All Quotes

"One's own cognitive destiny (not the ‘letter on the subject’) leads far away. Asking a question and reading a book—what could be more foolish?"

"We drag ourselves through the streets at night and talk to ourselves. Dialogue flourishes during the day and echoes with its ignoble dealings. At night, we monologue. Like kings."

"What is different about beauty is its destructive effect. The joyful tension of a poem bursts your poor heart, if it enters you. You are the victim who devoutly welcomes the sharp knife with which beauty sacrifices you. No one must be where beauty is, it seems to say, and with a disdainful gesture it turns its back on you. Those who see the face of beauty die, yes, but not in despair."

"How can we still bear to call ourselves living—we who are dying!"

"The first comer who wants to have his say boasts the right to independent thought, which he has been educated to believe in. Let him speak: he will hang himself."

"Modesty is the vile success of those who annul themselves, but only a little, and in this way stand out."

"Why do I insist on calling myself a “philosopher” even though neither philosophers want me nor I want them? Because I entered this discipline, with its venerated rules, as a child and my loyalty has never wavered. For more than fifty years I have studied it without distraction. I have grasped its secrets and reticence, I have seen its exaltations and declines, its excesses and forgetfulness. Philosophers on the altar and then hurled down. I witnessed their reign and the dominance of their ideas, and I studied it more than that of leaders and commanders. I had lasting loves, I imitated models (but how can one imitate the Idea, alas). I grew old there. I know three or four things about it better than my contemporaries. I have nothing more to add."

"If Karl Kraus had written ‘'Capital’', he would have done so in three lines."

"If you steal, they arrest you; if you say that God exists, it's just an opinion. That has always amazed me."

"We forgive those who have offended us because that evens the score: one offense each. But the latter is deadly."

"True discipline in matters of the intellect is a ruthless intransigence against the spirit of discussion. Every concession made in the name of mutual equality is a betrayal of the truth, over which courtesy prevails. Thinking divides."

"I define thinking as paying attention to everything that is not oneself, or paying attention to oneself as if one were not oneself. Because of the misunderstandings this causes, I tend to use “being attentive” instead of “thinking,” and ‘attention’ instead of “thought.” One of the benefits would be to leave “thought” in its current usage. The idea of effort connected with it would be well explained by the concept of attention that is implicit in it. I then define idea as the gap between us and things. I am taken aback when I hear people say that ideas and things are identical. It is the power of this gap that defines the ability to think."

"I equally deplore the triumphalism of Kant and, in general, of those philosophies which, finding it necessary to start from the self, praise it as if it were a great achievement and not the miserable fate that has befallen us."

"The task of theodicy was accomplished at the very moment it disappeared, not because it failed but because it succeeded completely. In the final analysis, it made the very notion of evil disappear."

"An idea does not seem truly reliable to me unless it also satisfies my senses."

"A righteous man is one who knows this: that he must annul God daily so that the measure of eternal justice may be fulfilled daily."

"That ‘I’ should be governed: this is where the scandal of politics begins. Therefore, in examining my aversion to it, I intend to examine the idea in relation to those who make it their profession, and then both in relation to my spirit. It seems obvious when viewed from the outside. But examined in relation to my spirit, or to any spirit, the idea that someone should ‘take care’ of me (this person should in fact be the ‘politician’) never ceases to amaze me. That I should be governed, that is where the scandal lies. My spirit's aversion to this idea is total."

"Politics is the protection of the disabled."

"The politician embodies the average state of a society—its vices, mediocrities, and defects—as if he absorbed its evils in the manner of old sorcerers who suck the pus from a wound, sucking out the evil spell as well. Thus, their vices, turpitudes, and malfeasance taste of something different. It is as if they harness all that is vile in coexistence and free others from it."

"Only those who preserve values lose them, and only those who can only subvert them actually preserve them."

"True, society should save us from the universe that swallows us up. But what saves us from society?"

"The means of mass destruction correspond to the grand return of value in place of being."

"If you still want me to bring out this obscure evidence of mine and shed some light on it, I see, for one thing, the principle of non-contradiction, the categorical imperative, the principles of science, knowledge about our solar system, just enough to face our fate—I mean that of the species. It is this communism that I am referring to."

"Socrates dies because he broke the law. It is foolish to say that he was a gentleman, says Hegel rightly. If a philosopher is someone who pits the individual against the world, we cannot help but feel repugnance, he adds."

"The species is nothing; some men are everything."

"There is therefore only one age. Or, as we might also say, all other ages are matters of psychology. Only old age is in itself. Only old age requires nothing less than metaphysics to be treated adequately."

"He who has been educated in pessimism and has become its disciple, and moreover, as an epigone, intends to carry it into his own time, sees in it a classic theme, an eternal theme. He knows well what pessimism demands and what is demanded of it. He is the pessimist of truth, if one can call him that. Pessimism honors truth: this is the general thesis. This pessimist has followed the righteous path of honor. He has honored truth. This is the pessimism we want with all our strength, he says: to walk the path that every man who has approached truth walks to its cruelest core, where it is no longer with him. Because truth is the whole against the part, the whole against you."

"In the spirit, there are still continents to conquer, discoveries and great journeys."

"If we were to ask ourselves about the usefulness and harm of pessimism in life, there would be only one answer: truth or life."

"He had learned that irrational things have no system but narration. But that was not enough for him. He loved concepts and through them he sensed the smells of things and their quintessences and felt their power flowing in his blood, and he could even call them by name one by one... Concepts were his soul and through them he also filtered his moods. Individuals are embodied concepts. What do I care about possessing their flesh, he used to say. The image of an individual about whom nothing can be known except through his psychology seemed to him outdated and linked to a becoming image of man. Whereas, on the contrary, the individual is complete and can no longer be the object of psychology but of concept. This was his conviction. He had no fear of having prejudices."

"He saw Paris as a set of ideas. To think in this city is to think it, he said. And for a time, he devoted his self to it."

"Sgalambro's philosophy, which from the point of view of language quality has Schopenhauer as its reference author, is a painful philosophy about the captivity of man, about being bad, in the sense of being a prisoner, with a central theoretical theme that is the relationship between being and having to be, and with the claim to affirm truth and not opinion: if I speak, I speak because I mean what I say as the truth, not to add doubts to doubts, otherwise I remain silent."

"Sgalambro was a Schopenhauerian, he was Schopenhauer. I don't think this critical and essentially pessimistic vein did Battiato much good, as he lost some of that vein of irreverence, the paradoxical, ironic, sometimes even completely light-hearted energy he had in his works such as ‘Bandiera bianca’."

"An assessment of the Nigerian petroleum industry reveals that the NNPC is one of the inefficient government institutions in Nigeria, with heavy political interference, ambiguities, corruption and nepotism."

"Recent investigations and probes into government corruption in Nigeria reveals that a substantial part of government corruption, originates from the activities that relate to the management of the oil and gas proceeds, supposed to be channeled towards the growth and development of the nation."

"A major gap in the PIB 2020 is that the government’s continued control of the new NNPC raises concerns of a likely continuation of old practices such as corruption and weak accountability."

"The PIB 2020 does not specifically require the government to sell shares in NNPC Limited and this may stifle the much-needed fundraising required for the growth of the sector. Furthermore, unlike previous reform proposals, the PIB 2020 does not set a specific deadline for when the privatization/commercialization will be completed."

"The restriction that has been placed by OPEC and all the other issues Nigeria is facing with production, even though the way you put it, Nigeria has the potential to produce 2.1 to 2.2 million barrels of Oil."

"With the production cut put in place by OPEC just to shore up oil prices shows that we now produce between 1.5 to 1.4 million barrels per day, so we have excess capacity. However, this historic cut is expected to see crude oil prices rebound by at least $15 per barrel in the short term."

"I try my best to do better than those people who have done wrong things to me. For me, it was a blessing in disguise to see the rough side of the world growing up as it made me see how to do things better; to be better and how to focus on the positive things in life to keep your head above water so do speak."

"The e-commerce platform would hit a market valuation of over four billion dollars by 2022."

"When you compete with the "big boys",with resources in terms of cash,human capital, structure,and are global with a very strong brand,you have to be very courageous and have the heart of a lion but the great humility of a sheep."

"If you want to compete with multinational companies ,you have to be knowledge driven and you must stay focused on a niche market."

"I tell them we can also support any responsible government of the state which sincerely wants us to add value without us really being in the driving seat."

"I think its halfway knowing who you are. Always remember to be humble."

"Ex ko talaga (Really my ex). I needed to get away from the situation in order for me to grow."

"I learned through experience."

"Mahirap (It's difficult). If you don't have education, you have nothing to fall back on. Ano'ng magiging trabaho mo (What will be your job?) If you don't have a degree, what job will they give you?"

"Self-reflection, na-practice ko siya and I realized, kailangan ko na yata mag-aral.. (I practiced it and I realized, I guess I need to study)"

"At your lowest point, the trickiest thing you can do is give in to depression and want to finish everything,” she reflected. “Have strong faith."