An Assignment

Life lessons? Helpful sayings? That's vague. It can be argued that anything you say is based on lessons from life, and that any phrase can be helpful to another depending on context. Also, I disapprove of any emphasis on action based on moralism or common sense rather than choice, because of the resulting adherence to templates of social ideality. Anyway, here are a few quotes that come to mind:


"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Faith: not wanting to know what is true." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one which comes after it." - George Orwell

"Genius is eternal patience." - Michelangelo

"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence." - Mark Twain

"A man is what he thinks about all day long." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." - H.G. Wells

"Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments." - Julius Sextus Frontinus, 10 A.D.

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." - Isaac Asimov

"Individuals who discover new ways of doing things by themselves can be as proficient, or indeed, exceed the abilities of those who purchase the insight of others through education." - Syd Mead

"I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands, to release this energy that fuels the stars, to let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles, to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power, and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles - this, what you might call technical arrogance, that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds." - Freeman Dyson

"[The] imagination of the artist dwells enthroned in his own recess [and] must be incomprehensible as from darkness." - J.M.W. Turner

"Learning comes from admitting ignorance. A passion for understanding comes from wanting to understand what you don't." - Richard Saul Wurman