"With eyes for the most part downcast and, if ever they lighted on a fellow creature, at once and furtively averted, Bernard hastened across the roof. He was like a man pursued, but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see, lest they should seem more hostile even than he had supposed, and he himself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplessly alone."

Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

"I am I, and wish I wasn't."

Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”

"The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one..."

Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”

"I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly."

Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

"But I do," he insisted. "It makes me feel as though..." he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel like that?"

Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

"All right, then. I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

"Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again and again, with an evergrowing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken."

Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

Mark Twain, Notebook 1904

“If the man doesn't believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can't burn him.”

Mark Twain

“Sanity is not statistical -- Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.”

Winston Smith, from George Orwell's 1984

“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”

Gen. George Patton

“The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.”

Aldous Huxley

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Douglas Adams

“No snowflake in the avalanche ever feels responsible.”

unknown

“Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness.”

unknown

“If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.”

Woody Allen

“The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.”

Matthew Arnold, 'God and the Bible,' 1875

“Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.”

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”

Sir Winston Churchill

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.”

Dale Carnegie

“There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.”

Robertson Davies

“A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it.”

unknown

“Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”

Albert Einstein

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”

Albert Einstein

“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”

Thomas Jefferson

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”

Anatole France (1844 - 1924), The Red Lily, 1894, chapter 7

“A law is something which must have a moral basis, so that there is an inner compelling force for every citizen to obey.”

Chaim Weizmann

“The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it.”

Glaser and Way

“The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.”

George Bernard Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple" (1901), act II

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.”

Frank Dane

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1895)

“To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice.”

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"Der Glaube, es werde alles immer schlimmer, ist faktenresistent."

Joachim Käppner, SZ

“Alles was lediglich wahrscheinlich ist, ist wahrscheinlich falsch.”

Descartes

“People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.”

Russell Baker

“Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”

Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

“In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.”

John Lilly

“They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.”

Louise Erdrich

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Andy Warhol (1928 - 1987), The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

“When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.”

Bernard Bailey

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”

Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth...except of course you just didn't see that other possibility, but that's beside the point.”

unknown

"We're really good at it. Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid."

Terry Pratchett, “Pyramids”

“Lu-Tze took a few steps back. He prided himself on an incredibly well-honed ability to talk his way in and out of anything, but that rather depended on a passably sane entity being involved at the other end of the dialogue.”

Terry Pratchett, “Thief of Time”

"Come now, do we need this? It's the duty of every citizen to help the Watch, isn't it?" - "I don't know. I know the Watch think it is. I've never seen it written down. There again, I never knew it was the right of the Watch to spy on innocent people."

Terry Pratchett, “The Truth”

"Oh, obvious. I'll grant you it's obvious. Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn't mean they're true."

Terry Pratchett

“Es mag Zeiten geben, da wir gegen Ungerechtigkeiten machtlos sind, aber wir dürfen nie versäumen, dagegen zu protestieren.”

Elie Wiesel

“Etwas ist nicht recht, weil es Gesetz ist, sondern es muß Gesetz sein, weil es recht ist.”

Charles de Montesquieu

“Auch wenn alle einer Meinung sind, können alle unrecht haben.”

Bertrand Russell

“Wenn alle Experten sich einig sind, ist Vorsicht geboten.”

Bertrand Russell

“Der Begriff "Sünde" hat für mich etwas ungemein Verwirrendes - wahrscheinlich, weil ich von Natur aus sündhaft bin.”

Bertrand Russell

“Bloßes Ignorieren ist noch keine Toleranz.”

Theodor Fontane

“Verbotenes bekämpft man am besten, indem man es erlaubt.”

John B. Priestley

“Drei Dinge sind im Leben eines Menschen wichtig. Erstens: Menschlichkeit. Zweitens: Menschlichkeit. Und drittens: Menschlichkeit.”

Henry James

“Vieles wird mit menschlicher Unzulänglichkeit entschuldigt, für das es wegen unzulänglicher Menschlichkeit keine Entschuldigung gibt.”

Rupert Schützbach

“Ich fand, daß es für alle irdischen Streitigkeiten nur einen Ausweg gibt: die Toleranz. Und daß sie nur einer einzigen Gesinnung gegenüber nicht angewandt werden darf: der Intoleranz.”

Bruno Walter

“An eye for an eye -- and everyone is blind.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“Alles, was gigantische Formen annimmt, kann imponieren - auch die Dummheit.”

Erich Kästner

“Für mich ist eine Gesellschaftsordnung dann freiheitlich, wenn man sich darin gefahrlos unpopulär machen kann.”

Adlai Stevenson

“Nichts ist schwerer, als den gelten zu lassen, der uns nicht gelten läßt.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

“Solange du dem anderen sein Anderssein nicht verzeihen kannst, bist du noch weit ab vom Weg zur Weisheit.”

Aus China

“Man verdirbt einen Jüngling am sichersten, wenn man ihn verleitet, den Gleichdenkenden höher zu achten als den Andersdenkenden.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Gelungene Kritik ist immer auch das Bemühen um einen Dialog. Auf den Kritiker als Scharfrichter können wir verzichten.”

Hendrik Schmidt

“Menschen sind nicht fester als Nägel; schlägt man ihnen ständig auf den Kopf, dann sinken sie immer tiefer oder krümmen sich.”

Karl Tackmann

“Wir finden nur die verständig, die unserer Meinung sind.”

François de La Rochefoucauld

“Nichts ist so trügerisch wie Tatsachen, ausgenommen Zahlen.”

George Canning

“Tatsachen gibt es nicht, nur Interpretationen.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Es ist unglaublich, wieviel Geist in der Welt aufgeboten wird, um Dummheiten zu beweisen.”

Oscar Wilde

"And she sees everything in black and white. That's always a trap for the powerful. Oh, yes. A mind like that is so easily ... led."

Terry Pratchett, “Carpe Jugulum”

"Warum kriegt in diesem Land eigentlich jeder, der sich von rosa Pinguinen verfolgt fühlt, eine Schrotflinte?"

Bernd das Brot

"How can a state execute a person in the name of justice? For justice isn't done with murder."

unknown

"It's a lot more complicated than that-------"
"No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts."

Terry Pratchett, “Carpe Jugulum”

"to be yourself in a world that is doing its best, day and night to make you like everybody else--is to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight."

e.e. cummings

“If you prick us do we not bleed?”

William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”

"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is."

Albert Camus

"I wish they would only take me as I am."

Vincent Van Gogh

"Ought? I don't know about ought. That's not a philosophical word."

Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods”

"I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could."

Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods”

"Gods and men, men and gods, everything happens because things have happened before. Stupid."

Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods”

"Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers."

Terry Pratchett, “Small Gods”

"With the first link the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all, irrevocably."

Cpt. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek, The Next Generation

"Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know.

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."

Mary Oliver

"Labels are for canned food! People are much too binary in their thinking..."

Michael Stipe

"Okay, conservatives have changed my mind. Allowing gay marriage, I have been persuaded, will destroy the family, weaken Western civilization, turn America into Sodom and Gomorrah, increase the trade deficit with Japan, endanger the family farm and promote tooth decay. The impeccable logic of conservative opponents is simply too powerful to deny."

Chicago Tribune columnist Stephen Chapman

"My wife is not a lesbian and neither is my son. I've never had sex with a man and neither has my wife. I hope that your campaigning for homosexuals is due to your being unknoweable rather than you thinking the things they do are just `sexual preferance.' Keep your sexual perversions to yourself and I'll keep my sexual perversions to myself." -- an exerpt from hate mail received by the Lavendar Network Newspaper.

"As you can see, we have met the enemy, and they are illiterate." -- Lavendar Network Newspaper's response to the aforementioned hate mail.

"Do what you think and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

Richard Bach

Eine strukturell desintegrierte Finalitat in Relation zur Zentralisationskonstellation provoziert die eskalative Realisierung destruktiver Integrationsmotivationen durch permanent lokal aggressive Individuen der Spezies "Canis". (Den letzten beißen die Hunde.)

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

William Shakespeare

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“If we all discovered that we only had five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to tell them that they loved them.”

Christopher Morley

“The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.”

William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”

“Must I hold a candle to my shames?”

William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”

“He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost”

William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet”

“The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law.”

William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet”

“Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow!”

William Shakespeare, “Love’s Labour ‘s Lost”

"She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you."

Terry Pratchett, “Equal Rites”

"I always heard there is no end to 'em. It's all down to dimensions, I heard, like what we see is only the tip of the whatever, you know, the thing that is mostly underwater--"
"Hippopotamus?"
"Alligator?"
"Ocean?"

Terry Pratchett

“The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about.”

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

"Funny," he intoned funerally, "how just when you think life can't possibly get any worse it suddenly does."

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity - distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

"The answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?" "Life!" urged Fook. "The Universe!" said Lunkwill. "Everything!" they said in chorus. Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection. "Tricky," he said finally.

Douglas Adams, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Enttäuscht vom Affen, schuf Gott den Menschen.
Danach verzichtete er auf weitere Experimente.

Mark Twain

"Der Weg logischer Gedanken kennt nur eine Form: das Labyrinth."

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 to heterosexuals. This doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals, it's just that they need more supervision.

Allein sein ist schön, wenn man allein sein will, nicht wenn man es muss.