Welcome to the first of our 2025 collections of quotes, recently encountered.
Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, and children have a great fondness for colours in their utmost brightness.
[Goethe]
I want to live in a world where being naked in public is normal.
[unknown]
Whatever the reasons, I enjoyed being nude; it felt natural to me. I got the same kind of pleasure from being free of clothing that many people get from being well dressed.
[unknown]
Not everyone can stand the strain of gazing down too long into the personal crater, with its scene of Hieronymus Bosch activities taking place in the depths.
[Anthony Powell; To Keep the Ball Rolling]
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away”. To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it”.
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.
[GK Chesterton]
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
[Aldous Huxley]
Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented.
[Elíe Wiesel, Roumainian-born American Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor]
I simply can’t understand
Why swimsuits are in such demand.
They’re soggy and damp,
Bind like a clamp,
And hold about three pounds of sand.
[DR Benson]
One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.
[Franz Kafka]
Have you ever thought about how surreal reading a book actually is? You stare at marked slices of tree for hours, hallucinating vividly. Isn’t it amazing how words can transport us to different worlds and experiences, all while staying in one place?
[unknown]
The best motto to think about is not waste things. Don’t waste electricity. Don’t waste paper. Don’t waste food. Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste. Look after the natural world, and the animals in it, and the plants in it too. This is their planet as well as ours. Don’t waste them.
[Sir David Attenborough]
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
[Bertrand Russell, British Philosopher]
We can blame HG Wells for popularising the notion that the future will be incomprehensibly alien, totally unlike our world now. Though his novel The Time Machine was fantastical, it reflected a broader cultural view during the industrial revolution that history hadn’t prepared us for what was coming next. Eventually, we might evolve into competing post-human species of underground Morlocks and surface-dwelling Eloi. Echoing Wells, futurists today declare that humans are either on the brink of becoming hyper-evolved cyborgs or paper clips on the desk of a godlike AI.
[Annalee Newitz; New Scientist; 11/01/2025; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26435250-100-ancient-humans-understood-the-future-and-the-past-pretty-much-as-we-do/]
A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong … The spectacle is nearly always comic.
[Lewis H Lapham, editor and writer (1935-2024) in 1989]
[h/t John Monaghan]
Your time on earth is limited. Don’t try to “age with grace”. Age with mischief, audacity and a great story to tell.
[unknown]