I tend to use a lot of quotations from great thinkers of the past. I do this because it is always the case that someone smarter has said what I want to say. You can be certain that they have said it better than I could ever hope to. Even now I find myself wanting to quote Montaigne who said “I get others to say what I cannot put so well myself, sometimes because of the weakness of my language and sometimes because of the weakness of my intellect”. Using quotes can be said to be lazy, but it is not out of laziness that I draw on those who are better with words. There are certain thinkers, such as Seneca, who I could quote hundreds of times. But instead I have decided to select quotes from ten different individuals.
- “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” –Albert Camus
2. “If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldst be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy.” –Marcus Aurelius
3. “Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.” -Seneca
4. “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” -Robert Anson Heinlein
5. “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
6. “It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.” –Diogenes of Sinope
7. “But you, though you are not yet a Socrates, ought to live as one who wished to be a Socrates.” –Epictetus
8. “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.” –Friedrich Nietzsche
9. “He who cannot lose his life, neither shall he save it.” –Carl Jung
10. “The person whose life has meaning is the one who, instead of remaining complacently in the midst of his regrets, decides to strive for perfection, however imperfectly, to express the absolute, even through his own deficiencies, to seek eternity, even if only temporarily. If he spends his life making peace in society or rendering justice to victims, he is effectively pointing, even if it is with a trembling finger, to the existence of peace or justice as such. If he spends his life raising his children, that is, in teaching them a way of life, it is because he thinks that his way of life is worthy of immortality, that it deserves to be perpetuated because it brings happiness.” –Chantal Delsol
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