#sk

My God, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws and two times two is four are not to my liking? To be sure, I won't break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#notes-from-underground #nature

When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature. ↗

— Lisel Mueller

#nature

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#capability #confidence #optimism #possibility #skills

Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them. ↗

— Dag Hammarskjold

#ask #attend #because #become #cravings

I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do. ↗

— Billy Connolly

#atheism #belief #christianity #god #religion

There are far more reasons for death than there are for life. ↗

— Sergei Lukyanenko

#anton-gorodetsky #death #life #death

That was the trouble with formulating a system: what could you do but repeat it? ↗

— Peter Washington

#belief-system #madame-blavatsky-s-baboon #mystic #mysticism #religion

He said, one has to learn that painting well - in the academic and technical sense - comes right at the bottom of the list. I mean, you've got that ability. So have thousands. ↗

— John Fowles

#artists #creativity #painting #skill #art

Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#science #skepticism #change

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved? ↗

— Carl Sagan

#humility #science #skepticism #truth #science