Under daily life noise there is a calm and pacific realm. The medecine professor Jon Kabat-Zinn puts forward the analogy of the storm at sea to illustrate the superficiality of most of our concerns. At sea level we fear the most violent storm, but a couple of dozen feet below : everything is calm and still. Defined as a quest to wisdom, philosophy wakes us up from the slumber of ignorance. It puts forward 'alarm clocks' whom, if we accept their authority, force us to realize the unsoundness of our noisy opinions.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself -- and you are the easiest person to fool - Richard Feynman, physics Nobel prize 1965

You will never get into trouble by admitting that you may be wrong - Dale Carnegie, american author and public speaker

Vain men never hear anything but praise - Le Petit Prince

Most men seek less to be instructed, and even to be amused, than to be praised and applauded - Jean de la Bruyère, french philosopher

What you do speak so loudly I cannot hear what you say - Ralph Waldo Emerson, american philosopher and poet

The most important thing in communication is to hear what is not being said - Peter Druker, professeur et consultant américain en management d'entreprise

Tell you the secret to a good life : always be the oldest one in the room - Yvon Chouinard, founder of the Patagonia brand

[...] modern culture has been increasingly building blindness to the mysterious, the impenetrable, what Nietzsche called the Dionysian in life - Nassim Taleb, essayist, statistician and risk expert

Original humans were believed to be both male and female ; this made them so powerful that the gods feared them and split them in half - Susan Sontag, american essayist, novelist and militant

Is Arnold Jackson a bad man who does good things or a good man who does bad things ? It's a difficult question to answer. Perhaps we make too much of the difference between one man and another. Perhaps the best of us are sinners and the worst of us are saints. Who knows ? Somerset Maugham, british novelist

People hate to have their minds changed - Jeff Atwood, developer and cofonder of Stack Overflow website

Never ask permission to do your job correctly - Doc Norton, speaker, coach and consultant in software delivery

People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it - John Jost, american social psychologist

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other - Eric Hoffer, american philosopher and psychologist

Non nobis solum nati sumus (we are not born for ourselves alone) - Cicero, roman antiquity philosopher

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth - Mohamed Ali, american professional boxer