#sm

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#afterlife #mortality #life

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#cosmos #dna #sense-of-wonder #stars #wonder

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. ↗

— Mark Twain

#atheism #bible #christianity #mythology #truth

What day is it?" It's today," squeaked Piglet. My favorite day," said Pooh. ↗

— A.A. Milne

#optimism #day

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#christianity #pacifism #religion #christianity

Don’t take this the wrong way, but you smell like Magnus. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#smelling-like-magnus #wrong

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion. ↗

— Robert Burns

#error #foolishness #perception #sense-of-self #perception

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#state

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. ↗

— John F. Kennedy

#dogmatism #comfort

Life itself has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become displaced, fantastic, familiar-unfamiliar. This is why it is so logical for literature today to be drawn to the fantastic plot, or to the amalgam of reality and fantasy. ("The New Russian Prose") ↗

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

#fantasy #literature #realism #art