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.

yoice.net is a growing treasury of quotes, ideas, and reflections — for people who want to explore, question, and be inspired.

Courage and individuality quote by Lothar ZenettCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Dare what no one dares, speak what no one says, think what no one thinks, do what no one does. If no one says yes, you should say yes; if no one says no, then say no. When everyone doubts, dare to believe; when everyone joins in, stand alone. Where everyone praises, have doubts; where everyone mocks, do not mock; where everyone is stingy, dare to give; where all is dark, bring light!" Lothar Zenett
Courage and individuality quote by Lothar ZenettCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Dare what no one dares, speak what no one says, think what no one thinks, do what no one does. If no one says yes, you should say yes; if no one says no, then say no. When everyone doubts, dare to believe; when everyone joins in, stand alone. Where everyone praises, have doubts; where everyone mocks, do not mock; where everyone is stingy, dare to give; where all is dark, bring light!" Lothar Zenett
Inspirational Erich Fromm quote about beginning a journey through a strange new worldCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"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 image attributed to C. S. LewisCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." C. S. Lewis
Do Not Let Your Fire Go Out quote by Ayn RandCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours." Ayn Rand
Epiktet quote about learning, reflection, and becoming a more thoughtful person through booksCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents." Epiktet
John Taylor Gatto quote about school and self-directed learningCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market." John Taylor Gatto
Inspirational quote by Bertrand Russell about truth, love, and toleranceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say…I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more closely and closely interconnected we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way and if we are to live together and not die together we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet." Bertrand Russell
Inspirational Leo Tolstoi quote about order, knowledge, gentleness, forgiveness, and human sympathyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure human sympathy is more valuable than ideology." Leo Tolstoi
Thomas Kuhn quote about paradigm shifts, scientific progress, and truthCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"We may... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth... The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything." Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn quote about scientific progress and the advantages of later scientific theoriesCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress." Thomas Kuhn
Quote by Yuval Noah Harari about truth, power, and societyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Truth was never the highest priority of human society. It was the highest priority of some individuals, but never of society as a whole — because society as a whole does not function on the basis of truth. If you take two of the most powerful institutions of humankind — science and the scientific community, and religion and churches — neither of them has truth as their chief value. For individuals, yes. But as institutions, no. The chief value of science is power. The chief value of religion is order — organization. Religion is all about maintaining order in society, and science is mainly about gaining power." Yuval Noah Harari
Neil Postman quote about the scientific method, learning, perspective, balance, and humilityCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry — is not even a ”subject " — but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning." Neil Postman
Quote by Mark Passio about freedom, morality, truth, tyranny, and slaveryCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"The more moral a population is, the freer it becomes. The more immoral a population is, the deeper into bondage and slavery it goes. Another way of saying this is to say that the presence of truth and morality in the lives of the people of any given society is always inversely proportional to the presence of tyranny and slavery in that society. The more truth and morality there is, the less tyranny and slavery there is. The less truth and morality there is, the more tyranny and slavery there is. That's the Law of Freedom. And many people don't want to understand that; that these two things are inextricably interwoven and connected and can never be separated from each other: the presence of truth and morality in a society and the presence of freedom or its lack in a society." Mark Passio
Quote about liberty, wisdom, and virtue by Edmund BurkeCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths." Edmund Burke
Aldous Huxley quote about liberty, permanent crisis, and government controlCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government." Aldous Huxley
C.S. Lewis quote about tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victimsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals." C.S. Lewis
Quote about freedom and control from Neil Patrick Harris in The Matrix ResurrectionsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"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
Quote by Michael A. Hoffman II about modern perceptions of freedom and controlCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"These blind slaves are told they are 'free' and 'highly educated' even as they march behind signs that would cause any medieval peasant to run screaming away from them in panic-stricken terror. The symbols that modern man embraces with the naive trust of an infant would be tantamount to billboards reading, ‘This way to your death and enslavement,’ to the understanding of the traditional peasant of antiquity" Michael A. Hoffman II
Murray Rothbard quote about liberty, political action, and rolling back the stateCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"I see no other conceivable strategy for the achievement of liberty than political action. Religious or philosophical conversion of each man and woman is simply not going to work; that strategy ignores the problem of power, the fact that millions of people have a vested interest in statism and are not likely to give it up.... Education in liberty is of course vital, but it is not enough; action must also be taken to roll back the State." Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard quote about pollution, private property, government, and technologyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Pollution and overuse of resources stem directly from the failure of government to defend private property. If property rights were to be defended adequately, we would find that here, as in other areas of our economy and society, private enterprise and modern technology would come not as a curse to mankind but as its salvation." Murray Rothbard
Harry Browne quote about school vouchers and government control of private schoolsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Democratic politicians want to solve the crisis of poor education by taking more of your money and using it to reduce classroom sizes in the government schools. Republican politicians want to solve the crisis by taking more of your money to provide vouchers to a handful of the poorest students in each area, paying for a part of the tuition expense at private schools. But before long this 'reform' would make those private schools indistinguishable from the government schools ... Vouchers are an excellent way for the government to increase control over private schools." Harry Browne
Neil Postman quote image about society's growing obsession with entertainmentCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death." Neil Postman
Charles Wright Mills quote about social science, personal troubles, public issues, and democracyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"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
Thomas Kuhn quote about political revolutions and the temporary loss of institutional governanceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"Political revolutions aim to change political institutions in ways that those institutions themselves prohibit. Their success therefore necessitates the partial relinquishment of one set of institutions in favor of another, and in the interim, society is not fully governed by institutions at all" Thomas Kuhn
Erich Fromm quote about love, human connection, and political engagementCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"If we love our fellow humans, we cannot limit our insight and our love only to others as individuals...We have to be political people, I would even say passionately involved political people, each of us in the way that best suits our own temperaments, our working lives, and our own capabilities." Erich Fromm
Thomas Sowell quote image about fairness and politicsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"'Fair' is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is 'fair,' this means that there must be some third party with power - the government - to impose its will. The road to despotism is paved with 'fairness'." Thomas Sowell
Billy Corgan quote about the exploitative nature of the music industry and lack of money in music businessCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"The problem is that there’s not enough money in music as a business model. Where in television and vis-a-vis the advertisers and movies, there’s so much money that the controlling forces still circle around the stars in the right way, stars are taken care of better in those industries. In the music industry it’s still very much this exploitative thing, it’s still very much people signing their lives away, the old deal-with-the devil stuff. That is still going on, it’s unbelievable in this day-and-age that this is still going on." Billy Corgan
Inspirational quote image featuring Jean Cocteau about comfort, luxury, fear, and discomfortCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"You have comfort. You don't have luxury. And don't tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort." Jean Cocteau
Quote by Roland Baader on the importance of the market economy in securing freedom.Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"It may be too late to avert the financial disaster that lies ahead of us, but we must at least prevent the road to financial ruin from also becoming a road to servitude. Let's talk our heads off and write our fingers to the bone, let's make ourselves outsiders and ridiculed figures if necessary, but let's fight to ensure that the basis of people's freedom, the market economy, is not presented to them as the alleged culprit and executed by the henchmen of power under the false pretext. Otherwise, it is we ourselves, our happiness and prosperity and freedom, who die with the market. Let us free ourselves from the true evil, from the fuel of presumptuous domination and destructive lies: from state counterfeit money." Roland Baader
Quote by Benjamin Constant about how paying representatives affects their motivationCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
/
"When you pay the representatives of the people, you do not arouse in them an interest in performing their functions conscientiously; rather, you interest them only in continuing to secure for themselves the exercise of those functions." Benjamin Constant