed, or face chaos. Japan’s elaborate manners and customs are a similar response to living at close quarters on cramped islands. – Peter Hitchens, The Abolition of Britain (2018)

It is a great folly to hope that other men will harmonize with us. I have never hoped this. I have always regarded each man as an independent individual, whom I endeavored to understand with all his peculiarities, but from whom I desired no further sympathy. In this way have I been enabled to converse with every man, and thus alone is produced the knowledge of various characters and the dexterity necessary for the conduct of life. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“E tu, o que é que vais fazer?” Acompanhei-a à porta: de facto, dei-me conta de que não tinha a mais pequena ideia. Beijei-a suavemente nos lábios e respondi: “Não há um Israel para mim.” Um pensamento pobre, mas exato. Depois, ela desapareceu no elevador. – Michel Houellebecq, Submissão (2015)

Querer pelo desejo o que sabe não poder querer pela vontade. – José Saramago

I suffer – on the very limit of madness, I swear it – as if I could do all and was unable to do it, by deficiency of will. – Fernando Pessoa

Sempre pensei na vida como se fosse um funil. As pessoas começam nas bordas do funil, têm imensas possibilidades e depois, à medida que envelhecem, o círculo é cada vez mais pequeno, até que saem pelo cano fora… As possibilidades estão todas lá, ao princípio. Mas a vida é mesmo uma diminuição das possibilidades. As pessoas têm sempre de escolher e quando escolhem, perdem sempre alguma coisa. – Vasco Pulido Valente (2000)

No início do século XVI difundiu-se em Portugal o uso do azulejo com padrões tipicamente hispano-mouriscos, produzidos em Sevilha e Toledo. A sua estética veicula o horror ao vazio. – Museu do Azulejo

To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live. – Victor Hugo

An interpretation of the genesis of Paleolithic art is done from a ludic point of view: humans executed such works just as a pastime and for pure aesthetic pleasure. – Museu da Fundação do Côa, Vila Nova de Foz Côa

You can't get rid of your fears; but you can learn to live with them.

Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone — the visitors and countess alike — turned to look at her as if wondering why she had said it, and they all felt awkward. – Leo Tolstoy (1869), War and Peace

This confusion of fundamental values with superficial tastes is one of the strangest but most important fetishes of globalization. In reality non-Westerners superficially emulate Westerners and sometimes have as much money as Westerners. They use the same technology as Westerners. They echo the same political sloganeering as Westerners. Yet they are hardly political Westerners at all. – Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen (2021)

Primum non nocere – Latin phrase, "first, do no harm"

O princípio que o trabalho é objeto de uma construção, de um tornar-se; e não objeto de uma essência, de um ser. – José Nuno Matos, O operário em construção (2015)

NATO’s informal charter mission was, according to its first secretary-general, Lord Hastings Ismay, to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. – Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen (2021)

Living in a modest studio in Paris, Czapski was producing paintings saturated with light and color into his late eighties. Asked why his work featured "lonely people, deserted café tables, faces half concealed in the metro, minute daily events glimpsed in passing", he replied: "Each time, it is almost nothing. But that 'almost nothing' signifies everything". – John Gray, The New Leviathans (2023)

We cannot live with that awareness of the future always in our minds; uncertainty and hope are as essential to man as breath. – Judith Starkston

We might call this the “rubber band theory” of personality. We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much. – Susan Cain, Quiet (2013)

Tomada de consciência da pequenez e da grandeza do homem era como Kant definia o efeito causado pelo sublime, porque o infinito esmaga-nos, mas o pensamento sobre o infinito eleva-nos, de modo que o sentimento do sublime provoca, em simultâneo, dor, medo e prazer. – Pierre Hadot, Não Te Esqueças de Viver (2019)

Junk food capitalizes on our evolutionary predispositions for sugar and fat. It works using the peak shift principle, that is, take a stimulus that produces a certain response and then exaggerate its critical features to exaggerate the response. – Anjan Chatterjee, The Aesthetic Brain (2013)

Humans are primarily driven by their emotions. Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of an elephant and its rider to describe how the human mind works. The elephant represents the emotion part of the human brain. It makes most of the decisions. The rider represents the rational part of the brain. It can sometimes influence the elephant, but it mostly provides justifications for the elephant's decisions. – Chris Richardson, Microservices Patterns (2018)

Chico pensa na utilidade «prática». Mas, se através dos tempos o homem pensasse apenas na utilidade prática, hoje não seria um homem, seria um parafuso. De resto, os utilitários estão lutando contra si: conquistada a base prática, liquidados, em hipótese, os problemas de bem-estar, forçada toda a azáfama ao silêncio, eis que as flores da solidão, da asfixia, brotarão com a sua virulência clandestina da miséria do homem: a vida estará então toda ela por conquistar, desde o limiar das origens. – Vergílio Ferreira, Aparição (1959)

A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. – Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)

Se o estado de espírito que a causava era triste, não deixava por isso de ser doce. – J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla (1872)

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed subordination. Subordination is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This subordination is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! Have courage to use your own understanding! That is the motto of the Enlightenment. – Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (1784)

E finalmente a Kate, o meu último amor de juventude, o último e o mais grave, depois dela pode-se dizer que a minha juventude terminou, nunca mais conheci os estados mentais que normalmente associamos à juventude, aquela despreocupação encantadora, aquela sensação de um mundo indefinido e aberto. Depois dela a realidade fechou-se sobre mim, definitivamente. – Michel Houellebecq, Serotonina (2019)

Sometimes I wonder, and if I only had 6 months left to live, what would I do? And the brutality of the question is only matched by the brutality of the answer: I don't know. – David Fernandes (2014)

Nature is neither friend nor foe, neither malevolent nor benevolent. Nature is purposeless, Nature simply is. We may find nature beautiful or terrible, but those feelings are human constructions. The relationship between nature and us is one-sided, there is no reciprocity. We should not be concerned about protecting our planet: Nature can survive far more than what we can do to it and is totally oblivious to whether homo sapiens lives or dies. Our concern should be about protecting ourselves: because we have only ourselves to protect us. – Alan Lightman (2014)

Num certo momento, os velhos partidos europeus deixaram de tratar os seus eleitores como potenciais militantes, e passaram a tratá-los como uma espécie de consumidores, a quem prestam serviços por meio do Estado Social e da gestão da economia. Previsivelmente, os eleitores começaram a comportar-se como quaisquer consumidores, mudando de fornecedor quando o serviço não lhes parecia satisfatório. – Rui Ramos (2015)

The idea of zero tolerance is also informed by risk aversion. It represents an attempt to abolish, administratively, the risks associated with the expression of an unwelcome idea or belief. Of course, in one sense, tolerance is risky. Once conventional restraints on belief, opinion and speech are removed it becomes difficult to predict the future course of public life. The freedom to speak and to pursue knowledge has a habit of going off in unexpected directions. – Frank Furedi, How Fear Works (2018)

We are changing all the time. Moving between different aspects of self. We may have one aspect that wants to be more bold or subversive, which wrestles with our more agreeable, conflict-avoidant self. There is a constant negotiation occurring between these various aspects. And each time we tune in to a particular one, different choices result, changing the outcome of our work. – Rick Rubin, The Creative Act (2023)

Bicos, bocas, antenas e garras, olhos, escamas e patas, será de tal modo inato em nós o antropomorfismo que perante objetos mecânicos a nossa imediata tentação seja a de lhes atribuir partes orgânicas? Ou será que o antropomorfismo esteve deveras presente na mente dos engenheiros ao conceberem as máquinas, desenhando o seu funcionamento à imagem de um corpo? – José Navarro de Andrade, Terra Firme (2014)

Schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. – Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949)

E tudo o que fiz, na verdade, não teve nenhum significado, nem sentido, pois trabalhei para os outros, não para mim. – David Fernandes (2013)

True, her temperament very often failed to comply, and declined to submit to the dictates of reason. – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869)

She was a novelty, and it had become the thing to invite her to certain soirées, gorgeously attired and with her hair done up exhibition-style, and just sit her down like a beautiful picture to adorn the evening - just as other people borrow a picture, vase, statue, or screen on the occasion of their own party. – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869)

Em Madrid, pensava Robert Jordan, queria comprar alguns livros e pediria um quarto no Hotel Flórida e tomaria um banho bem quente. E mandaria Luís, o porteiro, procurar-me uma garrafa de absinto, se ainda as houver nas Mantequerías Leonesas ou em qualquer outro ponto perto da Gran Via, e ficaria deitado a ler, depois do banho, bebendo um ou dois absintos. E depois telefonaria para o Gaylord a fim de saber se poderia lá ir jantar. – Ernest Hemingway, Por Quem os Sinos Dobram (1940)

That was a special time: something new was afoot, something very unlike the tranquility of the past, and something very strange too, but which could be felt everywhere. Various rumors began to reach us. The facts were generally known, more or less, but it was obvious that apart from the facts there were certain ideas accompanying them, and, most importantly, a great number of them. But this is what was truly confusing: it proved utterly impossible to adapt to these ideas and find out exactly what they meant. – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons (1871)

Although everyone flatters developers, they are in high demand and salaries keep rising and rising, they feel less and less happy building stuff they don't understand, have no impact or that simply doesn't make sense. In an article an unknown engineer wrote "Then I worked for a tech giant, and then for a high-growth unicorn. It shocked me how dilbertesque they both were. Full of politicians and burnt out engineers in golden handcuffs who can't wait to get out, and meaningless business speak, and checked out employees who pretend they're excited about everything all the time." – Stephan Schmidt (2020)

The unusual European settlement, drawn up from ancient Greece and Rome, catalysed by the Christian religion and refined through the fire of the Enlightenments, turned out to be a highly particular inheritance. – Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe (2017)

Que sei eu do que serei, eu que não sei o que sou? – Fernando Pessoa, Tabacaria (1928)

Some West African populations cut clearings in the rain forest to cultivate yams; as a result of more standing water, more malaria-carrying mosquitoes bread; malaria, in turn, increased the frequency of the gene for sickle cell anemia in the population, because this gene offers protection against malaria. So cutting down trees resulted in more people having sickle cell anemia. When we modify our environment, these modifications can bounce back to influence our biology and psychology. – Anjan Chatterjee, The Aesthetic Brain (2013)

Edward Snowden revealed that the Orwellian 1984’s Big Brother of the United States Empire is already watching you. And society responded with the indifference of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. – David Fernandes (2016)

If we are all rewriting our memories every time we recall an event, the memory exists not as a file in our brain but only as the most recent rewrite of a scenario. Every memoir is fabricated, and the past is nothing more than our last retelling of it. Archival memory data is mixed with whatever new information helps shape the way we think—and feel—about it. “My conclusion,” says Schiller, “is that memory is what you are now. Not in pictures, not in recordings. Your memory is who you are now.” – Stephen S. Hall (2013)

The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a clear eyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage. – H. R. McMaster and Gary Cohn (2017)

The Chettiar ethic is very much a Protestant ethic: work hard, live very simply and earn as much profit as you can. The more profit you make means the more blessings you have from God. In accordance with the principle of Mahimai, a share of the profit is shared with God through contributions to religious and charitable work. – Subbiah Lakshmanan

Not all those who wander are lost. – J. R. R. Tolkien

Apenas me aconteceu ter uma inteligência naturalmente lúcida e uma vontade um tanto ou quanto forte. – Fernando Pessoa, O Banqueiro Anarquista (1922)

Cada geração deve reconhecer-se na sua Constituição. Se ela for ideologicamente construída e programaticamente datada, estamos a admitir que uma outra geração pensou por nós, para nós e em vez de nós. – António Barreto (2015)

The theoretical description of an algorithm can declare that certain things are simply assumed not to happen. However, a real implementation may still have to include code to handle the case where something happens that was assumed to be impossible, even if that handling boils down to printf("Fatal System Failure") and exit, letting a human operator clean up the mess. This is arguably the difference between computer science and software engineering. – Martin Kleppmann, Designing Data-Intensive Applications (2017)

Em a Crítica da Razão Negra (2014), Achille Mbembe enquadra o discurso Negro em três acontecimentos fundacionais: a escravatura, a colonização e a segregação. – David Fernandes (2017)

I have no graceful gestures, I have no sense of proportion; my words are inappropriate to my ideas, which devalues those ideas. – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869)

I wanted to ask you, Mister Terentyev, whether what I've heard is true - you consider that you would only have to speak out of the window to the common people for quarter of an hour, for them to agree with you at once about everything and follow you immediately? – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869)

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. – George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

The first instalments of Tolstoy's War and Peace (1869), then titled The Year 1805, would appear side by side with the opening chapters of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) in the same issue of The Russian Messenger (1866). – David Fernandes (2024)

A question that has since hung like a sword of Damocles over all knowledge, from the most trivial to the most advanced: How can we ever be justified in generalizing from what we've seen to what we haven't? – Pedro Domingos, The Master Algorithm (2015)

Thus a good learner is forever validating the narrow path between blindness and hallucination. – Pedro Domingos, The Master Algorithm (2015)

In Denmark the remains of Early Neolithic settlements on the banks of the lake have been preserved. The bog has good preservation conditions for animal bones and plant remains. The pollen from the bog strata shows how the vegetation changed after the arrival of the farmers, c. 4000 BC. Tree pollen was superseded by grain pollen and herb pollen when primeval forest was transformed into arable land. – Nationalmuseet (2024)

An organism that sees objective reality is always less fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees fitness payoffs. Seeing objective reality will make you extinct. – Donald Hoffman

Much of machine learning comes down to minimizing prediction error. – Anil Ananthaswamy

Don't acknowledge fellow passengers or sustain eye contact beyond 2 seconds. Please respect urban solitude. – London Underground (2012)

"Destroy all carbon-based life forms" would be a very bad algorithm for autonomous killbots. – US Army

Imagine that you are your brain, locked inside the bony vault of the skull, trying to figure out what's out there in the world - a world that, from the perspective of the brain, also includes the body. All you have to go on are noisy and ambiguous sensory signals, which are only indirectly related to what's out there, and which certainly don't come with labels attached ("I'm from a cup of coffee! I'm from a tree!"). Perception, in this view, has to be a process of inference - of neurally implemented probabilistic guesswork. – Anil Seth

Eu sou ocidental. A minha cultura é esta, não me interessam as outras. De que me vale a cultura asiática, a cultura africana? Respeito-as, mas não são a minha. Não ma podem substituir. A minha cultura é esta e eu sofro com ela. – Arturo Pérez-Reverte (2016)

Ivan Illich asked, “What can I do to survive in the midst of the show?”, before answering his own question with a proposed two-fold approach. First, he calls for “an ethics of vision”, which calls for us to “protect” our “imagination from overwhelming distraction, possibly leading to addiction”. Second, he suggests “ocular askesis”, a discipline by which we train ourselves to perceive the world as we wish to see it. Illich scholar L.M. Sacasas goes further: “Our task, then, would be to cultivate an ethos of seeing or new habits of vision. We should remember, that all the senses can be likewise trained.” – Ashley Colby (2022)

Michael Young’s “The Rise of the Meritocracy” argued that the most significant fact of modern society is not the rise of democracy, or indeed capitalism, but the rise of the meritocracy. In a knowledge society the most important influence on your life-chances is not your relationship with the means of production but your relationship with the machinery of educational and occupational selection. – The Economist (2018)

When writing up his researches on electrochemistry, Faraday was faced with a difficulty: he was trying to describe physical processes that nobody had described, or perhaps even though of, before. As his ideas grew, language itself became part of his thinking. He sought precision and faced a particular problem with words that were in common use but had misleading theoretical connotations; the prime example was current, which implied that electricity was a fluid. New words were needed not for their own sake but because existing ones carried theoretical baggage that could constrain one’s thinking. – Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon, Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field (2014)

Wabi-sabi is a concept in traditional Japanese aesthetics constituting a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” – Wikipedia (2017)

Every year farmers send billions of gallons of water to other countries in the form of the food grown with that same water. The issue of agriculture's water footprint, all the water used to produce a commodity and get it to a consumer, is contentious since many farmers use scarce water to produce low-value export crops. – National Geographic (2015)

All you ever were was a little bit of the universe thinking to itself. – Iain Banks, Surface Detail (2010)

Someone studying atoms is just atoms trying to understand themselves. – The Particle Adventure (2013)

Fermions give rise to structure, they have stability and lead to life. We are formed from atoms that have existed for billions of years, it is only now that they are configured in combinations that think they are us. We breathe in oxygen, exhale carbon dioxide, grow and die, but our atoms will go on. Their basic pieces will recombine with infinite variety into the distant future. – Frank Close, Antimatter (2009)

Pelo menos 129 pessoas morreram na sequência de uma série de atentados lançados em Paris, à porta de cafés, restaurantes e no Le Bataclan, conhecida sala de espectáculos da capital francesa onde no momento do ataque decorria um concerto. O arco civilizacional das Filipinas ao Norte de África não se está a tornar Europeu; é a Europa que lentamente está a ser engolida por esse mesmo arco. – David Fernandes (2015)

A well-established tradition of merit rating becomes the current system's most valuable weapon for its own survival. People who attempt to change the system (for the better) have no chance of recognition. – N. Logothetis

É preferível ter vontade de nada que não ter vontade nenhuma. – Friedrich Nietzsche

There are many ways in which humanity could become extinct before reaching posthumanity. Perhaps the most natural interpretation of is that we are likely to go extinct as a result of the development of some powerful but dangerous technology like molecular nanotechnology, which in its mature stage would enable the construction of self‐replicating nanobots capable of feeding on dirt and organic matter, a kind of mechanical bacteria. Such nanobots, designed for malicious ends, could cause the extinction of all life on our planet. – Nick Bostrom, Are you living in a computer simulation? (2003)

Food deserts are residential areas with poor access to healthy, affordable food. Most families understand the importance of eating nutritious foods like fruits and vegetables and avoiding processed foods like chips and fast food. But when you live in a food desert, these goals are hard to achieve. – Robyn Correll

The Oxford Dictionary includes in its definition of ugly in English “morally repugnant.” In Greek, the word “kalos” means both beauty and noble, while “aischros” means shameful as well as ugly. – Julia Baird (2015)

Unlike today, there was no Google, no Stackoverflow, no open source at your fingertips, rarely even someone to email to ask for help. You were basically programming on an island, and anything you needed to figure out or solve, you had to do it yourself. What you need today is searching, understanding and evaluation. You have access to the world's smartest (and sometimes dumbest) people. The chances that something you need hasn't been done elsewhere is rare and the real skill is in finding it, relating it to what you need, deciding if it is useful or adaptable, and if it is of a decent quality. - Andrew Wulf

One of Mr Dennett's key slogans is "competence without comprehension". Just as computers can perform complex calculations without understanding arithmetic, so creatures can display finely tuned behaviour without understanding why they do so. The mental items that populate human consciousness are more like fictions than accurate representations of internal reality. - The Economist (2017)

The psychologist Don Norman coined the term conceptual model to refer to the rough knowledge of a technology we need to have in order to use it effectively. - Pedro Domingos, The Master Algorithm (2017)

The bigger problem of understanding "my" code or "this" code is " has somebody else already solved this problem". My feeling is that most problems have already been solved but we write code because it's quicker to write code than discover it. - Joe Armstrong

Any organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. - Conway's Law

In fact, I couldn't remember the portrait very well, though I had finished it only a few weeks before. That was my pattern — the moment I launched into a new painting, the one I had just finished slipped from my mind. Only a vague and general image remained. I did retain a physical memory, however, of the sense of achievement I got from working on it. - Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore (2017)

Thus Computer Science is closer to the underlying theory of computation, with its roots in mathematics, and Computer Engineering is closer to the design of physical devices, with roots in physics and chemistry as well. - University at Buffalo (2010)

As it stands, I’ve put in 2,600+ hours and written 62,176 lines of code (mostly C++). The game’s made $27.92 in income, which nets out at about $0.01 per hour. Had I spent the time washing dishes at $7.25 / hour (a 725x more lucrative job) I’d have made a cool $19k! - Luke Rissacher

85% of your financial success is due to your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate and lead. Shockingly, only 15% is due to technical knowledge. - Carnegie Institute of Technology

When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It become quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit. - Peter Senge

The acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions. When these conditions are fulfilled, skill eventually develops, and the intuitive judgments and choices that quickly come to mind will mostly be accurate. A marker of skilled performance is the ability to deal with vast amounts of information swiftly and efficiently. - Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

If you want to become a leader, your development is all on you. We asked executives to rank their top employee attributes and the willingness to follow is more valuable than leadership. You have to build leadership skills on your own if you want to be prepared for the demands of management roles. - Karie Willyerd, Barbara Mistick (2016)

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. - John Gall, Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail (1975)

Economists such as David Autor and Daron Acemoglu have pioneered a new way of looking at work: analysing occupations in terms of the tasks they involve. These can be manual or cognitive, routine or complex. The task content determines how skilled a worker must be to qualify for work in a particular occupation. Mr Autor argues that rapid improvement in technology has enabled firms to reduce the number of workers engaged in routine tasks, both cognitive and manual, which are comparatively easy to programme and automate. - The Economist (2014)

In 2006 the Dutch Justice Minister, Piet Hein Donner, caused significant anger in the Netherlands when he suggested in an interview that if Muslims wished to change the law of the land to Sharia by democratic means (that is when Muslims were large enough in number), then they could do so. – Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe (2017)

Deneen is a student of Alexis de Tocqueville, and part of his argument is classically Tocquevillian, that the liberal-democratic-capitalist matrix we all inhabit depends for its livability and sustainability and decency upon pre-liberal forces and habits, unchosen obligations and allegiances: the communities of tribe and family, the moralism and metaphysical horizons of religion, the aristocracy of philosophy and art. – Ross Douthat (2018)

We can get back to thinking about machine learning as probabilistic reasoning and statistical learning. – Anil Ananthaswamy

It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. – George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

People fear fame like a pig fears getting fat. – Chinese adage

Passei anos e anos a ler livros e livros, milhares e milhares de páginas, dos quais muitas já não me lembro, mas que sei fazerem parte de mim, como fugazes relâmpagos de conhecimento e sabedoria que por vezes aparecem, mas que sei não serem meus, mas de outros. – David Fernandes (2023)

O provérbio que a definição de loucura é repetir a mesma ação e esperar resultados diferentes é poderoso, mas existe muita gente que tem de repetir as mesmas ações pois simplesmente não sabem fazer outras. O momento que muda a vida de um Homem é quando toma consciência das suas limitações e não quando conquista algo. – David Fernandes (2023)

The anatomical dialogue established during NREM sleep (using sleep spindles and slow waves) between the hippocampus and cortex is elegantly synergistic. By transferring memories of yesterday from the short-term repository of the hippocampus to the long-term home within the cortex, you awake with both yesterday's experiences safely filed away and having regained your short-term storage capacity for new learning throughout that following day. The cycle repeats each day and night, clearing out the cache of short-term memory for the new imprinting of facts, while accumulating an ever-updated catalog of past memories. – Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep (2018)

Psychological adaptations are complex behavioral patterns built into our minds over many generations. The same forces that select genes for physical features of the body also select genes for features of the brain to carry out functions that ultimately give the organism a reproductive advantage. For example, our general experience of beauty is the result of a loose ensemble of evolutionary adaptations. What ties different people, places and proofs together into the experience of beauty is that our ancestors, who happened to find pleasure in these objects, were the people who had more children. – Anjan Chatterjee, The Aesthetic Brain (2013)

We are social creatures; our satisfaction is largely determined by how we stack up relative to others. People make seemingly irrational choices when given the following two scenarios. Imagine being in line, with a chance of receiving cash when you reach a counter. In one scenario, you get $100. In another, you get $150 but the person ahead of you gets $1000. Most people prefer to be in the first scenario even though they end up with less money than in the second one. Once our basic needs are met, we care more about our relative position in a group than in some absolute measure of our reward. – Anjan Chatterjee, The Aesthetic Brain (2013)

In order to succeed, you must first survive. – Warren Buffett

The function f(x, y, z) depends on three variables and is plotted in 4D space. There is no way for us to visualize what it looks like. – Anil Ananthaswamy

Balancing their portfolio of knowledge regarding depth versus breadth is something every developer should consider throughout their career. - Mark Richards

Don’t play games you can’t win. If the deck is stacked against you, a smart option is to go to a different table and play with a different deck. The dominant system wants you to wait to get picked. It indoctrinates people, again and again, in accepting its hegemony and insight and wisdom, so that we judge ourselves instead of the system. If the system were fair and wise, this would be fine. But it might not be. If you’re waiting to get picked by a famous college or a big company or the music industry, you might end up waiting a very long time. – Seth Godin

We were built as gene machines created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in facial features, in a talent for music, in the color of her hair. But as each generation passes the contribution of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. Our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes that is any one of us is bound to crumble away. - Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)

Rimsky meanwhile was looking out the window, thinking hard about something. The findirector's position was very difficult. It was necessary at once, right on the spot, to invent ordinary explanations for extraordinary phenomena. - Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita (1967)

A lost cause can be as spiritually satisfying as a victory. - Robert A. Heinlein

Um vento tépido aquecia os ombros de Robert Jordan. A neve derretia-se rapidamente enquanto almoçavam. Vieram duas grandes sanduíches de carne e uma boa fatia de queijo de cabra para cada um, e Robert Jordan tinha cortado com a navalha grossas fatias de cebola que pusera de cada lado da carne e do queijo entre os pedaços de pão. Nunca tivera tanta fome. Encheu a boca de vinho, ao qual o couro dava um vago gosto de alcatrão; o couro tocava as agulhas de pinho da camuflagem e ele inclinava a cabeça entre os ramos do pinheiro para beber melhor. Pensou então, 'Vivi toda a experiência da minha vida nos três dias que estive nestas montanhas. Anselmo é o meu mais velho amigo. Agustín, com o seu palavreado imundo, é o meu irmão. E nunca tive irmãos. Maria é o meu amor verdadeiro e a minha mulher. E nunca tive um amor verdadeiro. Nem tive mulher. - Ernest Hemingway, Por Quem os Sinos Dobram (1940)

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. - Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

I distrust a convinced fanatic far more than I distrust an averagely compromised man. - Nick Cohen

Vice is ever most dangerous when lurking behind the Mask of Virtue. - Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796)

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. - Albert Bartlett

Maxwell recognized that the foundations of the physical world are imperceptible to our senses. All we know about them, possibly all we can ever know, are their mathematical relationships to things we can feel and touch. He stressed Kant's proposition that all human knowledge is of relations rather than of things. - Nancy Forbes and Basil Mahon, Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field (2014)

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)

Instead, the true pattern of biphasic sleep — for which there is anthropological, biological, and genetic evidence, and which remains measurable in all human beings to date — is one consisting of a longer bout of continuous sleep at night, followed by a shorter midafternoon nap. - Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep (2017)

So much of a good life is about what didn't happen. - Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money (2025)

When you've overestimated how much of your actions influence your results, you miss key feedback the world tries to give you, sticking to your guns instead of updating your approach. You keep plugging ahead, which seems like an admirable trait. You may throw more effort at the strategy, convinced it will pay off with even bigger rewards when you're eventually proven right. - Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money (2025)

Life is movement. - Aristotle (4th century BC)

A engenharia social do Estado-providência procura anular a meritocracia, processo em que o conhecimento e a capacidade técnica conferem poder; a mesma é vista como uma ideologia egoísta de uma elite meritocrática que como Marx explicou, "define as condições especiais da sua emancipação como as únicas condições gerais capazes de salvar a sociedade moderna". - Noam Chomsky

Francis Crick, who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, was once asked what it takes to win the Nobel Prize. He responded: "Oh it's very simple. My secret had been I know what to ignore." - Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money (2025)

And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon ourselves; for fortune may always change, but not character. - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be bad. This is well expressed by the English use of the word character as meaning credit, reputation, honor. Hence honor, once lost, can never be recovered; unless the loss rested on some mistake, such as may occur if a man is slandered or his actions viewed in a false light. - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

Carl Jung was once asked, "What do you consider to be more or less basic factors making for happiness in the human mind?" Jung highlighted two: "The faculty for perceiving beauty in art and nature." and "A philosophic or religious point of view capable of coping successfully with the vicissitudes of life." - Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money (2025)

The most general survey shows us that the two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom. We may go further, and say that in the degree in which we are fortunate enough to get away from the one, we approach the other. Life presents, in fact, a more or less violent oscillation between the two. Needy surroundings and poverty produce pain; while, if a man is more than well off, he is bored. - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

No one can persevere long in a fictitious character; for nature will soon reassert itself. - Arthur Schopenhauer (1851)

We forget that the capacity whether for achievement or for enjoyment does not last a whole lifetime. So we often toil for things which are no longer suited to us when we attain them; and again, the years we spend in preparing for some work, unconsciously rob us of the power for carrying it out. - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

He, too, is charmed by all the pretty things and the many pleasing shapes that surround him; and forthwith his imagination conjures up pleasures which the world can never realize. - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

As our body is concealed by the clothes we wear, so our mind is veiled in lies. The veil is always there, and it is only through it that we can sometimes guess at what a man really thinks; just as from his clothes we arrive at the general shape of his body. - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (1851)

On the one hand, then, cold reason, a mathematical mind, must be applied to the things of the world. In parallel, a warm passion, an emotional heart, must embrace the beings of this same world. - Julien Rochedy (2025)

Consequently, how can one claim to want to affirm, preserve, or defend White people when they constantly generate, by virtue of their very being, everything that negates them? - Julien Rochedy (2025)

Anti-racist action thus falls within the well-known three-dimensional program: prevention - sanction - repression, an institutional program. - Pierre-André Taguieff (2025)

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. - Ibram X. Kendi (2019)

The victimhood rhetoric based on the dogmas of "white privilege," "systemic racism," and "Islamophobia" erected as the dominant form of racism, thus allows a proven racist to be absolved of the accusation of racism. This type of sophistry is common in neo-antiracist discourse, the main ideological vector of the new racism accompanying the anti-Western offensive, whose target is the White population of European origin in Western democratic countries. Anti-French racism therefore appears as a subcategory of anti-White or anti-Western racism, which is being normalized in certain intellectual, cultural, and media circles stemming from immigration of non-European origin and with the active support of decolonial and leftist movements that have taken hold and spread throughout many universities. - Pierre-André Taguieff (2025)

The fight against racism is a permanent invention of doubles of racism. - Pierre-André Taguieff (2025)

The phenomenon known as anti-French racism is the price to pay for having allowed a multicultural and multi-ethnic society to develop in France. - Pierre-André Taguieff (2025)

In a society divided along ethnic lines, the election is a census, and the census is an election. - Aris Roussinos (2026)

The culprit, he argued, was not liberalism, but conservatism’s own capitulation — its willingness to fight on terrain defined by its enemies, using arguments its enemies had already won. - Richard A. Greenwald (2026)

So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam (Christ), a life-giving spirit. - 1 Corinthians 15:45

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Jesus Christ) - Matthew 5:27, 28

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. (Jesus Christ) - Matthew 10:34-38

We should bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation — to make a point — than to further the cause of truth. The latter end is only pursued when it seems coincident with the former. - Edgar Allan Poe (1842)

No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets. - Stanislaw Lem (1978)

Your knowledge and experience are your most important professional assets. Unfortunately, they’re expiring assets. Your knowledge becomes out of date as new techniques, languages, and environments are developed. Changing market forces may render your experience obsolete or irrelevant. As the value of your knowledge declines, so does your value to your company or client. - Andrew Hunt, David Thomas (2004)

As the troops used to say, "If the country is good enough to live in, it's good enough to fight for." With privilege goes responsibility. - Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed (1981)

They were the old breed of American regular, regarding the service as home and war as an occupation; and they transmitted their temper and character and viewpoint to the high-hearted volunteer mass which filled the ranks of the Marine Brigade. - John W. Thomason, Jr.

Forensic anthropology and the concept of race: If races don't exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them? - Norman J. Sauer (1992)

The purpose of a system is what it does. - Stafford Beer (1979)

Implementing a democratic coordination protocol is often complex, as it requires well-defined communication and conflict resolution mechanisms to facilitate consensus building. - Michael Albada (2025)

Volatility is noise for patient investors. - Felix Prehn (2026)

Equating hard work with growth. Leaders also make a mistake in believing that hard work alone indicates readiness for promotion. One leader I coached received exceptional feedback for his work but was passed over for a broader enterprise role. The reason? He needed to move from being an effective executive to a strategic leader. Working hard, solving problems, and ensuring people find it valuable to work with you are all important, but evolving your own vision and influence, enterprise thinking, executive presence, and decision-making demonstrates agility through your professional growth. - Marlo Lyons (2026)

A new theory by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman is garnering attention. Grounded in evolutionary psychology, it is called the interface theory of perception (ITP) and argues that percepts act as a species-specific user interface that directs behavior toward survival and reproduction, not truth. - Donald Hoffman (2015)

Ichi-go ichi-e (one time, one meeting) - a Japanese four-character idiom

In order to safeguard our shared aesthetic inheritance. - Roger Scruton (2009)

We don't have to agree with such judgements in order to acknowledge their point. - Roger Scruton (2009)