#ions

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people. ↗

— Patricia Highsmith

#functions #i #imagination #much #people

Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone. ↗

— Lance Armstrong

#companionship #competition #cooperation #success #imagination

if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones. ↗

— Norton Juster

#fantasy #fiction #humor #illusions #imaginary

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." [What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck, Saturday Evening Post, 26 October 1929 (p. 17)] ↗

— Albert Einstein

#inspiration #knowledge #limitations #imagination

We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know. ↗

— Joan Didion

#imagination

As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications. ↗

— Dave Parnas

#applications #been #failed #real #repeatedly

There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault. ↗

— John Gower

#clichés #deceit #delusion #discrimination #double-standards

We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#anxiety #desire #happiness #materialism #possessions

Their books are also different. Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#borges #counterbook #imaginable-permutations #orbis-tertius #tlön

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil. ↗

— William Cullen Bryant

#justice #labor #rights #unions #imagination