La opinión es la enemiga directa de la verdad.
Vincenzo Gioberti
Conspiracy…is more comforting. The truth is far more frightening. Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.
Alan Moore
El buen ciudadano es aquel que no puede tolerar en su patria un poder que pretende hacerse superior a las leyes.
Marco Tulio Cicerón
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We live on a little island of the articulable, which we tend to mistake for reality itself.
Marilynne Robinson
El aprendizaje es un simple apéndice de nosotros mismos; dondequiera que estemos, está también nuestro aprendizaje
William Shakespeare
La única manera de seguir adelante es con distracciones. Demasiada realidad resulta difícil de soportar.
Woody Allen
La jubilación es para la gente que se ha pasado toda una vida odiando lo que hacía.
Woody Allen
Envy is an insult to oneself
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
The Future ain’t where it used to be.
Yogi Berra
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Henry Ford
If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong.
Groucho Marx
Ninguna de las religiones existentes es buena porque todas, en alguna medida, son un instrumento de poder y empujan al ser humano a guerras fratricidas y luchas sangrientas
Giordano Bruno
Un periodista siempre debería ser escéptico. Tiene que estar harto, enfadado con la situación y reaccionar
Gay Talese
Podemos establecer una distinción a este propósito entre Big Data —un asunto de números que se alimenta de las correlaciones—y Big Narrative, una aproximación antropológica, impulsada por el relato, que intenta explicar porqué las cosas son como son.
El Big Data es barato mientras que el Big Narrative es caro.
El Big Data es claro mientras que el Big Narrative es borroso.
El Big Data factible mientras que el Big Narrative es paralizante
Evgeny Morozov
A mí me llama la atención que siempre se habla, y con razón, de libertad de expresión. Es obvio que hay que tener eso, pero lo que hay que tener, principal y primariamente, es libertad de pensamiento. ¿Qué me importa a mí la libertad de expresión si no digo más que imbecilidades? ¿Para qué sirve si no sabes pensar, si no tienes sentido crítico, si no sabes ser libre intelectualmente?
Emilio Lledó
Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
Dr. Seuss
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
Dr. Seuss
Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.
Dr. Seuss
Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.
Douglas Adams
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Douglas Adams
Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our futures successes.
Douglas Adams
Healey’s First Law Of Holes: When in one, stop digging.
Denis Healey
Si crees que la formación es cara… prueba con la ignorancia
Derek Bok (Rector de Harvard University)
In the old days, writers used to sit in front of a typewriter and stare out of the window. Nowadays, because of the marvels of convergent technology, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are now the same thing.
Douglas Adams
Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.
Douglas Adams
I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
Douglas Adams
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
Douglas Adams
In many cases, traditions last not because they are excellent, but because influential people are averse to change
Cass Sunstein
Todo está diseñado. Pocas cosas están bien diseñadas.
Brian Reed
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Cree a aquellos que buscan la verdad, duda de los que la han encontrado.
André Gide
No existe arte que un gobierno aprenda más rápido que el de sacar dinero de los bolsillos de las personas
Adam Smith
Todos los hombres nacen iguales, pero es la última vez que lo son
Abraham Lincoln
And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln
The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity
Dorothy Parker (attributed)
Now, the invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and that it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked and if it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes.
Religion doesn’t seem to work like that; it has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. That’s an idea we’re so familiar with, whether we subscribe to it or not, that it’s kind of odd to think what it actually means, because really what it means is ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? – because you’re not!
Douglas Adams
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.
Douglas Adams
Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.
Douglas Adams
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
Douglas Adams
Truth is not determined by majority vote.
Doug Gwyrn
La cura para el aburrimiento es la curiosidad. Para la curiosidad no hay cura.
Dorothy Parker
You know what the greatest tragedy is in the whole world?’ said Ginger, not paying him the least attention. ‘It’s all the people who never find out what it is they really want to do or what it is they’re really good at. It’s all the sons who become blacksmiths because their fathers were blacksmiths. It’s all the people who could be really fantastic flute players who grow old and die without ever seeing a musical instrument, so they become bad ploughmen instead. It’s all the people with talents who never even find out.’
Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job.
Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.
Terry Pratchett
If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
Terry Pratchett
Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.
Terry Pratchett
There’s a rumour going around that I’ve found God. This is unlikely. I have enough difficulty finding my keys.
Terry Pratchett
Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind.
Terry Pratchett
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
Terry Pratchett
Breakthroughs are driven by individuals/amateurs. But barriers are put up by «theory endorsing» institutions.
Stefaan Verhulst
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
Socrates
Muchas cosas difíciles de diseñar suelen ser fáciles de realizar.
Samuel Johnson
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson, Johnsonian Miscellanies – Vol II
You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.
Robert A Heinlein, The green hills of Earth
Children seldom are able to realize that death will come to them personally. One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die … and accepts his sentence undismayed.
Robert A Heinlein, The moon is a harsh mistress
Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn’t forbidden.
Robert A Heinlein, The moon is a harsh mistress
A managed democracy is a wonderful thing… for the managers… and its greatest strength is a ‘free press’ when ‘free’ is defined as ‘responsible’ and the managers define what is ‘irresponsible’.
Robert A Heinlein, The moon is a harsh mistress
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
Robert A Heinlein, The moon is a harsh mistress
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert A Heinlein, The moon is a harsh mistress
The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
Robert A Heinlein
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
Robert A Heinlein
Hay solo dos cosas con las que uno se puede acostar: una persona y un libro.
Ray Bradbury
El puritanismo es el temor a que alguien en alguna parte se lo esté pasando bien.
H L Mencken
I’ve been accused of vulgarity. I say that’s bullshit.
Mel Brooks
No hay diseño sin disciplina. No hay disciplina sin inteligencia.
Massimo Vignelli
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
Afirmaba que la revolución está predestinada a triunfar. Yo le dije que a un gentleman solo pueden interesarle causas perdidas.
Jorge Luis Borges
Hay comunistas que sostienen que ser anticomunista es ser fascista. Esto es tan incomprensible como decir que no ser católico es ser mormón.
Jorge Luis Borges
Si no imaginamos muchos futuros, no podremos construir ninguno.
Jeff Jarvis
No entiendo por qué hay que temer a la muerte, te mueres y ya está, no pasa nada. En mi familia es una tradición.
Javier Krahe
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Hellen Keller
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H L Mencken
All the war propaganda, all the screaming & lies and hatred, comes from people who are not fighting.
George Orwell
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Ernest Hemingway
Temo más las lágrimas de mi pueblo que las armas de mis enemigos.
Enrique III de Castilla
El mundo comienza y acaba con nosotros. Solo existe en nuestra conciencia, ella lo es todo y ese todo desaparece con ella. Al morir no abandonamos nada. ¿Por qué entonces tantos melindres en torno a un acontecimiento que no es ningún acontecimiento?
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Lo que se arruina lo que deseo.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Ser objetivo es la prueba de una perturbación inquietante. Quien dice vivo dice parcial: la objetividad, fenómeno tardío, síntoma alarmante, es el comienzo de la capitulación.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Pasar del desprecio al desapego parece fácil. Sin embargo es menos una transición que una hazaña, que un triunfo. El desprecio es la primera victoria sobre el mundo; el desapego, la última, la suprema. El intervalo que las separa es similar al camino que va de la libertad a la liberación.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Ganas de rugir, de escupir a la gente a la cara, de golpearla, de pisotearla… Me he ejercitado en la decencia para humillar a mi rabia, y mi rabia se venga de mi tan frecuentemente como puede.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Todo el mundo me exaspera. Pero me gusta reír. Y no puedo reír solo.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Podríamos por fin respirar mejor si una mañana nos dijeran que la inmensa mayoría de nuestros semejantes se ha volatilizado como por encanto.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Sería capaz de cualquier sacrificio para librarme de este yo lamentable que en este instante mismo ocupa en el Todo un lugar con el que ningún dios ha osado soñar.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
Intento en vano imaginar el cosmos sin… mi. Afortunadamente, la muerte se apresurará a remediar la insuficiencia de mi imaginación.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
El orgasmo es un paroxismo; la desesperación, otro. El primero dura un instante; el segundo una vida.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
No hay que leer para comprender a los demás, sino para comprenderse a si mismo.
Emil M Cioran, Ese maldito yo
The future never quite does begin. We remain in the present and we arrive in the future moment by moment. I think it’s actually significant that in this question, future isn’t capitalised – if it were, it would be a different question. In the 20th century we have the Future in a very big way, and I don’t think we have that in the 21st century, we just have the lower case indeterminate ever going forward future. In the 20th century, the ’21st century’ was a very dynamic term and was used a great deal – in the 21st century we never mention the 22nd century, and culturally that’s very significant. Something has changed hugely in the past 30 years. When I wrote Neuromancer, ’21st century’ was vibrant and retained an energy – now that’s gone, and I’m interested in that.
It might represent a kind of very wide cultural maturation. Americans for instance no longer believe in the future as some completely other place. Europeans never believed in that, because in Europe the evidence is all around us that the future is built in the past. We’re surrounded by the past in Europe. The American vision of the future was over the hill, down the highway, we’ll build a new world. Americans have gotten the message. I think that Blade Runner was very important in that, in its wonderfully European depiction of a future Los Angeles that grew perpetually out of its own ruins. A very un-American vision, radically un-American. Something came from that.
William Gibson
Los entusiastas de la web nos han recomendado que metamos vídeos y audios. Nos han dicho: ‘¿Cómo vamos a hacer lo mismo del papel?’ Como si el papel fuera una desgracia… Pero el único periodismo que se ha vendido a lo largo de la Historia es el del papel y ha sido el más sofisticado.
Eduardo Arriagada
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, «Look at that, you son of a bitch. «
Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut
El ordenador no es una máquina inteligente que ayuda a estúpidos, sino una máquina estúpida que sólo funciona en inteligentes.
Umberto Eco
Nosotros pensamos que un país vale a menudo lo que vale su prensa. Y si es verdad que los diarios son la voz de una nación, nosotros estamos decididos, en nuestro puesto y por la débil parte que nos corresponde, a elevar este país elevando su lenguaje.
Albert Camus, Combat (1944)
Envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that does not give the sinner even momentary pleasure.
George Will
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
PJ O’Rourke
Cuando me dicen que soy demasiado viejo para hacer una cosa, procuro hacerla enseguida.
Pablo Picasso
And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.
John Steinbeck
All of us are working on the same project. Some consciously, with understanding; some without knowing it.
Marco Aurelio
La mejor forma de tener una buena idea es tener muchas ideas.
Linus Pauling
That which is against communism is for humanity.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn