বাঙালি অতীশ লঙ্ঘিল গিরি তুষারে ভয়ংকর, জ্বালিল জ্ঞানের দীপ তিব্বতে বাঙালি দীপংকর। – সত্যেন্দ্রনাথ দত্ত
In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don’t know so that we can keep the future open.
Small things are the measure of the man.
– Mark C. Taylor, in an article about Derrida
“If you see fraud and don’t shout fraud, you are a fraud”. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“If you’re afraid – don’t do it, – if you’re doing it – don’t be afraid!” ― Genghis Khan
“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.” – Baltasar Gracian
“My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.” – David Lynch
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ” ― Paulo Freire
“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.” ― Jack London
“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. – Rainer Maria Rilke
“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else” ― Umberto Eco
“One has to be a bad fellow, transcend the rules, sacrifice oneself, betray, and behave like the artist who buys paints with his wife’s household money, or burns the furniture to warm the room for his model. Without such criminality there is no real achievement.” -Sigmund Freud
“In all periods and times when there were no prophets, there were individuals to whom Allah spoke in whispers through their conscience and intellect.” – Ali Ibn Abu-Talib
“Once you label me you negate me.”― Søren Kierkegaard
“If you want to be loathsome to God, just run with the herd.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.” – Charlie Munger
I’m right, and you’re smart, and sooner or later you’ll see I’m right. – Charlie Munger
“The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.” – Tara Ploughman
“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible. ― Richard Feynman
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” – Elon Musk
“The greatest achievement is selflessness.’
‘The greatest worth is self-mastery.’
‘The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.’
‘The greatest precept is continual awareness.’
‘The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.’
‘The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.’
‘The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.’
‘The greatest generosity is non-attachment.’
‘The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.’
‘The greatest patience is humility.’
‘The greatest effort is not concerned with results.’
‘The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.’
‘The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.’
– Atish Dipankar Srijan (980-1053)
I made a prosperous voyage when I was shipwrecked. – Zeno of Citium
“If someone visits a living man and gets nothing from him to eat, it is as if he had visited the dead.” : a hadith written in Chisti khanqah kitchen.
জ্ঞাণ আহরণ ও বিতরণ পুরুষজন্মের ঋষিঋণ। (মহাভারত)।
“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” ― John Maynard Keynes
“The game taught me the game. And it didn’t spare me rod while teaching.” -Jesse Livermore
Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man. – David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical…for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
“There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”
David Foster Wallace