#cal

They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#alexandria #caliph #intolerance #library #men

Look, we are getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems... Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine? ↗

— John le Carré

#logical-thinking #men

I became skilled at covering my tracks, filling in the blanks. Sometimes the blanks were never filled. At other times, I would recall places where I had been or things I had done as if from a dream, which made the playback of my father and other men abusing me seem I even less real, fantasies conjured up from my imagination I not my memory. Perhaps somebody else’s memory. I didn’t think of myself as having mental-health problems. You don’t at sixteen. I thought of myself as being special, highly strung, moody. ↗

— Alice Jamieson

#amnesia #dissociation #dissociative #dissociative-identity-disorder #incest

It is surprising how many great men started out as horse thieves. ↗

— P.J. Sullivan

#greatness #historical #history #horses #men

I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. ↗

— Calvin Coolidge

#money

Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago. ↗

— Will Rogers

#government #money

They can talk shit about each other behind the others' backs, but when it comes down to it, money is the one true race and everyone down here is the color of greenbacks and as tall as mountains. ↗

— Richard Kadrey

#greed #money #pride #relationships #society

When someone loves you so much that He dies for you, you can trust that any rewards He promises are going to be good. ↗

— David Servant

#hell #money #radical #reward #stewardship

We go to school so that when we grow up we can make lots of money, and we make lots of money so we can provide for our children, and we have children to provide for our retirement (because we don’t have any money left). ↗

— R.M. ArceJaeger

#philosophical #money

The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them. ↗

— Aleister Crowley

#thelema #philosophical