Ron Kozloff
Writer and Director
APHORISMS
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Agreeing with someone creates a strange brotherhood that both know will not last.
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Beauty (or the perception of it) does not last long, and that is one of its chief appeals.
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Being busy makes time pass more quickly and hastens the approach of your death.
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Being on the right side of history” means to be on the side of democracy, as if democracies have always been right.
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Beware of anyone else telling you what is important.
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Can we be anyone in our dreams that we are not already? The answer is no.
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Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is worse than doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
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Don’t we create problems in order to have something to do?
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English has to be the most snobbish language in the world. Only the pronoun I is capitalized. I am superior to you and him and her and them, and even me.
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Faith means that you believe something is true but you don’t really know. Why not just call that “ignorance”?
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Guilt hurts oneself and helps other people.
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How do I know that I am telling the truth? You can’t tell me.
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Heaven would have to be a place with no thoughts.
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Help is not a four-letter word.
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Happiness is a biochemical trance.
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It is possible that everything I say is untrue (but I doubt it.)
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In the end everything means nothing.
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It is too easy to automatically adopt an ideology. It is like cheating on yourself.
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I don’t believe in anything; either I know it or I don’t know it.
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It’s amazing how many people don’t want to see other people happy.
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Intelligence does not always include humour, but humour always includes intelligence.
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It is better to have too much to do than too little.
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Lust is dumb and it makes us even dumber.
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Laughter is a car crash, two irreconcilable ideas colliding.
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Living is like carrying a hot potato that you don’t know where to drop.
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Life is short if you know why you are alive.
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Logic suggests there is a reason for something. But what if the reason doesn’t make sense?
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Maybe objects feel superior to us but have no way of showing it.
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Maybe one day people will be capable of using more of their brain capacity in order to figure out why politicians exist.
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Man is a defective machine that should be taken off the road.
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Never trust short people who have lots of testosterone.
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No religious experience can compete with the first drink of the day.
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Once you recognize the futility, you have to start describing it.
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People living in a democracy are probably happier than people living in a totalitarian state, but that is not saying much.
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People sometimes pretend to know how animals think. It is more likely that they know how we think.
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Pleasure obeys The Law of Diminishing Returns.
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Pleasure is The Grand Seductress.
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Public service is our highest calling as human beings. It means being ready to help other people. It is a value that should be taught in schools. Quite the opposite is now the case
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Survival is overrated; there are lots of things worse than death.
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Sleeping is the next best thing to being dead.
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Sometimes the worst torture is more easily endurable than the slightest annoyance.
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Sex and love can be opposites. Sometimes the best sex is with someone you hate.
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The wise are always essentially indifferent.
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There are never any answers, but it is still our habit (and duty) to ask the questions.
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There is some force in nature, either in the person or against him, that does not want him to evolve. It is the genesis of the enemy.
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The most rewarding activities are said to be ones in which you are helping others. That is because you are gaining the relief of not having to think about yourself.
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There is no job that is held in lower esteem in our society than a poet’s.
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a poet.”
“Oh, yeah? Can I scrape you off the floor?
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The greatest power you can have over somebody is not to need them.
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The body is the first obstacle to liberation. The body rules, doesn’t it?
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Truly understanding somebody not only means walking in their shoes but also being them from the time of birth.
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The only real accomplishment is changing human nature.
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The heart and the head are natural enemies.
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The sad fact is that you can’t believe in anyone, not even in yourself.
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There are so many diseases available in the world it is a small wonder that everyone is not always sick.
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To see with different eyes. Everyone needs a new pair of eyes. Everyone.
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The next world war should be waged by those who think everything is connected against those who believe all things are separate.…The most despairing position to take is that it is all cast in stone.…We are particles that collide in moments, separate, and then go off on our own way.
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The inmate in prison spends most of his time in a small space on his bed reading, getting up for his meals occasionally. That is exactly what I do.
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The only question you need to ask yourself is what you should be doing at any given moment.
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The down side about accomplishing something is that you are then in the position of having to find what to accomplish next.
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The educational system is a factory that manufactures idiots.
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The only way you can hurt a masochist is to not hurt him.
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The truth doesn’t matter. It has never mattered. It was always my truth that was all important.
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There is a God and He is definitely the world’s best comic.
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The trick to survival is getting used to your own stink.
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The unfortunates win in the end.
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The only real weapon we possess is laughter.
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The only real weapon we possess is the ability to laugh.
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There is no me, really; there is only my name.
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The hardest part about being human is finding out what it means to be human.
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There must be a storage space somewhere in the universe that contains all the books that were never written, all the movies that were never made, all the jokes that were never told, all the songs that were never sung.
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There is something beautiful about a smile. It is like an invitation into the centre of a flower .
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The inmate in prison spends most of his time in a small space on his bed reading, getting up for his meals occasionally. That is exactly what I do
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The ideal mental state would be to be able to remember everything you needed and forget everything you wanted.
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Violence will not help your cause, might even damage it. But it will also damage your enemy
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What keeps us going is the curiosity about what is going to happen. The problem is that we already know what is going to happen.
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What is the point of encouraging any country to establish democracy when we have seen what democracy is really all about?
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Why is unemployment so difficult? Because it is an unnatural state.
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Why can’t we realize that we are all just poor, bewildered beasts in a cage? Wouldn’t that help to bring us together in our zoo.
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What is the point of being able to think if you are not thinking about what counts?
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Why don’t the overweight and the underfed exchange places for a month or two?
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Why do people talk of their souls? It is like a blind man describing a picture that is in front of him.
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We assume that the handicapped are nicer people than we are; it’s not true.
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We can only hope that those who succeed the human race do not resemble it.
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What number comes after a zillion?
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What is important in this life is to discover what is important.
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You don’t always admire what someone you admire admires.
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You hold the gun; I ask you to use it because I know you won’t.
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You don’t always admire what someone you admire admires.
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IF…
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If people could ever feel the full immensity of the horror of life at once it would make them explode.
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If you’ve ever had too much of a good thing, you always want another good thing.
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If misery loves company it must be very happy.
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If too many people like me, I think I must be doing something wrong.
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If you are not crazy in this life there is something wrong with you.
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If you can’t help yourself, you should try to help somebody else.
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If life is a becoming, then death cannot be an end.
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If only the dead could hear what we say of their home.
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If human beings are naturally cut off and isolated it is because we have a body.
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If you’re not pushed or pulled you aren’t going anywhere.
BEING YOUNG… GETTING OLD
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When you’re young you don’t see things clearly; when you’re old you don’t want to see things clearly.
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The only advantage in being young is that you look better.
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The young always have to have their own reality and it has to be superior to yours.
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One good thing about getting old is that you come to realize that most things don’t matter.
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Aging means becoming less and less until there is eventually no more left.
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As life proceeds people often become less alive.
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In the early 21st century heroes no longer exist for many young people. This suggests a disturbing lack of ignorance on their part. A hero is a hero only when we don’t know all about him.
WOMEN, MEN, FAMILY
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A big advantage women have over men is that they don’t think about sex as often.
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Why are there so few female philosophers? Maybe women don’t like to waste their time.
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Beautiful women get tired of being thought beautiful. They must also distrust beauty in others.
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Women are superficial when it comes to themselves and profound when it comes to the opposite sex.
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It is true that men hate and fear women. Who wouldn’t hate someone who used to be their childhood jailer and dictator?
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Ugly women must carry lots of rage.
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I often think that women think men are idiots they have to tolerate just long enough to get pregnant.
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It seems that those who have the least want to have the most children.
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For the family man there is engagement but burden; for the bachelor there is loneliness but the space to dream.
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Families are tribes. They are an excuse to hate other tribes.
MONEY
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Money is a bandage on a wound that never heals.
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Money is the most popular girl at the dance, but once she is spent she turns into an old lady.
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The profit motive is at the bottom of all action.
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The only time money is important is when you don’t have enough of it.
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The fastest way to get somebody to like you is to give them money.
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Money and death are two sides of the same coin. Most people choose to look at one side rather than the other.
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The chief advantage of being rich is knowing how little value money really has. The poor can live under a comfortable illusion.
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I would like a percentage from anyone who casts me in their fantasy.
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Shouldn’t there be a tax on using up oxygen? You should have to give back some sort of something, say, a good deed.
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Capitalism is the expression of our natural greed; socialism is supposed to be the expression of our natural benevolence. Let’s wonder which is stronger.
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Wasting time is called time spent doing something that will not bring you gain, as if gain is the only thing worth striving for.