"How is one to have any respect for the world where nothing else matters except who can lie the most plausibly and steal the most?"

Halldór Laxness Literature See all quotes by Halldór Laxness →

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“o anyone who weeps, life has some importance.”

“It's a useful habit to never believe more than half of what people tell you, and not to concern yourself with the rest. Rather keep your mind free and your path your own.”

“My image will soon be obliterated; it was only an illusion. But even though I may fall, even though my image may be obliterated, there is one thing that will never fall and can never be obliterated, and that is the yearning of those in chains for liberty.”

“You should deny facts if they're inconvenient.”

“He who weeps does not die; weeping is a sign of life; weep, and your life is worth something again.”

“They thought I was an Icelander! But I'm no Icelander, s'help me!”

Resonant Thoughts

"To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Her…"

— Thomas Carlyle

Philosophy1795–1881

#life

"A Muslim cannot obtain anything better than an amiable and beautiful wife, such a wife who, when ordered by her husband to do a thing, will obey, and if her husband looks at her will be happy; and if …"

— Thomas Hughes (priest)

Law1822–1896

#truth

"Consider our development aid record. Last year, the nations of the world spent over $1 trillion on armaments. But we contributed less than 10 per cent of that amount — a mere $80 billion — as official…"

— Mohamed ElBaradei

Politics1942

#art

"To every object there corresponds an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the other hand, an ideal system of possible cognitive processes by virtue of which the object and the t…"

— Edmund Husserl

Mathematics1859–1938

#truth