Echoes

“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.”

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.”

“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.”

“Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.”

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”

“Ich bin ein Suchender gewesen und bin es noch, aber ich suche nicht mehr auf den Sternen und in den Büchern; ich beginne die Lehren zu hören, die mein Blut in mir rauscht.”

“I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.”

“Die Einsamkeit zeitigt das Originale, das gewagt und befremdend Schöne, das Gedicht. Die Einsamkeit zeitigt aber auch das Verkehrte, das Unverhältnismäßige, das Absurde und das Unerlaubte.”

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous — to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”

“Não sou nada. Nunca serei nada. Não posso querer ser nada. À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.”

“I'm nothing. I'll never be anything. I can't want to be anything. Aside from that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.”

“خاموشی زبان خداست / باقی ترجمه ناقص است”

“Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation.”

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

“One way of looking at speech is to say it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.”

“Das Theater muss die Toten zum Sprechen bringen, damit die Lebenden sich hören können.”

“The theater must make the dead speak so that the living can hear themselves. When the stage is empty, history enters.”

“Così è (se vi pare).”

“It is so, if you think so.”

“Es gibt nichts, was der Mensch mehr fürchtet, als die Berührung durch das Unbekannte. Er will sehen, was nach ihm greift, er will es erkennen oder zumindest einreihen können.”

“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it.”

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

“万头攒动火树银花之处不必找我。如欲相见，我在各种悲喜交集处。”

“Do not look for me where crowds surge and fireworks blaze. If you wish to find me, I am where all sorrows and joys converge.”

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.”

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

“Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist.”

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

“God created paper for the purpose of drawing architecture on it. Everything else is, at least for me, an abuse of paper.”

“Your best work is your expression of yourself. Now you may not be the greatest at it, but when you do it, you're the only expert.”

“There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?”

“You don't take a photograph, you make it.”

“To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality.”

“The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda.”

“There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance.”

“La mode se démode, le style jamais.”

“Fashion fades, only style remains the same.”

“If you can design one thing, you can design everything.”

“We are stardust, we are golden, / And we've got to get ourselves / Back to the garden.”

“Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief's awesome presence.”

“The piano ain't got no wrong notes.”

“I'm a very selfish filmmaker. I make films for me. And then I share them with the audience.”

“I would like to make a film to tell children "it's good to be alive."”

“我觉得电影不应该解释自己。人们需要自己去探索、去感受它在讲什么。”

“I feel that a movie shouldn't explain itself. People have to search, to feel what it's about.”

“Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.”

“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

“每个科学家都梦想做一些能帮助世界的事情。”

“Every scientist dreams of doing something that can help the world.”

“In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.”

“It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way.”

“The stream of thinking is not a chain of discrete ideas, but a continuous flow in which every image, feeling, and thought melts into the next. Consciousness does not appear to itself chopped up in bits; it flows.”

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.”

“I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”

“The power of the powerless lies in the ability to live within the truth.”

“The power of the powerless lies in the ability to live within the truth. When a greengrocer refuses to put a propaganda slogan in his window, he is not merely making a gesture — he is shattering the entire structure of the post-totalitarian system, because that system depends on everyone's complicity in the lie.”

“La tyrannie de la majorité est un danger toujours présent dans les démocraties.”

“The tyranny of the majority is an ever-present danger in democracies, and it is especially threatening to individual liberty because it operates not through the force of law but through the force of opinion.”

“La Méditerranée parle de mille voix; elle est une somme d'histoires individuelles.”

“The Mediterranean speaks with many voices; it is a sum of individual histories.”

“The European killing fields were not battlefields. They were, for the most part, places where civilians were brought to be murdered.”

“The Hiding Hand principle suggests that ignorance of the difficulties ahead can be a blessing in disguise — people start projects they would never have begun had they known the full cost, and then find creative ways to overcome the unexpected obstacles.”

“The entrepreneur is essentially a man of action, driven not by hedonistic motives but by the dream and the will to found a private kingdom, the will to conquer, and the joy of creating.”

“Quand le taux de rendement du capital dépasse durablement le taux de croissance de la production et du revenu — ce qui était le cas jusqu'au XIXe siècle, et risque fort de redevenir la norme au XXIe siècle —, le capitalisme produit mécaniquement des inégalités insoutenables, arbitraires, remettant radicalement en cause les valeurs méritocratiques sur lesquelles se fondent nos sociétés démocratiques.”

“When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

“如果有多一张船票，你会不会跟我走？”

“If there is an extra ticket, would you go with me?”

“Once you've met someone you never really forget them. It just takes a while for your memories to return.”