Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
- Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
Freeman Dyson, From Eros to Gaia
-- Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End
'Twas grief enough to think mankind
All hollow servile insincere -
But worse to trust to my own mind
And find the same corruption there
Sketch of Person
"I’ve found that’s all you have to do to get ahead in life, be non-idiotic and live a long time. It’s harder to be non-idiotic than most people think." - Charlie Munger
Joel Grus
--Lemony Snicket, All the Wrong Questions
Purity Cartone, in The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson, p. 180
"When you are looking for something beautiful and satisfying, it's much harder to find the ugly truth." Penn Jillette, in his book "Oh, God, No" , talking about showing how magic tricks are done.
Mychal Denzel Smith
"All men are greater than dead men." -R Scott Bakker
Mocking tombstones is edgy and transgressive. Mocking pencils is just weird.
The alt-text of this xkcd comic.
Matt Levine
-- Granny Weatherwax. Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett
-Rick
These are the opening words of a ~1.5 minute monologue in one of Feynman's lectures; I won't transcribe the remainder but it can be viewed here.
Ya. E. Yudovitch. Gramm more expensive than tonne: rare elements in coals (p. 102, Moscow, 1989.)
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, section LXXVII.
"When you are looking for something beautiful and satisfying, it's much harder to find the ugly truth." Penn Jillette, in his book "Oh, God, No" , talking about showing how magic tricks are done.
They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?
Princess Diana
Attribution doubtful.
I don't agree, but it's a hypothesis I hadn't even considered, let alone specifically or categorically rejected.
from seddit