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.

Inspirational quotes by Leonardo da Vinci on art, science, and lifeCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. Learning never exhausts the mind. Art is never finished, only abandoned. Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. Water is the driving force of all nature.”" Leonardo da Vinci
Inspirational quote by Mark Twain about exploring, dreaming, and discoveringCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain
Inspirational quotes by Leonardo da Vinci on art, science, and lifeCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. Learning never exhausts the mind. Art is never finished, only abandoned. Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. Water is the driving force of all nature.”" Leonardo da Vinci
Inspirational quote by Mark Twain about exploring, dreaming, and discoveringCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain
Inspirational Ivan Illich quote about hope, peace, joy, and building a better world togetherCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"We have failed...through our lack of responsible awareness...and thus added to suffering around the world. All of us are cripples-some physically, some mentally, some emotionally. We must, therefore, strive cooperatively to create a new world. There is no time left for destruction, for hatred, for anger. We must build, in hope and joy and celebration." Ivan Illich
Inspirational social change quote image attributed to Ivan IllichCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"We can only live the changes we wish to see: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create. We must break the obsolete social and economic systems that divide the world between the over-privileged and the under-privileged. Each of us, whether government leader or protester, business executive or worker, professor or student, share a common guilt." Ivan Illich
Inspirational Russell Simmons quote image about work and successCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It's all about the work. Nothing is going to fall into your lap. If you want to be a lawyer, see yourself as a lawyer, go to the library and start learning the law. If you want to be a rapper, start rapping and get out there. Live your life as if you already are where you want to be." Russell Simmons
Terence McKenna quote about memory, anticipated futures, and the richness of the present momentCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Your memories are eroding away. The futures you anticipate, will mostly not come to pass, and the real richness is in the moment. And it's not necessarily some kind of 'Be Here Now' feel-good thing because it doesn't always feel good. But it always feels. It is a domain of feeling. It's primary." Terence McKenna
Allan Bloom quote about rock music and its influence on childrenCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later." Allan Bloom
Ivan Illich quote about school dividing life into segments and providing custodial careCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them." Ivan Illich
Neil Postman quote about technology, education, religion, politics, and societyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it." Neil Postman
Inspirational quote image about markets, freedom, and individual self-interest by Harry BrowneCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The marketplace is a wondrous institution. It harnesses the self-interest of each of us and puts it to work for the benefit of all. And it does so without intruding upon our desires, our privacy, or our freedom. It is regulation by reality, not by coercion." Harry Browne
Freedom and self-ownership quote image featuring Murray RothbardCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his "free will." He also discovers the natural fact of his mind's command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self." Murray Rothbard
Inspirational quote by Walt Whitman about resisting and maintaining libertyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"To the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little, once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty." Walt Whitman
Harry Browne quote about big government and political powerCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn't much matter who controls it, because it can't do you much harm." Harry Browne
Quote image featuring Neil Postman's reflections on Orwell, Huxley, information, truth, and controlCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance." Neil Postman
Noam Chomsky quote about inequality and the impact of the Occupy movementCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant." Noam Chomsky
Thomas Sowell quote about the right kinds of people in governmentCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The kinds of people we need in government are precisely the kinds of people who are most reluctant to go into government -- people who understand the inherent dangers of power and feel a distaste for using it, but who may do so for a few years as a civic duty. The worst kind of people to have in government are those who see it as a golden opportunity to impose their own superior wisdom and virtue on others." Thomas Sowell
Milton Friedman quote about creating a political climate that encourages the right actionsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office." Milton Friedman
Quote by Yuval Noah Harari about truth, power, and societyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"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
James M. Buchanan quote about government functions, public services, and optimal government sizeCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"You have to have a government to provide you with legal order, with stability, enforcement of property rights, enforcement of contracts, definition of rules and regulations - the rules of the game, so to speak - and to provide certain shared goods and services, public services. Several people have tried to estimate this and they come out with figures like government spending at 15% of GDP. In the modern world it has gone to 40% or above. So we are way beyond the optimal, and that is easier to say than what the optimum is." James M. Buchanan
Chris Hedges quote about power, political accountability, and activismCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and usually venal. The question is how do we make those in power frightened of us and not be seduced by formal political processes." Chris Hedges
Walter Lippmann quote about the role of statesmanship and understanding public interestsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the na?ve self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want." Walter Lippmann
Thomas Sowell quote about the political left and the use of state powerCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"What the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others." Thomas Sowell
Quote by Roland Baader on the importance of the market economy in securing freedom.Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"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
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"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
Quote by Donald Trump about Elon Musk's subsidized projectsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocketships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said, “drop to your knees and beg,” and he would have done it…" Donald Trump
Quote by Rose Wilder Lane about the nature of State, Government, and freedomCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The picture of the economic revolution as the final step to freedom was false as soon as I asked myself that question. For, in actual fact, The State, The Government, cannot exist. They are abstract concepts, useful enough in their place, as the theory of minus numbers is useful in mathematics. In actual living experience, however, it is impossible to subtract anything from nothing; when a purse is empty, it is empty, it cannot contain a minus ten dollars. On this same plane of actuality, no State, no Government, exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men." Rose Wilder Lane
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
Thomas Sowell quote about the welfare system and motivationCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away." Thomas Sowell
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
Quote about national currency control and sovereignty by William Lyon Mackenzie KingCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile." William Lyon Mackenzie King