“Martin, Martin, Martin,” she said, “the population of literate people has been declining steadily since Gutenberg’s day. By the twentieth century, less than two percent of the people in the so-called industrialized democracies read even one book a year. And that was before the smart machines, dataspheres, and user-friendly environments."

 

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.
 

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.

If you want to receive a letter, you need to send a letter!

A lot of times, the real motivation is different from what people say is the real motivation. For example, buying expensive headphones, they are not really to make you hear better. You want to signal to the world that you are affluent and you have status and good taste.

The greatest threat to a service is the team that operates it.

The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

Knowledge is not free. You have to pay attention.

He who angers you, conquers you.

Complexity is like energy. It cannot be created or destroyed, only moved somewhere else.

Remember that what ultimately matters is not technical excellence but market penetration. The two rarely go hand-in-hand.

We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me that you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful?

Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal.
Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.

This shouldn’t even be a public debate. It’s like the public debating and voting on the graphite rods that prevent a nuclear reactor from overheating and melting down. There are certain things you should let the engineers decide.

I think Teach worries his readers would use an anti-corporate message as a defense: “Yeah, I never accomplish anything, but that’s the fault of those evil corporations who caused me to have the wrong psychic structure. This famous psychiatrist says so! Wanna go to a protest with me instead of trying personal growth? All the experts agree that we’re excused from changing our defective characters in any way until capitalism is overthrown!”

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well.

The goal of media is to make every problem, your problem.

Kada država počne sebe da naziva "domovinom" i "otadžbinom" znajte da je žedna krvi.