Original Quotes

“Every once and awhile God will allow you to do something stupid and escape the experience uninjured. But remember, that is the exception, not the rule.” 

“Raymond Inmon said that angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. I never much cared for walking as a distraction. I always preferred the mind-numbing iron-weights and punching bag. But then my muses aren’t angels. They are demons. And they’re no good at polite conversation.” 

“Physics taught us long ago that for every action there is a reaction. Why is it then that people are so surprised when their actions have consequences?” 

“Being conservative in the routine allows for excess on the occasion.” 

“Why is it that people go to such great lengths to demonstrate their cleverness when there is so much to be gained by concealing it?” 

“The only way to kill an idea is to replace it with another one. Unfortunately, progress is not always linear and new ideas are not always better than the old ones.” 

“Beliefs are like lovers; they cannot be won over with data or facts, no matter how convincing. Like courtship, they must be persuaded with gentle, patient words. Once you have made an adversary of one you would convince, you have lost your opportunity.” 

“What is aptitude without desire? It may be easier to kill a boar with a rifle than a knife, but to a boar, a hungry man with a knife is a much greater threat than a contented man with a rifle.” 

“Worries and regrets are life-sucking vampires of our own machination. Immortal and unyielding, they return nightly to torment their victims, feeding off our anxiety and depriving us of sleep.” 

“Reality, like the walls of a building, are held up by a relatively few girders. The façade of two buildings, like an individual’s perception of reality, may be completely different, though they be held aloft by the same pillars of truth.” 

“If you lean on a boulder, it will not budge. To move it, you must dig-in your heels and push. So it is with your natural abilities. You cannot expect to improve by leaning on the attributes with which God has endowed you.” 

“Accepting an idea is a form of incarnation since, once accepted, they take on a life of their own. And like all living things, ideas cherish their lives above all else; they will do anything to preserve themselves, not the least of which is bending the will of wise and learned men.” 

“Plato, Sigmund Freud, Jean Paul Sartre. All were visionaries that diagnosing with precision the quandaries, complications and problems of human existence. And yet despite their efforts, humanity suffers the same afflictions as we always have. Our doctors, it seems, have diagnosed a disease for which there is no cure and it is the very thing that makes us human; it is the ‘human condition.’” 

“How stupid does one have to be to assume they are always the smartest person in the room?” 

“The key to living in confidence is to selectively listen to only those opinions that reinforce your personal biases.” 

Fact: my cat has a highly-developed sense of self preservation. Fact: the average life expectancy of an out-door cat is a fraction of that of an indoor cat. Fact: my cat is aware that there are dangers outside. Question: why is my cat so damn anxious to get outside? 

“If you offer a tiger nothing but lettuce, do not be surprised when he eats your neighbor!” 

“His flash of brilliance was a distant bolt of lightning in a dark storm of confusion.” 

“I have a tremendous gift for precognizant retrospective; I can imagine precisely how bad my future decisions will seem.” 

“It is difficult to demonstrate moral courage when one is not convinced that one is acting morally.” 

“Though my eyes are cast ever upwards towards the summit, my feet are planted in the valley below and have no skill for climbing. Forever will I toil in the shadows of my ambitions.” 

“It is a curious thing that through our good intentions we can so champion a just cause that the harm done in our reckless pursuit far outweighs the intended good.” 

“So potent is human desire that in championing our noble causes we oft become instruments of evil, casting aside and trampling all other good intentions in our single-minded quests.” 

“Vanity is something of a contradiction since those who practice it, being overly concerned with their appearance and manners, never feel adequate and are thus oblivious to the ostentatious display they present to the world.” 

“People often keep themselves from attaining the summits of their aspirations once responsibility unmasks their fear of heights.” 

“Every so often we experience a stroke of genius so profound that it clearly illuminates the boundaries of our own limitations. What follows is despair; our limitations become a jail and our genius a window to a world we can never touch.” 

“Trying to be something that is contrary to your true nature is like painting your house with watercolors. The first challenge, like the first rain, will quickly remove the faux façade.” 

“Wise men are double-cursed, for they have enough intelligence to recognize perfection, yet not enough to ever match it.” 

“Mankind was not engineered for a life of leisure; the soul as well as the body atrophies from lack of exertion. Only when one is forced to struggle does one truly thrive.” 

“Some people’s reality is more accurate than others.” 

“Perspective is not important. It is paramount.” 

“Be careful with assumptions. They are like shadows, changing with perspective and disappearing entirely when light is shined upon them.” 

“As in science, so too in love does the uncertainty principle apply. For one cannot know passion and reason at the same time. To have more of one is to have less of the other.” 

“Religious stories are like Schrodinger’s Cat – they exist in a super positional state of possible wisdom until forced by an interpreter to take specific meaning.” 

“Arguing with an atheist that God exists – or arguing with a believer that He does not – is like trying to convince someone their favorite color should be something other that whatever it is.” 

“It is said that the path to salvation is a narrow one. Perhaps that is because our paths sometimes take us to dark places. How can one hope to remain pure when every step towards salvation is a sin?” 

"No matter how tall we build our ivory towers, we never fail to install them with the opaque windows of bureaucracy." 

“Bureaucracy is like friction: it takes useful energy and turns it into frustration!” 

“In nothing is seen more clearly the ignorance and danger of mob mentality than in ideas that have become ‘conventional wisdom’.” 

“Politicians are all afflicted with an unusual condition of color-blindness; it is a malady that causes them to confuse black for white and white for black, so long as the confusion is to their advantage.” 

“For a politician the universe is a simple thing; it consists of but two actions: their own successes and the failures of others. Nothing else exists. For once a politician admits to the success of another or to his own failure, he is promptly voted out of office and ceases to be a politician!” 

“Why do people insist on painting their political views as either black or white when there is an entire spectrum of colors between the two? It is as if everyone dwelling in the northern hemisphere claimed to inhabit only the North Pole, and everyone in the southern hemisphere claimed to reside exclusively at the South Pole.” 

“Once you engage in a debate of ideas with someone of opposing views, your ideas cease to be your own; they realign themselves not according to your beliefs, but according to the antithesis of your opponent’s.”