“What defines a people is not race, not tradition, not geography, but the free choice of a group of human beings to live together as fellow citizens.”
– Thomas G. West
On What Defines a People
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Category Archives: Quotations
On the Affects of Death
“There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.”
– Samuel Butler
On Beauty in Retrospect
“The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?”
– André Gide
On Pure Entertainment
“People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.”
– George Carlin
On Waking up in Science Fiction
“Imagine waking up one day and realizing you were born on a completely different planet; and everything you learned was a lie, and your country’s history was so fabricated, and everyone around you was so brainwashed, and the heroes of your worship were actually monsters, villains.
This is like the plot to a science fiction novel, but it’s the insane reality for North Koreans, like me. From the moment I was born I was indoctrinated towards the first dictator Kim Il-sung and I always used to bow to his pictures, which hangs in every North Korean home.
To us he was a Santa Claus and God who is delivering presents on holidays and performing numerous miracles. When he was fighting our enemy he made bombs from pine cones and turned sent into rice and crossed a river on tree leaves, and he even walked across the rainbow. So that’s why, when I was young, I used to believe that I could also work across the rainbow.”
– Hyeonseo Lee
On The Function of Music
“The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”
– Thomas Beecham
On Chess and Objectivity
“Chess, first of all, teaches you to be objective.”
– Alexander Alekhine
On Weird People
“The weirdest thing about weird people is how normal they are.”
– Louis Theroux
Knowledge Guild 