Lo !!! "No, amusing me only, I wonder if they realize how they are used?" "Not a bit. They think they are the emperors of creation." "Poor lambs." "That's not how I'd describe them." "I was thinking of animal sacrifice." "Ah. That's closer." ― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour
There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first." ― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
"If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions." ― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into." ― Jonathan Swift
They have the unique ability to listen to one story and understand another. ― Pandora Poikilos, Excuse Me, My Brains Have Stepped Out"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct." ― Franciscan friar William of Ockham
"We do not realize how deeply our starting assumptions affect the way we go about looking for and interpreting the data we collect. We should recognize that nonhuman organisms need not meet every new definition of human language, tool use, mind, or consciousness in order to have versions of their own that are worthy of serious study. We have set ourselves too much apart, grasping for definitions that will distinguish man from all other life on the planet. We must rejoin the great stream of life from whence we arose and strive to see within it the seeds of all we are and all we may become." ― Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind
"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains." ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
If anyone at my funeral says 'it's what he would have wanted', I'll kick the lid off my coffin and throttle them. Or, if I've been cremated, I'll flip the lid off the urn and become a dust storm in their eyes. Only you know what you truly want. Anything else is presumption skewed through personal agendas." ― Stewart Stafford
"Life is a time span where people mostly do not see the wood for the trees, wondering what may be the accurate answers to the numerous questions that they have assembled throughout their life, how they might prevent their perception from contradicting the reality of the world of their daily experience and how they can find out the actual standards to measure the soundness of their assumptions. Whichever way, no matter how they ponder, they have no other choice than keeping on looking for Waldo or for Wally. ("How high is too far?")" ― Erik Pevernagie
"The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious." ― André Gide, Journals, 1889-1949
