1. The most important sentence in any article, is the first one. — William Zinsser

2. I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it. — Paul Dirac

3. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. — George Bernard Shaw

4. Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. — George Carlin

5. Your intelligence is not based on how much you know, but how much people think you know. — Original; but, like everything, probably based on something else

6. Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. — Robert Green Ingersoll

7. If you want an accurate weather forecast, look outside. — Original; but, like everything, probably based on something else

8. The road to wisdom? Well, it's plain: Err, and err, and err again; but less, and less, and less. — Piet Hien

9. We work hard, advance, and are able to afford more and nicer things, and yet this doesn't make us any happier. — Rolf Dobelli

Quotes from Matt Caig: The Humans

Evil is more powerful and more plentiful than good. We are more sensitive to negative than to positive things. On the street, scary faces stand out more than smiling ones. We remember bad behavior longer than good—except, of course, when it comes to ourselves.

A human life is on average eighty Earth years or around thirty thousand Earth days. Which means they are born, they make some friends, eat a few meals, they get married [or don't], have a child or two, or not, drink a few thousand glasses of wine, have [sex] a few times, discover a lump somewhere, feel a bit of regret, wonder where all the time went, know they should have done it differently, realize they would have done it the same, and then they die.

Humans were always doing something they didn't like doing. In fact, to my best estimate, at any one time only 0.3% of humans were activey doing something they liked doing, and even when they did so, they felt an intense guilt about it and were fervently promising themselves they'd be back doing something horrendously unpleasant very shortly.

New technology [...] just means something you will laugh at in 5 years. Value the stuff you won't laugh at in 5 years like love, a good poem, a song, or the sky.

The things you don't need to live—books, art, cinema, wine, and so on—are the things you need to live.