Philosophy Funny Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Philosophy Funny. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.
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Gilles Deleuze
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Last night I was seriously considering whether I was a bisexual or not but I don’t think so though I’m not sure if I’d like to be and argh I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, if you like a person, you like the person, not their genitals.
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Jess C. Scott (Tongue-Tied)
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It's a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
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Germany Kent
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If an apology is followed by an excuse or a reason, it means they are going to commit same mistake again they just apologized for.
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Amit Kalantri
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A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
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H.L. Mencken
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Instead of heading for a big mental breakdown, I decided to have a small breakdown every Tuesday evening.
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Graham Parke (No Hope for Gomez!)
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Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch.
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Lili St. Crow
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Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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Intelligence is more important than strength, that is why earth is ruled by men and not by animals.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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When you are angry try your best to go to sleep, it keeps you away from speaking, writing and thinking while you are angry.
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Amit Kalantri
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A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (The Art of Literature)
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To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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Memories make you sentimental, experiences make you smart.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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With a philosophy education, one can infuriate his peers, intimidate his date, think of obscure, unreliable ways to make money, and never regret a thing.
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Criss Jami (Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality)
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To be, or not to be: what a question!
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World)
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I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.
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David Gerrold (The Man Who Folded Himself)
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Do you know where your breakthrough begins? Your breakthrough begins where your excuses ends.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.
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Criss Jami (Healology)
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There have been two great narcotics in European civilisation: Christianity and alcohol.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you'd better answer them!' [slurred Hellian.] 'With what?' [Banaschar] sneered. 'Explanations?' 'No. Answers. There's a difference-' 'Really? How? What difference?' 'Explanations are what people use when they need to lie. Y'can always tell those,'cause those don't explain nothing and then they look at you like they just cleared things up when really they did the opposite and they know it and you know it and they know you know and you know they know that you know and they know you and you know them and maybe you go out for a pitcher later but who picks up the tab? That's what I want to know.' 'Right, and answers?' 'Answers is what I get when I ask questions. Answers is when you got no choice. I ask, you tell. I ask again, you tell some more. Then I break your fingers, 'cause I don't like what you're telling me, because those answers don't explain nothing!
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Steven Erikson (The Bonehunters (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #6))
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Don't bite the hand that feeds you - especially if you're dining alone.
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Kevin Ansbro
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I don't understand this irony - valuable things like cars, gold, diamond are made up of hard materials but most valuable things like money, contracts and books are made up of soft paper.
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Amit Kalantri
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I chase goals, not girls.
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Amit Kalantri
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Majority wins, but majority is not necessarily right and sometimes majority is awfully wrong.
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Amit Kalantri
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Funny to think that every day you have ever lived is a yesterday, and you will never live one single tomorrow. But then again, every day is a today when you’re living it.
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Mik Everett (Turtle: The American Contrition of Franz Ferdinand)
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The primary feature of women is not a 'beauty', it's a 'mystery'.
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Amit Kalantri
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I'm not the one going for a biology degree. I'm just a philosophy major who eats people.
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Scott Westerfeld (Peeps (Peeps, #1))
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You will miss a normal life while living a successful life, but not as much as the craving for a successful life while you were living a normal life.
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Amit Kalantri
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Reading is the noblest of all the hobbies, that is why people mention it so frequently in their resume even if they don't read much.
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Amit Kalantri
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Once I got away from him, I was smart enough to stay away from him. To hunt that one is as wise as to go hunting a porcupine. I cannot leave this alone, Nighteyes. I understand. I am the same about porcupines.
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Robin Hobb (Assassin's Quest (Farseer Trilogy, #3))
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When you’re given the gift of truth, you spend a lot of time trying to tone it down because it is already offensive enough.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom, It helps not, it prevails not.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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I don't beg for those things which can be earned.
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Amit Kalantri
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Of course, he said, he who is of a certain nature, is like those who are of a certain nature; he who is not, not.
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Plato (The Republic)
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Sometimes the smartest thing to do is to feign ignorance.
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Zack W. Van
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Death would not surprise us as often as it does, if we let go of the misbelief that newborns are less mortal than the elderly.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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I Take Life Very Seriously: One Joke At A Time.
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Sandra Chami Kassis
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An apple a day keeps the doctor away.' But eating too many, is quite enough-plenty. And you'll have to go see the good doc anyway.
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Solange nicole
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I agree that sometimes it is difficult to choose between right and wrong, but not between right and stupid.
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Amit Kalantri
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Empathy is not something that happens to us when we read Dickens. It’s work. What art does is provide material with which to think: new registers, new spaces. After that, friend, it’s up to you.
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Olivia Laing (Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency)
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Babe, best wool men ever pulled was lettin’ women think we think with our dicks. We pay a fuckuva lot of attention. We know your shit maybe more than you do because we live it right along with you and some of you try to make us eat it. It’s just that some of us choose not to get sucked in the drama and instead focus on getting laid regularly.” I felt my eyes get big right before I wrapped my arms around him and started giggling, but I managed to push through my giggles, β€œHoney, not sure you should share the brotherhood’s secrets.” β€œYou talk, no woman will listen. They prefer to think a man’s brain is in his dick. Gives ’em something to bitch about.
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Kristen Ashley (Fire Inside (Chaos, #2))
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There is a miracle in your mess, don't let the mess make you miss the miracle.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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Remember, crowd doesn't care about common sense.
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Amit Kalantri
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Never give up hope! If you do, you be dead already.
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Rose in The Inspired Caregiver
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Walking through life, we spend most of our energy choosing the right shoes.
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Ljupka Cvetanova (The New Land)
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The more thou search, the more thou shall marvel.
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COMPTON GAGE
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You will have relatively less problems to solve, if you don't confuse problems with inconveniences.
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Amit Kalantri
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I decided to do the easy task of changing situations and conditions by being a hero, than staying back to do the difficult task of changing people by being just a man.
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Amit Kalantri
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To the issues of friendship, love, business and war, "surprise" is the optimistic solution.
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Amit Kalantri
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No kind of social system can make you more happier and secure than your own money.
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Amit Kalantri
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Broken Wind believed that we are traumatized as babies by intestinal gas or colic. The great shaman invented a technique called "gastral projection" to help release these traumas. His philosophy was simple: "To air is human ... but to really cut one loose is divine.
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Beyondananda
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I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly, (Gadfly Saga, #1))
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Be careful because God's gifts alone are not able to give you joy; God's gift can only bring you joy when they are joined with your gratitude.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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All the failures in my life freed me from all my fears so that I can succeed.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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If one million of you give assent to the one thousand who participate in the murder of a child, then one million of you are a million times guilty.
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COMPTON GAGE
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Good man and bad man with money goes a long ways." ~ Amunhotep El Bey
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Amunhotep Chavis El Bey (The Quotations Book of life and Death)
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If you have money but not love you will somehow manage, but if you don't have both then you are in serious trouble.
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Amit Kalantri
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There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers.
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Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
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Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn't mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there's no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn't so, especially when our comrades know it too. Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don't confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baad,while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool But what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?
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Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
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One of the strategies which atheists adopt is proving the non-existence of God by demonstrating that He is not divine. β€˜There is so much bad happening in this world, if God is out there would he allow all of that?’ It is a fallacy. A true atheist doesn’t want to prove that God is evil. A true atheist should, instead, prove God doesn’t exist at all. It’s laughable. I mean, I can understand westerners using this strategy, for according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is considered divine. There is a clear difference between the agents of evil and the agents of good. But if you are someone who has the privilege of knowing eastern philosophy, and you still take this path, which is proving the non-existence of God by proving he is evil, it’s funny and laughable, and a sign of ignorance.
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Abhaidev (The Gods Are Not Dead)
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Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music. If we were in a restaurant sometimes Orpheus would look sullen and wouldn't talk to me and I thought people felt sorry for me. I should have realized that women envied me. Their husbands talked too much. But I wanted to talk to him about my notions. I was working on a new philosophical system. It involved hats. This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful. Orpheus said the mind is a slide ruler. It can fit around anything. Show me your body, he said. It only means one thing.
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Sarah Ruhl (Eurydice)
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Sometimes what not to do is more important than what to do. Sometimes when you are in crisis, when frustration are high or when you are under pressure, what you don't do is more important than what you do. Don't be afraid. ....
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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It is better to doubt that a concept is stupidly flying under your head than profoundly flying over your head.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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Of all funny things, truth is the funniest.
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Neel Burton
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Don't bite the hand that feeds you; especially if you're dining alone.
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Kevin Ansbro
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Justice is about harmony... revenge is about you making yourself feel better.
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COMPTON GAGE
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The harder you search the more troubled you become.
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COMPTON GAGE
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No crime is a means to an end. No crime can be rationalized.
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COMPTON GAGE
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Hands can cook, hands can create, hands can kill. There is no better tool than our hands.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
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Not obedience or feelings or respect, there is only one thing which people take seriously at all time and its "money".
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Amit Kalantri
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Life is a mighty joke that is not meant to be funny.
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Janvier Chouteu-Chando (Disciples of Fortune)
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Funny how money speaks even more loudly than morals in this beautiful, superficial material world.
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Rasheed Ogunlaru
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If you ask me I think the greatest breakthrough each and everyone of us need is not on finance, marriage, work, relationship, own house, car but self. The first breakthrough should start from being selfish.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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In the heyday of European imperialism, conquistadors and merchants bought entire islands and countries in exchange for coloured beads. In the twenty-first century our personal data is probably the most valuable resource most humans still have to offer, and we are giving it to the tech giants in exchange for email services and funny cat videos.
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: β€˜An intoxicating brew of science, philosophy and futurism’ Mail on Sunday)
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I started studying law, but this I could stand just for one semester. I couldn't stand more. Then I studied languages and literature for two years. After two years I passed an examination with the result I have a teaching certificate for Latin and Hungarian for the lower classes of the gymnasium, for kids from 10 to 14. I never made use of this teaching certificate. And then I came to philosophy, physics, and mathematics. In fact, I came to mathematics indirectly. I was really more interested in physics and philosophy and thought about those. It is a little shortened but not quite wrong to say: I thought I am not good enough for physics and I am too good for philosophy. Mathematics is in between.
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George PΓ³lya
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Gratitude without practicing maybe like practicing a faith without good work. A grateful heart is not enough without a grateful habit; because your joy is not produced by what you put in your heart but by habit you put in your life.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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It should be noted that Tress would have made an excellent philosopher. In fact, she had already determined that philosophy wasn’t as valuable as she’d assumedβ€”something that takes most great philosophers at least three decades to realize.
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Brandon Sanderson (Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere, #28))
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No matter how limited their powers of reason might have been. still they must have understood that living like that was just murder, a capital crime - except it was slow, day-by-day murder. The government (or humanity) could not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time. To kill one man - that is, to subtract 50 years from the sum of all human lives - that was a crime; but to subtract from the sum of all human lives 50,000,000 years - that was not a crime! No, really, isn't it funny? This problem in moral math could be solved in half a minute by any ten-year-old Number today, but they couldn't solve it. All their Kant's together couldn't solve it (because it never occurred to one of their Kant's to construct a system of scientific ethics - that is, one based on subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication).
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Yevgeny Zamyatin (We)
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I have been told the best things in life are free ~ I found them very expensive.
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E.A. Bucchianeri
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If you can't laugh at yourself, maybe you're not funny
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Benny Bellamacina (Philosophical Uplifting Quotes volume 2)
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God is not interested in helping you finding out why you are in a mess, He is interested in fixing it.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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Whenever you are in transition it is always important to choose the words that you use. You call it crises in your life and I call it transition.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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All my pains has always increased my sense of purpose.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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Be careful the mistake of yesterday always lives with tomorrow.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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People will laugh at anything, except their own moronic self.
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Fakeer Ishavardas
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What you see and what you listen to will determine how high you will go.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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If negative emotions have gain access into your heart, it is because you have given it attention. If memories of pain and hurt dominates your heart, it is because you gave them attention. How can a memory hurt you when it has only happened? It can only hurt you when you give it attention.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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Hey, I am thinking of it myself, in this part of world (East), we all do endeavors in praying and are sweating (white liquid) and this is our situation, frustrated , but on the other part of world (West) ,they are enjoying in party and drinking liquor (white liquid) but their situation is that, successful, I do not know that the problem relates to the type of liquid or the way of drinking!!
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Ali Shariati
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Quand celui Γ  qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la mΓ©taphysique When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.
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Voltaire
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Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you're born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you're dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He's not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It's a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It's one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea!
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Christopher Hitchens
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The open door is never behind you; the open door is always before you. Quit looking at your past life and mistakes. Look unto Jesus who is the Author and Perfector of our faith. Your open door is not in the opportunity you missed ten years ago, it is not in some stuffs behind you that you can't get back. You can't gain your access by giving attention to your past life. Your past days are behind you and what God has for you is in front of you. Just pay attention.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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You can't love me if you don't love you, you can't think of nothing to do with me if you can't think of nothing to do with yourself, stop feeling sorry for yourself and tidy up, clean up the apartment until you get a house, do that job until you build your own company. Look at what you have and think on how to make it better.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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Life is as precious to us as it is for an animal. An animal is as loving, caring, and kind to her children as we are. She might not be able to tell us but she can express it through her eyes and expressions. She feels joy and happiness. She is helpless in our cruel hands and vulnerable to our vicious greed. Let us be kind to animals. Let us learn to feel their pain. Can we kill a helpless baby to feed our greed? Then how can we kill helpless animal friends that can’t talk? Often we kill just for fun. How funny would it be if an animal killed a human just for fun? Let us be kind to animals as much as possible. I know we can. It is easier to love an animal than a human being. If you love an animal, it will rarely hurt you. Let us practice kindness and compassion to animals so that we may create a peaceful world.
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Debasish Mridha
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Maybe what you need in your life is not the next level of accomplishment or the next level of accumulation but the next level of appreciation for what you have; that will set the stage to make a space for what you will accumulate in the future. ( a bit deep) Simply put thank God for now before setting the goal for tomorrow because if you grow in gifts and didn't grow in gratitude, you have gained nothing.
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Patience Johnson (Why Does an Orderly God Allow Disorder)
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There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat. These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade. (This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, or conservatives are selfish, but that these are ways of life that provide opportunities of a certain disposition to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Bear with me.) There is another philosophy by which people live their lives, and it goes thus: You will do as I say or I will hurt you. . . . Let me draw you a Venn diagram with two circles on it, denoting sets of individuals. They overlap: the greedy ones and the authoritarian ones. Let's shade in the intersecting area in a different color and label it: dangerous. Greed isn't automatically dangerous on its won, and petty authoritarians aren't usually dangerous outside their immediate vicinity -- but when you combine the two, you get gangsters and dictators and hate-spewing preachers.
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Charles Stross (The Fuller Memorandum (Laundry Files, #3))
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New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play. Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister? It's no surprise that some one hundred million Americans will watch the Super Bowl--that's forty million more than go to church on Christmas--suck on that, Jesus! It's also eighty-five million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in. Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens, "achieving the American dream" is easy for some and just a fantasy for others. That's why the NFL literally shares the wealth--TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it thirty-two ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success." Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small-market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody--but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is $40 million; the Yankees' is $206 million. The Pirates have about as much chance as getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton. So you kind of have to laugh--the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does just that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie.
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Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
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It was astonishing how loudly one laughed at tales of gruesome things, of war’s brutality-I with the rest of them. I think at the bottom of it was a sense of the ironical contrast between the normal ways of civilian life and this hark-back to the caveman code. It made all our old philosophy of life monstrously ridiculous. It played the β€œhat trick” with the gentility of modern manners. Men who had been brought up to Christian virtues, who had prattled their little prayers at mothers’ knees, who had grown up to a love of poetry, painting, music, the gentle arts, over-sensitized to the subtleties of half-tones, delicate scales of emotion, fastidious in their choice of words, in their sense of beauty, found themselves compelled to live and act like ape-men; and it was abominably funny. They laughed at the most frightful episodes, which revealed this contrast between civilized ethics and the old beast law. The more revolting it was the more, sometimes, they shouted with laughter, especially in reminiscence, when the tale was told in the gilded salon of a French chateau, or at a mess-table. It was, I think, the laughter of mortals at the trick which had been played on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe that the whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and that mankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival by tooth and claw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion had preached this gospel and this promise. Now that ideal had broken like a china vase dashed to hard ground. The contrast between That and This was devastating. It was, in an enormous world-shaking way, like a highly dignified man in a silk hat, morning coat, creased trousers, spats, and patent boots suddenly slipping on a piece of orange-peel and sitting, all of a heap, with silk hat flying, in a filthy gutter. The war-time humor of the soul roared with mirth at the sight of all that dignity and elegance despoiled. So we laughed merrily, I remember, when a military chaplain (Eton, Christ Church, and Christian service) described how an English sergeant stood round the traverse of a German trench, in a night raid, and as the Germans came his way, thinking to escape, he cleft one skull after another with a steel-studded bludgeon a weapon which he had made with loving craftsmanship on the model of Blunderbore’s club in the pictures of a fairy-tale. So we laughed at the adventures of a young barrister (a brilliant fellow in the Oxford β€œUnion”) whose pleasure it was to creep out o’ nights into No Man’s Land and lie doggo in a shell-hole close to the enemy’s barbed wire, until presently, after an hour’s waiting or two, a German soldier would crawl out to fetch in a corpse. The English barrister lay with his rifle ready. Where there had been one corpse there were two. Each night he made a notch on his rifle three notches one night to check the number of his victims. Then he came back to breakfast in his dugout with a hearty appetite.
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Phillip Gibbs
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People, especially those in charge, rarely invite you into their offices and give freely of their time. Instead, you have to do something unique, compelling, even funny or a bit daring, to earn it. Even if you happen to be an exceptionally well-rounded person who possesses all of the scrappy qualities discussed so far, it’s still important to be prepared, dig deep, do the prep work, and think on your feet. Harry Gordon Selfridge, who founded the London-based department store Selfridges, knew the value of doing his homework. Selfridge, an American from Chicago, traveled to London in 1906 with the hope of building his β€œdream store.” He did just that in 1909, and more than a century later, his stores continue to serve customers in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Selfridges’ success and staying power is rooted in the scrappy efforts of Harry Selfridge himself, a creative marketer who exhibited β€œa revolutionary understanding of publicity and the theatre of retail,” as he is described on the Selfridges’ Web site. His department store was known for creating events to attract special clientele, engaging shoppers in a way other retailers had never done before, catering to the holidays, adapting to cultural trends, and changing with the times and political movements such as the suffragists. Selfridge was noted to have said, β€œPeople will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.” How do you get people to take notice? How do you stand out in a positive way in order to make things happen? The curiosity and imagination Selfridge employed to successfully build his retail stores can be just as valuable for you to embrace in your circumstances. Perhaps you have landed a meeting, interview, or a quick coffee date with a key decision maker at a company that has sparked your interest. To maximize the impression you’re going to make, you have to know your audience. That means you must respectfully learn what you can about the person, their industry, or the culture of their organization. In fact, it pays to become familiar not only with the person’s current position but also their background, philosophies, triumphs, failures, and major breakthroughs. With that information in hand, you are less likely to waste the precious time you have and more likely to engage in genuine and meaningful conversation.
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Terri L. Sjodin (Scrappy: A Little Book About Choosing to Play Big)