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.

Nikola Tesla quote about creativity, imagination, and inventionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain." Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla quote about creativity, imagination, and inventionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain." Nikola Tesla
Quote image attributed to Alexander von Humboldt about making one's own fortuneCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is a proverbial expression that every man is the maker of his own fortune, and we usually regard it as implying that every man by his folly or wisdom prepares good or evil for himself. But we may view it in another light, namely, that we may so accommodate ourselves to the dispositions of Providence as to be happy in our lot, whatever may be its privations." Alexander von Humboldt
Ayn Rand quote about happiness, moral purpose, and moral integrityCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." Ayn Rand
Novak Djokovic quote about determination, compassion, and respect in sportsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is my goal to win every time I play. But on the other hand, I also seek a balance of compassion and respect for the other players. I understand that everyone goes through difficult times, either mentally or physically, to cope with their life, to live the sport." Novak Djokovic
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
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
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
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
Quote about the arrogance and smugness caused by college degrees by ZUBYCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"One of the biggest problems with college degrees is they've made a lot of people think they are much smarter than they truly are. This arrogance and smugness makes them dumber because they think they're too smart to receive new information from anybody with fewer 'credentials'." ZUBY
Quote by Frank Zappa on schools stifling creativity and critical thoughtCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools* do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don’t give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for military-industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you’re just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you’re gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you’re gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headaches…make you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out." Frank Zappa
John Taylor Gatto quote image about education, freedom, independence, and childrenCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free." John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto quote about compulsory schooling and the purpose of educationCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest." John Taylor Gatto
Neil Postman quote criticizing textbooks as harmful to education and student learningCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Textbooks, it seems to me, are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and trivial learning. They may save the teacher some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on the minds of students is a blight and a curse." Neil Postman
Neil Postman quote about television, education, sequence, continuity, and thoughtCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away wtih the idea of sequenece and continuity in education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity have anything to do with thought itself." Neil Postman
Thomas Sowell quote about young people and sweeping judgmentsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience." Thomas Sowell
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 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
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
Paul Feyerabend quote about the academic world and individual freedomCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Yes, the academic world is screwed up, and there is nothing you can do about it. But don't worry about that. Just do what you want. If you know what you want to do and advocate for it, no one will put any energy into stopping you." Paul Feyerabend
Ludwig von Mises quote about government, liberty, and economic freedomCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty. Government is a guarantor of liberty and is compatible with liberty only if its range is adequately restricted to the preservation of economic freedom. Where there is no market economy, the best-intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter." Ludwig von Mises
Albert Jay Nock quote about humanity, submission, oppression, and freedomCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"According to my observations, mankind are among the most easily tamable and domesticable of all creatures in the animal world. They are readily reducible to submission, so readily conditionable (to coin a word) as to exhibit an almost incredibly enduring patience under restraint and oppression of the most flagrant character. So far are they from displaying any overweening love of freedom that they show a singular contentment with a condition of servitorship, often showing a curious canine pride in it, and again often simply unaware that they are existing in that condition." Albert Jay Nock
Ludwig von Mises quote image about freedom and totalitarianismCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech." Ludwig von Mises
Quote image featuring Ludwig von Mises on economic freedom and fundamental rights.Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial-that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions." Ludwig von Mises
Karl Jaspers quote about party oligarchy and hidden power in German federal electionsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Every four years it elects the Bundestag. The lists or persons submitted to it by the parties are already elected beforehand by the parties. The process of this hidden preliminary election, which is the actual election, is convoluted; the names for the constituency lists and the state lists are not drawn up in the same way. But it is always the party committees, never the people, who would be involved in this decisive beginning. One must be a party member in order to participate somewhere in this election and to be able to be set up. Even those who are party members, as such, have little effect in the nominations. The decisive factor is the party hierarchy and bureaucracy.[...] Even the elections are not really elections, but acclamations to the party oligarchy. [....] The parties, which should by no means be the state, make themselves, withdrawn from the life of the people, the state [....] The governance of the state is in the hands of the party oligarchy [....] Their position, not limited by any tension to other power, seduces [....] the parties to want to occupy the seats by their own people. This is the reward for party work, the spoils of victory after the electoral battle [....]" Karl Jaspers
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 Cardinal John Murphy Farley about conflict between international capital and ruling dynastiesCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The war that is being prepared will be a battle between international capital and the ruling dynasties. Capital wishes to have no one over it, knows no God or Lord, and wishes to have all states ruled as a great banking business. Their profit shall become the sole guide of the rulers ... Business ... one and only." Kardinal John Murphy Farley
Harry Browne quote about income tax, family values, education, and personal choiceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The best thing we can do for family values is to repeal the income tax. Then families will have the resources they need to implement their own values - and not those of the politicians. With the income tax gone, families will no longer be forced to have two breadwinners by necessity. Children will be raised better, family values will predominate, and crime will diminish. If your local school indoctrinates your child with values that are alien to you, you'll have the money to buy a private education." Harry Browne
Eduardo Galeano quote about the influence and power of bankersCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show." Eduardo Galeano
Ivan Illich quote image about service being mistaken for valueCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The pupil's imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work." Ivan Illich