32 Quotes for 32
Quotes on ordinary life, philosophy, politics, and myth
I turned 32. Following the previous two years (30, 31), here’s a list of 32 quotes from works I’ve read this year. Inclusion of this list signals only interest, not agreement.
Let me know if you have any other lines or recommendations for me to ponder in the comments.
Rowing is a sport which promotes philosophical thinking and reasoning. It has the peace and tranquility of water as a background, there is no body contact, no face-to-face confrontation, and the noise element is almost non-existent — apart from the ripple of the bow through the water. Clearly, it has therapeutic qualities, encouraging participants to resolve differences through peaceful communication and rationalisation.
Iam Smith, Bitter Harvest
Solitary animals are capable of social learning. In laboratory tests, animals such as octopuses and red-footed tortoises, which lead solitary lives in the wild, prove themselves to be adept at learning from social cues.
Cecilia Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets
The cultural left has spent several decades attacking meritocracy because outcomes are not equal across identity groups. They have undermined national narratives and symbols in the name of multiculturalism because the past, like the present, is not equal. People must understand that the future of our civilization is at stake.
Eric Kaufmann, The Third Awokening
So consider this your final warning. I have written a book, and the only thing I use in this book is words. Everything else that happens is your fault.
Edward Teach
I was also encouraged by reading a remark by C. S. Lewis that the significant something, the something of great power and moment, which each of the basic myths seems to suggest, is communicable not only when a good ancient author tells them but even in the most atrocious modern summary.
Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans
Did the Prometheus Unbound show a reformed, changed Zeus, whose character had developed from raw young tyrant to mature constitutional ruler—rather as the government of Athens could be passing from aggressive young democracy to maturity? The fact is rather that the gods have two faces. Both are inscrutable, but whereas one is appalling, the other enables people to survive.
Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans
Pythagoras may well have been the deepest in his learning of all men. And still he claimed to recollect details of former lives, being in one a cucumber and one time a sardine.
Heraclitus, Fragments
So setting aside the systems of ail the rest, there remains a contest not between me and Torquatus, but between virtue and pleasure: a contest of which Chrysippus, a man both shrewd and careful, does not think lightly, for he considers that the entire decision about the supreme good is involved in the opposition between these things.
Cicero, On Ends
So also certain postures and certain contorted and cramped movements such as lewd or effeminate men affect, are against nature; thus in spite of the fact that this happens through some defect in the soul, nevertheless the perversion of man’s nature is outwardly exhibited in the body
Cicero, On Ends
Shall I call it a natural instinct or in some sense a delusion whereby whenever we cast our eyes on the spots at which, as we have been told, men worthy of a place in history passed much of their time, we are then more excited than we are in listening to a description of their achievements, or in reading some of their works? I for instance feel at this moment such excitement. I call to mind Plato, who, so we have been told, was the first to use this place habitually for debate ; and his little garden, which lies quite near us, not only brings him back to my recollection, but seems to place the very man before my eyes.
Cicero, On Ends
I had fun and learned a lot from revisiting On Ends with
Michael
for
(I, II, III, IV,V)Concerning this, it should be noted that men must be either caressed or wiped out; because they will avenge minor injuries, but cannot do so for grave ones. Any harm done to a man must be of the kind that removes any fear of revenge.
Machiavelli, The Prince
Therefore, you must know that there are two modes of fighting: one in accordance with the laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts. But because the first, in many cases, is not sufficient, it becomes necessary to have recourse to the second: therefore, a prince must know how to make good use of the natures of both the beast and the man.
Machiavelli, The Prince
When Octavian won his war against Pompey, he had celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday. Now he addressed the Senate and people of Rome, assembled around him outside the city gates, to announce the end of the civil war and the restoration of the old order, which would be ushered in as soon as Antony returned from the Parthian campaign.
Jochen Bleicken and Anthea Bell, Augustus
Her creature-brain was too weak for her phone: it stripped it of all its soul-like qualities. Sight: screen: pleasure.
Matthew Gasda, The Sleepers
He opened Twitter. Twitter made his brain go haywire. It felt amazing.
Matthew Gasda, The Sleepers
Remember: there are no small parts, only small actors.
Stanislavski
“A lot of people say that poetry is useless.” “They’re afraid of useless things. Everything has to have a purpose. They hate pure creation, they’re in love with corporations. They’re afraid of solitude. They don’t know how to be alone.”
Alejandro Zambra and Megan McDowell, Chilean Poet
You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.
Nabakov, Lolita
You think you’re going to be exhausted because you didn’t get enough sleep before the race. It’s really the other way around. The reason you can’t sleep is because you’re so full of energy. Just go with it.
Randall Collins, Why Napoleon Never Slept
You can listen to music any time on your earphones, but if you do this during daily life when everyone else is doing something different, it just takes you apart rather than towards other people.
Randall Collins, Why Napoleon Never Slept
I wrote about Randall Collins’s work on energy here:
I remember hearing you say once that he who did not flatter the gods when he was at a loss, but rather remembered them especially when he was faring very well, would probably be more effective in action with gods, just as also with human beings.
Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus
A cheerful outlook was placed in the scales as an argument and proved to be heavier than reasonableness; for the state of mind was interpreted in a superstitious manner as the action of a god who promises success; and who, by this argument, lets his reason speak as the highest reasonableness. Now, let the consequences of such a prejudice be considered when shrewd men, thirsting for power, availed themselves of it—and still do so! “Bring about the right state of mind!”—in this way you can do without all arguments and overcome every objection!
Nietzsche, Daybreak
Trust in your feelings!” But feelings comprise nothing final, original; feelings are based upon the judgments and valuations which are transmitted to us in the shape of feelings (inclinations, dislikes). The inspiration which springs from a feeling is the grandchild of a judgment—often an erroneous judgment!—and certainly not one's own judgment!
Nietzsche, Daybreak
We laugh at a man who, stepping out of his room at the very minute when the sun is rising, says, “It is my will that the sun shall rise”; or at him who, unable to stop a wheel, says, “I wish it to roll”; or, again, at him who, thrown in a wrestling match, says, “Here I lie, but here I wish to lie.” But, joking apart, do we not act like one of these three persons whenever we use the expression “I wish”?
Nietzsche, Daybreak
You would wish to be responsible for everything except your dreams! What miserable weakness, what lack of logical courage! Nothing contains more of your own work than your dreams! Nothing belongs to you so much! Substance, form, duration, actor, spectator—in these comedies you act as your complete selves!
Nietzsche, Daybreak
You're not a good person until you make good choices. Until then you are chaos.
Alone, My Fiancee Is Pushing Me Away and I've Lost Hope
We typically shape new relations as modest variations on prior relations. So if we had traumatic prior relations, this makes us especially likely to create the conditions for new similar trauma.
Robin Hanson, Reenacting Trauma
This is a Substack piece:
The Romans believed that the person allowed excessive privacy would lose all self-control and become shameless, like the old emperor Tiberius on Capri.
Carlin Barton, Roman Honor
I so regretted not studying Greek and had to teach myself later. How could I be a philosopher and Greekless.
Roger Scruton, Conversations With Roger Scruton
This is the secret which civilization has guarded: that power and influence come through the acquisition of useless knowledge.
Roger Scruton, Against the Tide
I never really know what to make of Nietzsche because one sentence will be profound and the next one will be shallow and even silly. In my view, he didn’t grow up at all.
Roger Scruton, Conversations With Roger Scruton
An arm and a leg? Is it not remarkable that body parts still continue to function as measures of value in everyday speech? There is, of course, a threat in measuring value in arms and legs, a threat that they or something like them will also be excised as the means of payment.
William Ian Miller, Eye for an Eye
Heads up! I dont believe that is a heraclitus fragment