Axioms Quotes

“Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“You cannot be truly humble, unless you truly believe that life can and will go on without you.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A relationship is likely to last way longer, if each partner convinces or has convinced themselves that they do not deserve their partner, even if that is not true.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Some people avoid thinking deeply in public, only because they are afraid of coming across as suicidal.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Some of us were brought into this troubled world primarily or only to increase our fathers’ chances of not being left by our mothers, or vice versa.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Life sometimes reminds us that it is sometimes heartless by giving something or someone we really need to someone who does not need or even want them or it.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The most upsetting thing about Society’s attitude towards disabled people is that many millions of disabled people became disabled while trying to please Society, the very same bitch that secretly regards them as subhuman.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“A premature death does not only rob one of the countless instances where one would have experienced pleasure, it also saves one from the innumerable instances where one would have experienced pain.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We are loved way more by some of the people who have not contacted us in the last twelve or so months than we are loved by some of those who contact us every twelve or so days … or hours.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Some people will hate you for not loving them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We are way less likely to love someone just because they love us than we are to hate someone just because they hate us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Most sane human beings who are over the age of six usually act or react not as per what they genuinely feel or really think but in accordance with the expectations of those around them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Most sane human beings’ chances of being alive in a thousand years’ time are a hundred times higher than their chances of being sincerely happy for at least ten consecutive days.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“His work seems to confirm my old axiom: it is useless to try to keep the whole body alive.”
― Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel

“The human population would probably be way less than a thousand, if ejaculation were not usually accompanied by an orgasm.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Based on the considerations of history, ancient history, and international axioms, the logic of following up a citizen with his shadow for the purpose of the demarcation of political frontiers of any state has been discounted for international conventions. For example the Arabs cannot ask Spain just because they were there some time in the past nor can they ask for any other area outside the frontiers of the Arab homeland”
― Saddam Hussein, Saddam Hussein on Current Events in Iraq

“If we were not impressed by job titles, suits, and jargon, we would demand that financial advisors show us their personal bank statements before they tell us what we could or should do with our own money.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“In reality most human beings are not, to most human beings, more important than money.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Many a parent, sad to say, has used their child as an opportunity for them, the parent, to do, through their child, something or some of the things that they, the parent, did not do or did not do successfully.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Not a few millions of parents strongly hope that their own children will step in by instantly becoming their own parents’ foster parents, if and when the parents reach their second childhood.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“When selecting a one-night stand, a heterosexual woman who is materialistic is a trillion times more likely to choose a sexually unattractive poor man who seems rich over a sexually attractive rich man who seems poor.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Loneliness tortures many if not most of the elderly more intensely and more frequently than it torments many if not most of us who will never be or have not yet been pushed or pulled into old age.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“As an unavoidable result of the inevitable loss of some physical and/or some mental abilities, many a man who has been alive for many years has become a boy again.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Origin of the Logical. Where has logic originated in men’s heads? Undoubtedly out of the illogical, the domain of which must originally have been immense. But numberless beings who reasoned otherwise than we do at present, perished; albeit that they may have come nearer to truth than we! Whoever, for example, could not discern the "like" often enough with regard to food, and with regard to animals dangerous to him, whoever, therefore, deduced too slowly, or was too circumspect in his deductions, had smaller probability of survival than he who in all similar cases immediately divined the equality. The preponderating inclination, however, to deal with the similar as the equal - an illogical inclination, for there is no thing equal in itself - first created the whole basis of logic. It was just so (in order that the conception of substance should originate, this being indispensable to logic, although in the strictest sense nothing actual corresponds to it) that for a long period the changing process in things had to be overlooked, and remain unperceived; the beings not seeing correctly had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux." In itself every high degree of circumspection in conclusions, every sceptical inclination, is a great danger to life. No living being might have been preserved unless the contrary inclination - to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to mistake and fabricate rather than wait, to assent rather than deny, to decide rather than be in the right - had been cultivated with extraordinary assiduity. - The course of logical thought and reasoning in our modern brain corresponds to a process and struggle of impulses, which singly and in themselves are all very illogical and unjust; we experience usually only the result of the struggle, so rapidly and secretly does this primitive mechanism now operate in us.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Obviously, not everything can be proved, just as not everything can be defined. If every proposition had to be proved, there would be no beginning to any proof. Such things as axioms and assumptions or postulates are needed for the proof of other propositions. If these other propositons are proved, they can, of course, be used as premises in further proofs. (P. 131)”
― Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

“It’s always divine revelation versus made-up stuff.”
― Petros Scientia, Exposing the REAL Creation-Evolution Debate

“Whenever we have any experience, we interpret the experience. We interpret every observation. We then insert our interpretations of our experiences into our worldviews. We accumulate interpretations of experiences in our worldviews. Our worldviews seem like reality, but they aren’t real. We could call our worldviews “worldly wisdom.” They aren’t the wisdom that God imparts, but God speaks to us about His wisdom as compared to worldly wisdom.”
― Petros Scientia, Exposing the REAL Creation-Evolution Debate

“a person so often accused cannot be entirely innocent”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“I couldn’t answer that one right off the cuff but I remembered an axiom of a C.O. Of mine during the war. “When in doubt—reconnoitre. It doesn’t do the damnedest bit of good but it gives you time to think, and anyhow French words look and sound splendid in all military contexts.” There was possibly a fallacy in his theory because he was eventually killed by a booby-trap while reconnoitring a brothel in Rangoon—but I decided to follow his advice.”
― Berkley Mather