Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humorous quotes recently encountered.
The universe consists primarily of dark matter. We can’t see it, but it has an enormous gravitational force. The conscious mind — much like the visible aspect of the universe — is only a small fraction of the mental world. The dark matter of the mind, the unconscious, has the greatest psychic gravity. Disregard the dark matter of the universe and anomalies appear. Ignore the dark matter of the mind and our irrationality is inexplicable.
Joel Gold
To understand how something works, you must first understand how it got that way.
PZ Myers
So there’s the land — this real stuff we walk around on. Then there’s territory — the maps and lines we use to define the land. But then there are wars fought over where those map lines are drawn. The levels can keep building on one another, bringing people to further abstractions and disconnection from the real world. Land becomes territory; territory then becomes property that is owned. Property itself can be represented by a deed, and the deed can be mortgaged. The mortgage is itself an investment that can be bet against with a derivative, which can be secured with a credit default swap.
Douglas Rushkoff
[We wonder why the banking industry goes tits up, and the world is strewn with tribal warfare!]
We may perhaps date the beginning of modern thought from the night of January 7, 1610, when Galileo, by means of the instrument he developed [the telescope], thought he perceived new planets and new, expanded worlds.
Marjorie Nicolson
If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.
Cartoon cat, Garfield
So next time someone asks you whether you believe in evolution, the best answer you can give would be something like, “No, I don’t. I accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution, belief isn’t necessary.”
Found at Evolution Happens
Cuvée des Sires, usually a classic 70/30 blend of Aÿ Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, is a serious wine to be savoured; not, as Brun puts it ‘to be drunk from an actress’s shoe.’
Philippe Brun of Champagne house Roger Brun at imbibe.com
Dirt is matter out of place.
Mary Douglas
Everything is the way it is because it got that way.
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form
We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut
And what is this? ‘It is a cat. It arrived. It does not appear to wish to depart.’ The cat, a feral ginger tom, flicked a serrated ear and curled up in a tighter ball. Anything that could survive in Ankh-Morpork’s alleys, with their abandoned swamp dragons, dog packs and furriers’ agents, was not about to open even one eye for a bunch of floating nightdresses.
Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humourous quotes recently encountered.
It has proven surprisingly difficult to work out how many sheets of A4 the average goatskin can produce.
[@ianvisits on Twitter]
Challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.
[Carlos Castaneda]
Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
[Lao Tzu]
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
[Mark Twain]
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
[GK Chesterton]
A man’s bookcase will tell you everything you’ll ever need to know about him
[Walter Mosley, born 1952]
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
[Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)]
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
[Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)]
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
[George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)]
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the golden road to Samarkand.
[James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915), The Golden Journey To Samarkand]
It’s because someone knows something about it that we can’t talk about physics, it’s the things that nobody knows about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance … so it’s the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!
[Richard Feynman (1918-88)]
… and at the very bottom, a world of caverns whose walls are black with soot, a world of cesspools and sloughs, a world of grubs and beasts, of eyeless beings who drag animal carcasses behind them, of demoniacal monsters with bodies of birds, swine and fish, of dried-out corpses and yellow-skinned skeletons arrayed in attitudes of the living, of forges manned by dazed Cyclopses in black leather aprons, their single eyes shielded by metal-rimmed blue glass, hammering their brazen masses into dazzling shields.
[Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual]
If you’ve ever tried counting yourself to sleep, it’s unlikely you did it using the square roots of sheep. The square root of a sheep is not something that seems to make much sense. You could, in theory, perform all sorts of arithmetical operations with them: add them, subtract them, multiply them. But it is hard to see why you would want to.
[Matthew Chalmers, “Reality Bits”, New Scientist, 25/01/2014]

Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humourous quotes recently encountered.
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
[Hamlet IV, v]
Self-confidence doesn’t consist of knowing for sure something will go well. It has more to do with relaxing with the certainty that you can handle uncertainty, even if that means some kind of failure.
[Mark Tyrell]
All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.
[Eckhart Tolle]
She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
[Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park]
Books en masse are more than a library, they are a statement of identity.
[Mark Miodownik, Stuff Matters]
Friendships must be built on a solid foundation of alcohol, sarcasm, inappropriateness and shenanigans.
[Source unknown]
The wise man is one who knows what he does not know.
[Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching]
The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
[Sir William Osler]
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
[Marcus Aurelius]
Amidst al the shoppinge and eatinge, remembir whatte the holidayes are trewely aboute: fightinge off the wolf who hath stolen the sun.
[Chaucer Doth Tweet, ‏@LeVostreGC on Twitter]
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
[Samuel Johnson, 1759]
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
[Soren Kierkegaard]
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
[Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching]

Another of our occasional round-ups of recently encountered quotes which interested or amused.
The sage falls asleep not because he ought to
Not even because he wants to
But because he is sleepy.
[Raymond Smullyan, The Tao is Silent]
Give up all this advertising of goodness and duty, and people will regain love of their fellows.
[Lao Tsu]
Peace comes from within, do not seek it without.
[Buddha]
I have never understood the Scots, and I defy anybody to understand the Scots.
[Sir Bernard Ingham]
Probably the most tactless woman I ever met.
[Sir Bernard Ingham on Margaret Thatcher]
Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
[Alan Watts]
There are three questions you need to ask about any new law: is it necessary, is it workable and will it do more good than harm?
[Original source unknown]
Only idiots refuse to change their minds.
[Brigitte Bardot]
Most of us suspect we’re frauds; few of us will ever produce such memorable proof.
[From http://newpsalmanazar.wordpress.com]
As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.
[George Harrison]
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
[Bertrand Russell]
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
[Ludwig Wittgenstein]
In a still photograph you basically have two variables, where you stand and when you press the shutter. That’s all you have.
[Henry Wessel]
I believe that the phrase ‘obligatory reading’ is a contradiction in terms. Reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of ‘obligatory pleasure’? What for? Pleasure is not obligatory, pleasure is something we seek … If a book bores you, leave it; don’t read it because it is famous, don’t read it because it is modern, don’t read a book because it is old. If a book is tedious to you, leave it, even if that book is Paradise Lost – which is not tedious to me – or Don Quixote – which also is not tedious to me. But if a book is tedious to you, don’t read it; that book was not written for you. Reading should be a form of happiness.
[Jorge Luis Borges]
We are always the same age inside.
[Gertrude Stein]
In the ‘Book of Life,’ the answers aren’t in the back.
[Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz]

Another small selection of amusing or enlightening quotes encountered recently.
Why do we spend billions of pounds searching for life on other planets, yet we cannot preserve the life on the one we live?
[Seen on Facebook]
If you don’t like gay marriage, blame straight people: they’re the ones who keep having gay babies.
The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.
[Leonardo da Vinci]
It’s a shame to waste [the uniqueness that is you], by doing what someone else has done.
[Joseph Campbell]
There is a goal but no way; what we call the way is mere wavering.
[Frank Kafka]
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.
[Daniel Webster]
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
[Lao Tzu]
You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.
[Arlo Guthrie]
Recently, someone asked me if I believed in astrology. He seemed somewhat puzzled when I explained that the reason I don’t is because I’m a Gemini.
[Raymond M Smullyan, Five Thousand BC and Other Philosophical Fantasies]
At all costs, the Christian must convince the heathen and the atheist that God exists, in order to save his soul. At all costs, the atheist must convince the Christian that the belief in God is but a childish and primitive superstition, doing enormous harm to the cause of true social progress. And so they battle and storm and bang away at each other. Meanwhile, the Taoist Sage sits quietly by the stream, perhaps with a book of poems, a cup of wine, and some painting materials, enjoying the Tao to his heart’s content, without ever worrying whether or not Tao exists. The Sage has no need to affirm the Tao; he is far too busy enjoying it!
[Raymond M Smullyan, The Tao Is Silent]
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
[Mahatma Gandhi]