The way we see the problem is the problem.
Stephen Quotations
We found 68 matching quotations.
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.
Music is expression of harmony in sound. Love is the expression of harmony in life.
Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.
I want to know the truth, however perverted that may sound.
Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
You cannot condemn a man for what may only be a figment of your own imagination.
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.
It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
My goal is simple. It is the complete understanding of the Universe.
He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and the moon were about to clash, many people would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.
Fix this sentence: He put the horse before the cart.
Vision looks inward and becomes duty.Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration.Vision looks upward and becomes faith.
The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
There are three things men can do with women love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature.
For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imaginations, we learned to talk.
The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.
It may be that those who do most, dream most.
The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
There is only one way to hurt someone who has lost everything -- give him back something broken.
I chose and my word was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken ? the choosing was not. Just keep moving on...
Most people tire of a lecture in 10 minutes clever people can do it in 5. Sensible people never go to lectures at all.
It matters if you just don't give up.
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window.
Our goal can only be reached through a vehicle of a pain, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.
Life is not lost by dying life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
I am a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.
The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
Lord Ronald said nothing he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
God not only plays dice, he throws them in the corner where you can't see them.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
You can delegate authority, but not responsibility.
Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
I detest life-insurance agents they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
Every exaggeration of the truth once detected by others destroys our credibility and makes all that we do and say suspect.
Honesty rare as a man without self-pity, kinders as large and plain as a prairie wind.
There is a schizophrenic nature in modern politics. A leader is expected to have a religious faith but he is not supposed to let it influence him in his duties. Somehow, the truths that determine everything else about his existence are not allowed to influence how he conducts himself in public life. Not only that, his principles are usually considered so personal that the public is not even allowed to know for certain what they are. This passes for noble statecraft in our time. It was once thought cowardice.
Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.
If there is no gardener there is no garden.
During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.
An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.
Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered.
Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry.
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
You can't deny laughter when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to go out and kill something.