Quotes, thoughts, and philosophy — a treasury of extraordinary ideas.

A collection for those who don’t just read words, but seek to truly understand them.

yoice.net is a growing treasury of quotes, ideas, and reflections — for people who want to explore, question, and be inspired.

Moby quote about music production and pushing artistic ambitionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"You can sit down with Reason or Ableton and literally in a couple of hours make a very good-sounding record. But then a lot of people become contented with that, rather than pushing themselves to making something that sounds great." Moby
Quote image attributed to Alexander von Humboldt about making one's own fortuneCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is a proverbial expression that every man is the maker of his own fortune, and we usually regard it as implying that every man by his folly or wisdom prepares good or evil for himself. But we may view it in another light, namely, that we may so accommodate ourselves to the dispositions of Providence as to be happy in our lot, whatever may be its privations." Alexander von Humboldt
Ayn Rand quote about happiness, moral purpose, and moral integrityCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." Ayn Rand
Novak Djokovic quote about determination, compassion, and respect in sportsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is my goal to win every time I play. But on the other hand, I also seek a balance of compassion and respect for the other players. I understand that everyone goes through difficult times, either mentally or physically, to cope with their life, to live the sport." Novak Djokovic
Quote image by Neil Postman about learner engagement and the value of learningCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined, active, and thoroughly engaged unless he perceives a problem to be a problem or whatever is to-be-learned as worth learning, and unless he plays an active role in determining the process of solution." Neil Postman
Quote by Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun about the challenges of a moon mission in 1953Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the atmosphere and overcome the earth’s gravity and, having traveled all the way to the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety, we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three … each rocket ship would be taller than New York’s Empire State Building [almost ¼ mile high] and weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons." Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun
Inspirational John Taylor Gatto quote about community, personal freedom, and human connectionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"People are less than whole unless they gather themselves voluntarily into groups of souls in harmony. Gathering themselves to pursue individual, family, and community dreams consistent with their private humanity is what makes them whole; only slaves are gathered by others." John Taylor Gatto
Quote about childhood dreams and reality by Bill MaherCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"If kids knew what they wanted to be at age eight, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God nobody took me seriously and scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery." Bill Maher
Quote by Frederick Taylor Gates on education reform and societal visionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"In our dreams we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our moulding hand. The present education conventions made from our minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor shall we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply. The task which we set before ourselves is a very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shop and on the farm." Frederick Taylor Gates
Inspirational quote from They Live movie by John Carpenter about optimism in AmericaCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The feeling is definitely there. It's a new morning in America... fresh, vital. The old cynicism is gone. We have faith in our leaders. We're optimistic as to what becomes of it all. It really boils down to our ability to accept. We don't need pessimism. There are no limits." They Live
Quote about freedom and control from Neil Patrick Harris in The Matrix ResurrectionsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Right now, you’re feeling good about what you’ve done. You should. It was a victory. Bravo. Now what? You’ve come here to negotiate some kind of deal? You think you hold all the cards, because you can do whatever you want in this world. I say, go for it. Remake it. Knock yourselves out. Paint the sky with rainbows. But here’s the thing. The sheeple aren’t going anywhere. They like my world. They don’t want this sentimentality. They don’t want freedom or empowerment. They want to be controlled. They crave the comfort of certainty. And that means you two, back in your pods, unconscious and alone, just like them." Neil Patrick Harris
Quote about the arrogance and smugness caused by college degrees by ZUBYCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"One of the biggest problems with college degrees is they've made a lot of people think they are much smarter than they truly are. This arrogance and smugness makes them dumber because they think they're too smart to receive new information from anybody with fewer 'credentials'." ZUBY
Quote by Frank Zappa on schools stifling creativity and critical thoughtCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Schools train people to be ignorant, with style. They give you the equipment that you need to be a functional ignoramus. American schools* do not equip you to deal with things like logic; they don’t give you the criteria by which to judge between good and bad in any medium or format; and they prepare you to be a usable victim for military-industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you’re just smart enough to do a job and just dumb enough to swallow what they feed you, you’re gonna be alright. But if you go beyond that then you’re gonna have these grave doubts that give you stomach problems, headaches…make you want to go out and do something else. So, I believe that schools mechanically and very specifically try and breed out any hint of creative thought in the kids that are coming out." Frank Zappa
John Taylor Gatto quote image about education, freedom, independence, and childrenCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free." John Taylor Gatto
John Taylor Gatto quote about compulsory schooling and the purpose of educationCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Do we really need school? I don't mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don't hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest." John Taylor Gatto
Neil Postman quote criticizing textbooks as harmful to education and student learningCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Textbooks, it seems to me, are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and trivial learning. They may save the teacher some trouble, but the trouble they inflict on the minds of students is a blight and a curse." Neil Postman
Thomas Sowell quote about young people and sweeping judgmentsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience." Thomas Sowell
Quote about the uniqueness of cosmology by Bjørn Ekeberg and Louis MarmetCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Cosmology is different from other sciences in a fundamental way. The sheer scope of the subject matter covers the largest extent imaginable - literally - and it does so based only on observations from our own local place within it." Bjørn Ekeberg & Louis Marmet
Education research quote by Neil PostmanCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Education Research: This is a process whereby serious educators discover knowledge that is well known to everybody, and has been for several centuries. Its principal characteristic is that no one pays any attention to it." Neil Postman
Quote by Yuval Noah Harari about the relationship between science, power, and truthCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I mean science, as an institution, is interested in gaining the power — to gain control over the world — to be able to gain control over diseases, over the human body, over the environment, over rivers and animals and forests. You have to submit a grant to somebody to fund, it all comes down to money, in many cases. It’s also an institution- If you’re a freelance scientist, you just explore the truth. Okay. But in an institution, a university, you need money to finance so you submit a research grant, and you have to convince the authority not of the truth. You have to convince the authority that what you want to do will somehow make us more powerful. Will somehow enable us to produce a new weapon. Will somehow enable us to produce more food. Will somehow enable us to gain control over previously uncontrollable, or deadly disease. And this is really what gets the money. Of course, it means to also be truth to some extent. Does it work and who wants it?" Yuval Noah Harari
Quote by Alexander Unzicker about the crisis in modern physics and natural constantsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Physics has lost its grip on the ground. For every anomaly, scientists pull a new parameter out of a hat instead of trying to understand the underlying principles. They have accumulated more than 30 "natural constants": all values that no one can explain." Alexander Unzicker
Carl Sagan quote about the importance of science and technology understanding in democracyCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? ... Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along." Carl Sagan
John Taylor Gatto quote about schooling, education, and obedienceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"I've noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching - that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders." John Taylor Gatto
Inspirational quote by George Bernard Shaw about science challenging obvious beliefsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"In the Middle Ages people believed that the earth was flat, for which they had at least the evidence of their senses: we believe it to be round, not because as many as one per cent of us could give the physical reasons for so quaint a belief, but because modern science has convinced us that nothing that is obvious is true, and that everything that is magical, improbable, extraordinary, gigantic, microscopic, heartless, or outrageous is scientific." George Bernard Shaw
Capitalism and socialism quote by Ludwig von MisesCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Capitalism means free enterprise, sovereignty of the consumers in economic matters, and sovereignty of the voters in political matters. Socialism means full government control of every sphere of the individuals life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management." Ludwig von Mises
Paul Feyerabend quote about the academic world and individual freedomCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Yes, the academic world is screwed up, and there is nothing you can do about it. But don't worry about that. Just do what you want. If you know what you want to do and advocate for it, no one will put any energy into stopping you." Paul Feyerabend
Ludwig von Mises quote image about freedom and totalitarianismCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech." Ludwig von Mises
Quote image featuring Ludwig von Mises on economic freedom and fundamental rights.Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial-that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions." Ludwig von Mises
Harry Browne quote about big government and political powerCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn't much matter who controls it, because it can't do you much harm." Harry Browne
Harry Browne quote about Social Security and political wasteCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Social Security is inherently unsound for the simple reason that it's a political program run by politicians for political purposes...Social Security operates on a very simple principle: the politicians take your money from you and squander it." Harry Browne
Quote image featuring Charles Wright Mills and his analysis of the power eliteCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences. Whether they do or do not make such decisions is less important than the fact that they do occupy such pivotal positions: their failure to act, their failure to make decisions, is itself an act that is often of greater consequence than the decisions they do make. For they are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society. They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy." Charles Wright Mills
Quote about representative democracy by Dr. Angela MerkelCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"But that is precisely why I am also deeply convinced that it is right that we have a representative democracy and not a plebiscitary democracy, and that representative democracy gives us the opportunity for certain periods of time to make decisions, then within these periods of time also to campaign for these decisions and thus to change opinions. Looking back at the history of the Federal Republic, we can say that all the major decisions did not have a demoscopic majority when they were made. The introduction of the social market economy, rearmament, the treaties with the East, the NATO dual decision, the adherence to unity, the introduction of the euro and also the increasing assumption of responsibility by the Bundeswehr in the world - almost all of these decisions were made against the majority of Germans. Only in retrospect did the attitude of the Germans change in many cases. I also think it's reasonable for the population to look at the outcome of a measure first and then form a judgment about it. I think that is an expression of the primacy of politics. And that should also be adhered to." Dr. Angela Merkel
Quote by Professor Christoph Degenhart on political bias of ARD and ZDF towards right-wing criticsCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"In the portrayal of political processes, I often see a certain political one-sidedness. For example, when it comes to the topics of ecology or Europeanization, critics are always put in the right-wing corner. [....] The broadcasters adopt government lines in an undifferentiated manner. ARD and ZDF are increasingly acting as an acclamation forum for politics." Professor Christoph Degenhart
Edward Bernays quote about shaping public opinion and political influenceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"It is not necessary for the politician to be the slave of the public's group prejudices, if he can learn how to mold the mind of the voters in conformity with his own ideas of public welfare and public service. The important thing for the statesman of our age is not so much to know how to please the public, but to know how to sway the public. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." Edward Bernays
Quote by Cardinal John Murphy Farley about conflict between international capital and ruling dynastiesCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The war that is being prepared will be a battle between international capital and the ruling dynasties. Capital wishes to have no one over it, knows no God or Lord, and wishes to have all states ruled as a great banking business. Their profit shall become the sole guide of the rulers ... Business ... one and only." Kardinal John Murphy Farley
Harry Browne quote about income tax, family values, education, and personal choiceCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The best thing we can do for family values is to repeal the income tax. Then families will have the resources they need to implement their own values - and not those of the politicians. With the income tax gone, families will no longer be forced to have two breadwinners by necessity. Children will be raised better, family values will predominate, and crime will diminish. If your local school indoctrinates your child with values that are alien to you, you'll have the money to buy a private education." Harry Browne
Eduardo Galeano quote about the influence and power of bankersCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show." Eduardo Galeano
Ivan Illich quote image about service being mistaken for valueCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The pupil's imagination is 'schooled' to accept service in place of value. Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work." Ivan Illich