Ursula K. Le Guin

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

When true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.

All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don't, our lives get made up for us by other people.

Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby.

To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.

I know that to clinch a point is to close it. To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that’s the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy?

Socrates

["The Socratic Dialogues are a series of dialogues written by Plato and Xenophon in the form of discussions between Socrates and other persons of his time, or as discussions between Socrates' followers over his concepts."]

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing, for when I don't know what justice is, I'll hardly know whether it is a kind of virtue or not, or whether a person who has it is happy or unhappy.

By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

He is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. 

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.  

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.  

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

Emile Zola

I am an artist... I am here to live out loud.

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity.

If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.

If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.

If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.

I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.

As they have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so . . .

My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the spectre of the innocent man, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime he did not commit.

The honor of a man whose life is spotless is being vilely attacked: A society that sinks to that level has fallen into decay.

Marquis de Sade 

It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure.

All universal moral principles are idle fancies.  

Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes.

Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.

Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates.

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination.

Happiness lies neither in vice nor in virtue; but in the manner we appreciate the one and the other, and the choice we make pursuant to our individual organization.

I've already told you: the only way to a woman's heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.  

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.

Humphry Davy

The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.

In the present state of our knowledge, it would be useless to attempt to speculate on the remote cause of the electrical energy... its relation to chemical affinity is, however, sufficiently evident. May it not be identical with it, and an essential property of matter?

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort.

The art galleries of Paris contain the finest collection of frames I ever saw.

The most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by my failures.

When two elements combine and form more than one compound, the masses of one element that react with a fixed mass of the other are in the ratio of small whole numbers.

Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
I live here, too.

Francis Crick  

Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the triplets.

Do codons overlap? In other words, as we read along the genetic message do we find a base which is a member of two or more codons? It now seems fairly certain that codons do not overlap.

For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few.

How is the base sequence, divided into codons? There is nothing in the backbone of the nucleic acid, which is perfectly regular, to show us how to group the bases into codons.

It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion is less secure than our other deductions about the general nature of the genetic code.

Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is most unlikely to be a complete artefact and is very probably closely related to genuine protein synthesis.

The balance of evidence both from the cell-free system and from the study of mutation, suggests that this does not occur at random, and that triplets coding the same amino acid may well be rather similar.

The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority.

This seems highly likely, especially as it has been shown that in several systems mutations affecting the same amino acid are extremely near together on the genetic map.

Emily Dickinson

If I can stop one heart from breaking I shall not live in vain . . .

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes. The Nerves sit ceremonious, like tombs.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

My friends are my estate.

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

Old age comes on suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Saying nothing... sometimes says the most.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.

Johannes Kepler

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh enrichment.

There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move.

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel.

I used to measure the Heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. Although my mind was heaven-bound, the shadow of my body lies here.

Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.

Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God.

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason.

Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.

What experience and history teach is this — that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.

What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand, and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of spirit as well as the universe of nature.

The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself — whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance — is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality — of what is essentially and ultimately true and real — of spirit as the true and essential being.

The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.

Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.