Quotes, thoughts, and philosophy — a treasury of extraordinary ideas.

A collection for those who don’t just read words, but seek to truly understand them.

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Inspirational Erich Fromm quote about beginning a journey through a strange new worldCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be. Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before." Erich Fromm
Inspirational Erich Fromm quote about beginning a journey through a strange new worldCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be. Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar, and you’ll live as you’ve never lived before." Erich Fromm
Inspirational quote from They Live movie by John Carpenter about optimism in AmericaCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The feeling is definitely there. It's a new morning in America... fresh, vital. The old cynicism is gone. We have faith in our leaders. We're optimistic as to what becomes of it all. It really boils down to our ability to accept. We don't need pessimism. There are no limits." They Live
Quote about freedom and control from Neil Patrick Harris in The Matrix ResurrectionsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Right now, you’re feeling good about what you’ve done. You should. It was a victory. Bravo. Now what? You’ve come here to negotiate some kind of deal? You think you hold all the cards, because you can do whatever you want in this world. I say, go for it. Remake it. Knock yourselves out. Paint the sky with rainbows. But here’s the thing. The sheeple aren’t going anywhere. They like my world. They don’t want this sentimentality. They don’t want freedom or empowerment. They want to be controlled. They crave the comfort of certainty. And that means you two, back in your pods, unconscious and alone, just like them." Neil Patrick Harris
Inspirational quote about reality by Eduardo GaleanoCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Reality is a magic lady, sometimes very mysterious. To me she is very passionate. She is real not only when she is awake, walking down the streets, but also at night when she is dreaming or when she is having nightmares. When I am writing, I am always paying tribute to her - to that lady called Reality." Eduardo Galeano
Ivan Illich quote about choosing a life of action over consumptionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I believe that a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a lifestyle which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a lifestyle which only allows to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment. The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies." Ivan Illich
Quote by Aldous Huxley about power, control, and societyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large-scale biological and atomic war—in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds." Aldous Huxley
Inspirational courage quote by Terence McKenna about commitment, dreams, and discovering magicCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed." Terence McKenna
Education research quote by Neil PostmanCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Education Research: This is a process whereby serious educators discover knowledge that is well known to everybody, and has been for several centuries. Its principal characteristic is that no one pays any attention to it." Neil Postman
Quote by Bertrand Russell about educational systems designed to control peopleCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Educational systems have been developed not to impart genuine knowledge but to make the people docile to the will of the rulers. Without a sophisticated system of deception in schools, it would be impossible to maintain the appearance of democracy. It is not desired that ordinary citizens think for themselves. Because it is believed that people who think for themselves are difficult to handle. Only the elites are supposed to think. The rest are supposed to obey and follow their leaders, like a herd of mutton. This doctrine has corrupted all state education systems from the ground up, even in democracies." Bertrand Russell
John Taylor Gatto quote about schooling, education, and obedienceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders." John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto quote about Socrates and the professionalization of teachingCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Is it any wonder that Socrates was outraged at the accusation he took money to teach? Even then, philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, that of pre-empting the teaching function, which, in a healthy community, belongs to everyone." John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto quote image about school, conformity, and submitting to authorityCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony." John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto quote about school, motivation, and finishing what you startCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"By bells and many other similar techniques they (schools) teach that nothing is worth finishing. The gross error of this is progressive: if nothing is worth finishing then by extension nothing is worth starting either. Few children are so thick-skulled they miss the point." John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto quote about education in a changing worldCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"As society rapidly changes, individuals will have to be able to function comfortably in a world that is always in flux. Knowledge will continue to increase at a dizzying rate. This means that a content-based curriculum, with a set body of information to be imparted to students, is entirely inappropriate as a means of preparing children for their adult roles." John Taylor Gatto
Schooling and education quote by John Taylor GattoCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what’s rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate”; that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. It’s just impossible for education and schooling to be the same thing." John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto quote about basic skills, literacy, math, and the purpose of schoolingCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for 'basic skills' practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I've just taught you." John Taylor Gatto
Samuel Adams quote about freedom, knowledge, and virtueCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"For no People will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can they easily be subdued, where Knowledge is diffusd and Virtue preservd . On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own Weight, without the Aid of foreign Invaders." Samuel Adams
Quote about distortion of worldview in natural science and technology by Prof. Dr. Markus GabrielCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I truly see a massive distortion in our current worldview because natural science and technology, represented these days by virology and computer simulations, have taken the former place of religion. In short, essentially at the end of the day, engaging in unfounded metaphysics – but based on facts. Yes, the natural sciences today belong to the standard realm of ideology, and ideology today means that you can lie with facts…" Prof. Dr. Markus Gabriel
Neil Postman quote about the limits of science and the search for meaningCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"But in the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its story of our origins and of our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. To the question, "How did it all begin?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living. Moreover, the science-god has no answer to the question, "Why are we here?" and, to the question, "What moral instructions do you give us?", the science-god maintains silence." Neil Postman
Jacques Vallée quote about skepticism, science, and unexplained phenomenaCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Skeptics, who flatly deny the existence of any unexplained phenomenon in the name of 'rationalism,' are among the primary contributors to the rejection of science by the public. People are not stupid and they know very well when they have seen something out of the ordinary. When a so-called expert tells them the object must have been the moon or a mirage, he is really teaching the public that science is impotent or unwilling to pursue the study of the unknown." Jacques Vallée
Charles Wright Mills quote about social science, personal troubles, public issues, and democracyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is the political task of the social scientist — as of any liberal educator — continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work — and, as an educator, in his life as well — this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society." Charles Wright Mills
Robert Lawrence Kuhn quote about the scientific method and non-physical theoriesCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I like to distinguish between the scientific method, which is applied to all materialistic theories. The scientific method is one of observation or experimentation, repeatability, falsification, the repeatability by different techniques of different labs, or prediction and results. It's a scientific method. I say that if it's a non-physical theory, or the theory has any aspect of non-physicalism to it, it doesn't have to be all, any aspect invalidates, to some degree invalidates, the scientific method as I just described from being applicable. And I think there's a tendency in some theories that have some non-physical aspect to try to show their legitimacy by applying the scientific method... I think that's a false desire, because once you're non-physical you are invalidating, to one degree or another, the scientific method. Maybe not totally, but in some degree." Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Quote by Rupert Sheldrake about scientific materialism and scientific beliefsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"For more than 200 years, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Believers are sustained by the faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs." Rupert Sheldrake
Thomas Kuhn quote about paradigm choice, scientific revolutions, and the scientific communityCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice--there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists." Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn quote about paradigm shifts and how scientists perceive the worldCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well." Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn quote about crises, paradigms, and the rules of normal researchCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"All crises begin with the blurring of a paradigm and the consequent loosening of the rules for normal research. .. Or finally, the case that will most concern us here, a crisis may end with the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm and with the ensuing battle over its acceptance." Thomas Kuhn
John Trudell quote about human intelligence, power, and freedomCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"We have power... Our power isn’t in a political system, or a religious system, or in an economic system, or in a military system; these are authoritarian systems... they have power... but it’s not reality. The power of our intelligence, individually or collectively IS the power; this is the power that any industrial ruling class truly fears: clear coherent human beings." John Trudell
Freedom and Constitution quote graphic by Harry Edson BrowneCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions." Harry Edson Browne
Harry Edson Browne quote about freedom and the growth of governmentCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free." Harry Edson Browne
Quote by Woody Harrelson about politics, government corruption, and corporate influence in societyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Of course, we live in a completely corrupted world where every government is just a bunch of businessmen working for a bunch of bigger businessmen and none of them give a shit about the people. The sad fact is no one knows how to change it, because no one knows how to take on the corporations. So I guess we’re stuck with this system until the oil runs out." Woody Harrelson
Thomas Sowell quote about taxes as the price of civilization and political reelectionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected." Thomas Sowell
Quote by Voltairine de Cleyre about non-resistance, direct action, and political actionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through." Voltairine de Cleyre
Quote by Yuval Noah Harari about the relationship between science, power, and truthCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I mean science, as an institution, is interested in gaining the power — to gain control over the world — to be able to gain control over diseases, over the human body, over the environment, over rivers and animals and forests. You have to submit a grant to somebody to fund, it all comes down to money, in many cases. It’s also an institution- If you’re a freelance scientist, you just explore the truth. Okay. But in an institution, a university, you need money to finance so you submit a research grant, and you have to convince the authority not of the truth. You have to convince the authority that what you want to do will somehow make us more powerful. Will somehow enable us to produce a new weapon. Will somehow enable us to produce more food. Will somehow enable us to gain control over previously uncontrollable, or deadly disease. And this is really what gets the money. Of course, it means to also be truth to some extent. Does it work and who wants it?" Yuval Noah Harari
Understanding politics quote by Thomas Sowell about politicians and re-electionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind." Thomas Sowell
Insightful quote by Hans Herbert von Arnim on the political class and legitimacy of powerCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The political class is supported by the many-thousand-voiced chorus of those who are committed to it by the already accomplished or still hoped-for awarding of offices and dignities. The proof of deficiencies is made difficult at the outset by the fact that there is an abundance of thought patterns (paradigms), formulas and theories that support the basic ideological thesis of the quasi-automatic functioning of the system. They seek to close the gap between norm and reality not by improving reality, but by interpreting the norm laxly or by obfuscating reality. Serving the cause of legitimizing power despite its democratic shortcomings" Hans Herbert von Arnim
Carl Sagan quote about the importance of science and technology understanding in democracyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? ... Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along." Carl Sagan
Quote by George Orwell about the Proles and social control in 1984Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult." George Orwell
Image featuring a quote by Charles Bukowski about the frustrations of daily work lifeCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?" Charles Bukowski
Erich Fromm quote about love, success, prestige, money, and the art of lovingCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"...in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power-almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving. Could it be that only those things are considered worthy of being learned with which one can earn money or prestige, and that love, which "only" profits the soul, but is profitless in the modern sense, is a luxury we have no right to spend energy on?" Erich Fromm
Ayn Rand quote image about prosperity, progress, and free enterpriseCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way." Ayn Rand
Quote by Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun about the challenges of a moon mission in 1953Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the atmosphere and overcome the earth’s gravity and, having traveled all the way to the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety, we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three … each rocket ship would be taller than New York’s Empire State Building [almost ¼ mile high] and weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons." Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun