“The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.”
2. “They
made me see that the world was beautiful if you were beautiful, and that you
couldn't get unless you gave. And you had to give without wanting to get.”
3. “In
war, our elders may give the orders...but it is the young who have to fight.”
4. “The
destiny of man is to unite, not to divide. If you keep on dividing you end up
as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate trees.”
5. “We
cannot build the future by avenging the past.”
6. “I
have suddenly discovered that the central theme of Morte d’Arthur is to find an
antidote to war.”
7. “Is
there anything more terrible than perpetual motion, than doing and doing and
doing, without a reason, without a consciousness, without a change, without an
end?”
8. “The
most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch
someone else do it wrong without comment.”
9. “Only
fools want to be great.”
10. “Learn
why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can
never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust,
and never dream of regretting.”
11. “Those
who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.”
12. “We
find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves,
and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The
nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among
them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows
himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry,
mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners
of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery,
malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even
over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It
is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy,
then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will
become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different,
except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the
results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same
under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in
a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism
he will be liquidated.”
13. “Education
is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.”
14. “If
people reach perfection they vanish, you know.”
