Category: Thought

C’est véritablement utile puisque c’est joli.

It is truly useful since it is beautiful.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Le Petit Prince (1943), 14th chapter.

Most men’s conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.

George Santayana, The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress: Vol.II, Reason in Society (1905).

It is so difficult to mix with artists! You must choose business men to talk to, because artists only talk of money.

Jean Sibelius, as quoted by Bengt de Törne in Sibelius: A Close-Up (1937), p. 94.

Le temps est un grand maître, dit-on; le malheur
est qu’il soit un maître inhumain qui tue ses élèves.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Hector Berlioz, letter written in November 1856, published in Pierre Citron (ed.) Correspondance générale (1989), vol. 5, p. 390; as quoted by Paul Davies in About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution (1996), p. 214.

If we understood the world, we would realize that there is a logic of harmony underlying its manifold apparent dissonances.

Jean Sibelius, as quoted in Henry Thomas & Dana Lee Thomas, Living Biographies of Great Composers (1946) p. 309.

Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais
rien toutes seules, et c’est fatigant, pour les enfants,
de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications.

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Le Petit Prince (1943), first chapter.

Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, ‘Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!’

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
’Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

Emily Brontë, “The Old Stoic,” from Clement King Shorter, editor, The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë (1908).

It is not the astronomer’s business to consider whether it would be better if the sun were nearer or farther from the earth, or if he turned round her, instead of turning round him. Nor is it the chemist’s business to consider whether carbonic acid and carbonic oxide are noxious gases that ought not to exist. It has never been thought desirable to make Newton responsible for tiles falling on the people’s heads.
Economists, however, are held answerable for the laws which they discover.

Yves Guyot, The Principles of Social Economy (1892). Caricature by André Gill (1845–1885).

Pour intervenir utilement dans l’industrie, il faudrait
que le législateur possédât les connaissances nécessaires.

To intervene usefully in industry, the legislator would need to possess the necessary knowledge.

Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil (December 22, 1813 – June 29, 1892), Protection et libre-échange (1879).

Think about what you just did to Gen Z. . . . You just flat-out told them that men could become women magically. . . . You have now in a weird way inoculated them against your own bullshit by giving them something so ridiculous and obviously wrong that they now understand that it doesn’t matter how punished you’ll [sic] be for departing from the mainstream consensus — that the mainstream consensus is at least sometimes just total crap.

Brett Weinstein, segment from his Dark Horse podcast (“9/11: Does Gen Z Believe the Official Narrative?” 12/01/2025), in conversation with his wife Heather Heying.