adam.nz: Quotes from 2025

The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Conrad said that only two things sold, the very best and the very worst. From my recent efforts, it has been borne to me that I am not capable of writing the very best yet. I have no doubt that I shall be able to in the future, but at present, I cannot. It remains to be seen whether I can write the very worst.

… in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who we truly are.

Be persistent. Keep coming back. Be the case of the lice in the kindergarten class — they can't get rid of you.

He never grew up, but he never stopped growing.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.

You don’t need a roadmap, you need caffeine and unreasonable optimism.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime. Yet for every criminal, there are ten thousand honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but it is a force stronger than crime.

Mind and breath have the same source. Hence, breath is controlled when mind is controlled and mind, when breath is controlled. Breath is the gross form of the mind. When mind stops, the breath also stops and the other way around.

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

It's not an easy life, but it's simple … and you're free.

I will tell you the absolute secret of magic, at the most honest level. The secret of magic is you would not be willing to work as hard as we are, and that’s the whole secret.

It’s not about money at all. We made that up. How come of all the creatures … only one of them is dumb enough to pay rent.

I think what we fear most about finding a mind equal to our own, but of another species, is that they will truly see us—and find us lacking, and turn away from us in disgust. That contact with another mind will puncture our species' self-satisfied feeling of worth. We will have to confront, finally, what we truly are, and the damage we have done to our home. But that confrontation, perhaps, is the only thing that will save us. The only thing that will allow us to look our short-sightedness, our brutality, and our stupidity in the face, and change.

there are only two genders, finding people hot and finding scenarios hot

For the oppressed, peace is the absence of oppression. For the oppressor, peace is the absence of resistance.

Never try and answer a question you don't understand. Insist people clarify the question until it's clear, and often they will supply the answer themselves.

I lived my dream, some days it was a nightmare.

By pruning, we speed up the process and “play the game” of the forest.

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great a strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward toward the light; but the laden traveller may never reach the end of it.

The thing you've got to remember, is that humour is delayed fear, laughter is delayed fear.

The paradox of a disaster is that it brings out the best in so many of us. The paradox of comfort is that it brings out the worst in so many of us.

A master is someone who is able to remain true to themselves in any situation.

I need no axe to be a dwarf, nor do I need to hate trolls. What kind of creature defines itself by hatred?

There’s never been a more interesting time to be confused about almost everything in the news.

The traitor, the self, the self that cries "I want to live, let the world rot so long as I can live!" The little traitor soul in us, in the dark, like a spider in a box. He talks to all of us. But only some understand him. The wizards, the singers, the makers. And the heros, the ones who seek to be themselves. To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.

If flowers heal us, shouldn’t we also try to heal flowers?

Friends are always telling me I have too many trees. Obviously friends like these are expendable.

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

It’s always our leaders who want to fight, never the people.

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.

When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.

… do nothing because it is righteous, or praiseworthy, or noble, to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do, and which you cannot do in any other way.

Look, you’re a human being, and you’ve got a certain amount of guts – use it as a means of scaling the ladders of achieving the heights. Love and God will take care of themselves. First be yourself, dammit, and stop talking about things you have no understanding of.

If your medical doctor is so great, why are you still so sick?

Confidence is when you are able to see yourself as a flawed person and still hold yourself in high regard.

If you don't fix the road, you can't fix the creek.

Well done is better than well said.

The problem with Bluesky (and Mastodon as well) is they mostly have one kind of asshole. They operate unchallenged, leading to extreme asshole saturation. Meanwhile, X has *all* kinds of assholes working against each other, so they kinda cancel each other out.

Biology is the first half of the periodic table coming to life. Technology is the second half of the periodic table coming to life.

I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.

Wisdom creates the fragrance of rebellion.

Clay will break your back, but sand will break your heart.

So you go out and plant some native trees, and that turns human beings into what we're supposed to be, which is stewards and managers of the land rather than single-use occupants.

Suffering less, noticing it more.

We don’t fight weeds, we grow weeds.

The perfect man breathes as though he is not breathing.

These loaves were baked in brick ovens, out of doors, and some of them looked as big as peck measures. A slice cut from one of them and smeared thick with that delicious apple butter was a feast fit for gods or men.

You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature.

Either you are happening to this world or this world is happening to you … you have to make a choice.