Quotations

When I closed my Facebook account, I downloaded all the data that they had on me. One part that I wanted to preserve was my list of favourite quotations. I am posting them here for now, as I want to be sure I do not lose them:

"Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality - call it an alternate reality - to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognise as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created in our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?" (Haruki Murukami, 'South of the border, west of the sun', p176.

Making money isn't hard in itself ... What is hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting your life to. (Carlos Ruiz Zafón in The Shadow of the Wind)

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind (George Orwell)

You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool (George Orwell)

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is (Chuck Reid)

Cry 'havoc' and let slip the dogs of war... (Shakespeare)

Eliminate management by objectives. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership. (W. Edwards Deming)

It is a fundamental fallacy to believe that it is possible by the elaboration of machinery to escape the necessity of trusting one's fellow human beings (Clement Attlee)

Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi (Publius Terentius Afer)

Do not become a mere recorder of facts, but try to penetrate the mystery of their origin (Ivan Petrovich Pavlov)

I don’t care about posterity, that’s what I’d like to be remembered for. (Banksy)

It is important to bear in mind that political campaigns are designed by the same people who sell toothpaste and cars. (Noam Chomsky) (Incidentally, what really worries me is that those same people are now running our Universities. Degrees are now products. Graduates are now products. Why do we tolerate this?)