Top 40 Exurb1a Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Go home, Tao. Don’t try to be a hero, or a sage, or a warrior. Just exist for a while and be decent. That’s heroism enough.”

— Exurb1a

2. “Inaction is the primary refuge of those who prefer their own constructed realities to the beautiful chaos of the real world.”

— Exurb1a

3. “Hell isn’t a fire pit but a museum of regrets.”

— Exurb1a

4. “With the right ears even a lesser creature can hear the song. It is sung constantly, from the heart of each atom and star. The galaxies hum of shape and form in their essence. That is their secret. The particles whisper of the nature of proper interactions. That is their game. And during a storm, in the forest, on the right night, it is no secret that the leaves all sing of God.”

— Exurb1a

5. “Live out the rest of your life in a constant and quietly sad state of What If? Inaction is the primary refuge of those who prefer their own constructed realities to the beautiful chaos of the real world.”

— Exurb1a

6. “The true horror of existence is not the certainty of death, nor the threat of hell, but the knowledge that we will likely go our entire lives as impossibly complex machines, walking about in an impossibly complex universe, and never truly discover what it was all for. I don’t know is brave. I’ll never know is heroic.”

— Exurb1a

7. “We call it ‘narrative collapse’. When a planet is very connected, a time inevitably arrives when it becomes difficult to work out what is actually going on. Video and audio can be faked. Testimony isn’t reliable. All truths fall into a relative flatness. This is more dangerous than any doomsday weapon. You.”

— Exurb1a

8. “There’s nothing magic about a grenade, but you still don’t pull the pin out.”

— Exurb1a

9. “Beauty is nice and virtue is attractive, but nothing is more gorgeous than meeting another creature who shares your deepest values.”

— Exurb1a

10. “If I asked you in the midst of a tragedy, “Shall I end your suffering and make all well again?” you would answer, “Please do, I beg it.” If instead I asked you after the tragedy, “Are you glad you lived through it? Did you grow wiser from the experience?” you would answer, “Yes! Thank you for not stopping the thing prematurely.” Humans are not to be trusted.”

— Exurb1a

11. “People who spend all their time taking photos will just remember taking photos. Souvenirs only make you think of buying them, don’t they.”

— Exurb1a

12. “Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in.”

— Exurb1a

13. “Where there are tyrants, we’ll bring death. Where there are no tyrants, we’ll call them tyrants and we’ll bring death. Where there is anarchy, we’ll bring laws. Where there is no anarchy, we’ll call it anarchy and we’ll bring laws.”

— Exurb1a

14. “Also: Never buy cheap socks. Dance when you can. You’ll know when you’re in love. If you have to check, you’re not.”

— Exurb1a

15. “The universe was alive with staccato radio chatter and art and curiosity and wonder and change.”

— Exurb1a

16. “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. – Carl Jung.”

— Exurb1a

17. “In the beginning there was Nothing but Nothing is unstable so Something came about.”

— Exurb1a

18. “If philosophers gave clear answers then surely the whole field would’ve died out with the Greeks.”

— Exurb1a

19. “I fear that on my last day, on my deathbed, that is when the meaning of things will enter the room and kiss my forehead and whisper into my ear what it was I should have done with my life, and how I should’ve conducted myself. Hell isn’t a fire pit but a museum of regrets.”

— Exurb1a

20. “If I was in hell, would I know?”

— Exurb1a

21. “There is evil in the world, yet God claims he loves us. If he could remove that evil but chooses not to, then he is not all-loving as we’re told he is. If he wants to remove that evil from the world but cannot, then why do we call him all-powerful? In any case, he’s not truly God and there’s nothing to be frightened of. Chin up.” “Goodnight.”

— Exurb1a

22. “With quiet horror I knew then that the great transition in man’s history was not from illiteracy to literacy, nor from ground-bound to spacefaring, but that invisible, unremarked-of moment when the most dangerous threat to man’s existence ceased being nature, and became man himself.”

— Exurb1a

23. “This was matter’s most honest state in any case; superposition, quantum tunnelling, entanglement, cleavance, wormhole fracture; all of the strange furniture of quantum mechanics appeared to be the universe’s true face. All else was matter trying to seem sober, putting on laws for show.”

— Exurb1a

24. “That which is abandoned in the name of efficiency was often an essential part after all.”

— Exurb1a

25. “Save a drowning fool and he’ll only be back in the river the next day. And what then?” The boy lowers his voice to its true pitch; deep and echoing all of a sudden. “Leave him to drown and you’re no better than a murderer.”

— Exurb1a

26. “As far as I’m aware there has never been a point in history when a village, a society, or a planet has come together for a day and said, “What is it we’re all going after?” There has never been a vote about our collective purpose.”

— Exurb1a

27. “Humans are the only animals that build zoos for themselves.”

— Exurb1a

28. “It’s funny, you don’t convince the living to behave in a proper way; you just wait for them to die and hope their children grow up a little kinder and wiser than their parents.”

— Exurb1a

29. “In the face of an intangible problem, ignorance is generally the safest option.”

— Exurb1a

30. “Whatever happens, however clever we eventually become, there will be an end to our trials and projects. Whether we’re superseded by our creations or just put to sleep by exhaustion, the end of history will approach eventually. When that occurs, all the statues and books and paintings in the world won’t save our legacy. Better then that we just enjoy the time we have, living in a wonderful age like the one we find ourselves in now.”

— Exurb1a

31. “Power is fine. Restraint is better. Technology saves some. Compassion saves all.”

— Exurb1a

32. “True liberation is through the recognition of one’s unopposable oppressors.”

— Exurb1a

33. “One would strain to tell the difference between insanity and a mere annoyance, depending on the context. If a fellow had been wronged enough, perhaps he would take on the appearance of a man insane, but he is only insane with rage.”

— Exurb1a

34. “Let them be brave, the old man thought, a prayer to no one in particular – whoever they are, my great grandchildren – let them be brave so they might look back upon this planet from a distant star one day and have forged their own, better place. Let them be brave so they might choose Compassion over Stupidity each and every time. Let their genes hum with the Insatiable Need to Know That Which They Don’t Know Yet. God, let them be better than us at the very least.”

— Exurb1a

35. “Just like a hotel, it’s a place to sleep and be, only you don’t sleep that much and you’re barely a thing at all anymore. You keep the place bare like this because there’s nothing left on the inside to express.”

— Exurb1a

36. “Consciousness is a pattern, he mused. An ocean of sorts.”

— Exurb1a

37. “Two weeks of false starts, of too much cloud cover, of strong wind, of last minute mechanical doubts.”

— Exurb1a

38. “But if you think about it long enough, you’ll always come around to the same conclusion, I reckon. There’s no grand plan and no one’s in charge.”

— Exurb1a

39. “Until that hungry black god eats me up. Now I spend the centuries circling into it like a penny in one of those coin spirals at an arcade;.”

— Exurb1a

40. “Happy people are just people you aren’t acquainted enough with yet to know how miserable they really are.”

— Exurb1a

41. “Don’t be so foolish to believe empires are built on stone. They’re on bamboo stilts at best.”

— Exurb1a

42. “Is there a more opulent society imaginable than one that builds spaceships while its population starves?”

— Exurb1a

43. “With no help from myself, he also declared that self-consciousness was the product of a positive feedback loop between perception and reflection, the two eventually amplifying each other into a cycle that occurred so quickly neither could be separated from the other.”

— Exurb1a

44. “What a lovely thing utopia is when you were too young to remember the horror that came with it.”

— Exurb1a

45. “Then what? Damn it, what works?” “Adulthood. Only the wisdom of adulthood. From my spyle friends I’ve heard there is evidence of millions of developing species in the cosmos, many dead, many yet to arise. Some are carbon-based, some are silicon-based, some are gaseous, others distributed across entire solar systems in vast networks of radio intelligence. But there is one thing, one singular pressure imposing upon on them all. Can they learn moderation before extincting themselves?”

— Exurb1a

46. “He said silently and with infinite volume, Mind is only matter that knows it is matter. Matter is only mind that is yet to become mind.”

— Exurb1a

47. “Within a few minutes the gin and beer took hold. Leo’s head became full of warm marmalade and the usual neurotic mental noise had dimmed to a mutter. So this is what the drunks are after, he thought.”

— Exurb1a