#provoking

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify? ↗

— Milan Kundera

#mystery #thought-provoking #inspirational

And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn? ↗

— Ann Druyan

#carl-sagan #inspirational #science #theology #thought-provoking

I shake my head. I can't imagine living the way he does-always keeping track of who gave me what and what I should give them in return, incapable of love or loyalty or forgiveness, a one-eyed man with a knife in hand, looking fr someone else's eye to poke out. That isn't life. It's some paler version of life. I wonder where he learned if from. p. 395 ↗

— Veronica Roth

#forgiveness

I'm not interested in provoking people, but only in trying to be consoling. ↗

— Martin Kippenberger

#i #interested #not interested #only #people

You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#thought-provoking #intelligence

Mostly I have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. I am still looking for the beauty in that. ↗

— Maggie Nelson

#loneliness #sadness #thought-provoking #beauty

The party in Alobar’s head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#life #thought-provoking #inspirational

But was that not the task you set me? To defend the helpless against the strong?" "Indeed it was Master Weed. But who is to say who is helpless, and who is strong?" .........."If you seek the power to alter fate, you must also bear responsibility for the consequences. For you cannot change the fate of only one being; all fates are intertwined." "I performed the task," I protest. "I did what you bid me do." "You defended the weak from the strong." Larkspur speaks as if from far away. "But who will defend these poor weak infants against you!? ↗

— Maryrose Wood

#change

Some men think because they're afraid to do. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#thought-provoking #courage

When we are babies...we need an authoritative figure to guide and take care of us. We ask no questions about that authority and imagine that the small circumference of family life is the limit of the universe...As we mature, our horizon expands and we begin to question. This continues until we either throw over our creators--our parents--for good and take their place as the creative force in our lives or find replacements for them because the terror and responsibility are too great. People go one way or the other, and this accounts for all of the great personal and political divides throughout history. ↗

— Charlotte Rogan

#family