Wikiquote:Quote of the day/Complete list

This page listed all "Quotes of the day" at Wikiquote with the latest at the top — of tall those that had been been chosen up to January 2010. As the selection process has now been drastically revised, this archive no longer actually serves such useful functions as it once did, and has been abandoned. The only complete listings on one page henceforth will be one with earliest at top on the page: Quote of the Day Template:QoDBar2024

2010 : January

2009 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

2008 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

2007 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

2006 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

2005 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

2004 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

2003 : July - August - September - October - November - December (Note: In the first six months of the Wikiquote project a new "Quote of the Day" was not always selected for each day, and sometimes several days would pass before a new one was chosen.)

Latest quotations are listed first:

January 2010

Anybody can they say they are being "spiritual" — and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern. Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature. ~ Ken Wilber

Is there not glory enough in living the days given to us? You should know there is adventure in simply being among those we love and the things we love, and beauty, too. ~ Lloyd Alexander

Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs. ~ Anton Chekhov

Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate. ~ José Martí

Twas brillig and the slithy toves,
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son,
the jaws that bite and claws that scratch
Beware the jubjub bird
and shun the frumious bandersnatch."
~ Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass ~

If you don't have enemies, you don't have character. ~ Paul Newman

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us
An' ev'n Devotion.
~ Robert Burns ~

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. ~ Edith Wharton

Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one. ~ Stendhal

Truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.
~ Lord Byron in Don Juan ~

That which is above comprehension we cannot perceive to be contradictory, nor on the other hand can we perceive its rationality or consistency. ~ Ethan Allen

To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. ~ Barack Obama

Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less. ~ Robert E. Lee

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise. ~ Charles de Montesquieu

I somehow see what's beautiful
In things that are ephemeral.
I'm my only friend of mine,
And love is just a piece of time
In the world
In the world.
And I couldn't help but fall in love again.
~ Zooey Deschanel ~

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering — rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer's words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr. ~ Susan Sontag

Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Conscious faith is freedom.
Emotional faith is slavery.
Mechanical faith is foolishness.
~ G. I. Gurdjieff ~

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe. ~ Edmund Burke

I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom of the individuals of whom they are composed. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains. ~ Robinson Jeffers

I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end. ~ Simone de Beauvoir

My intent is to tell the truth as I know it, realizing that what is true for me may be blasphemy for others. ~ Gerry Spence

When I take people round to see my animals, one of the first questions they ask (unless the animal is cute and appealing) is, "what use is it?" by which they mean, "what use is it to them?" To this one can reply "What use is the Acropolis?" Does a creature have to be of direct material use to mankind in order to exist? By and large, by asking the question "what use is it?" you are asking the animal to justify its existence without having justified your own. ~ Gerald Durrell

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to. ~ Khalil Gibran

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis. ~ Umberto Eco

That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it.
Oh, no, I've said too much.
I haven't said enough.
~ R.E.M. ~

Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion

I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. ~ Isaac Asimov

The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it. ~ J. D. Salinger

December 2009

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it. ~ George Marshall

Justice has nothing to do with victor nations and vanquished nations, but must be a moral standard that all the world's peoples can agree to. To seek this and to achieve it — that is true civilization. ~ Hideki Tojo

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

At terrestrial temperatures matter has complex properties which are likely to prove most difficult to unravel; but it is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. ~ Louis Pasteur

The obstacles to peace are in the minds and hearts of men.
In the study of matter we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why we succeed in dealing with it. But about the things we care for — which are ourselves, our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates — we find a harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the greater need. Only by intellectual rectitude and in that field shall we be saved. There is no refuge but in truth, in human intelligence, in the unconquerable mind of man. ~ Norman Angell

How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments. ~ Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard's Almanack

People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success. ~ Norman Vincent Peale
"Heaven helps those who help themselves" is a well-tried maxim, embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates. Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency is to render them comparatively helpless. ~ Samuel Smiles

That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you. ~ Charles de Lint

All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an existence. ~ Benjamin Disraeli in Coningsby

Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
~ John Fletcher ~

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" ~ Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. ~ Paul Klee

All he desired in life was that — that he could pick himself together again and go on with his daily occupations if — the girl, being five thousand miles away, would continue to love him. He wanted nothing more, He prayed his God for nothing more. ~ Ford Madox Ford

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. ~ Walt Disney

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. ~ Margaret Chase Smith

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. ~ George Pólya

What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. ~ Gustave Flaubert

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. ... Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past ... it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst — not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association. ~ Peter Kropotkin

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter. ~ Horace

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm. You learn the delivery of a part only before an audience. ~ Willa Cather

Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
To cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause
In which to sing and to die!
~ Joyce Kilmer ~

Faith I have, in myself, in humanity, in the worthwhileness of the pursuits in entertainment for the masses. But wide awake, not blind faith, moves me. My operations are based on experience, thoughtful observation and warm fellowship with my neighbors at home and around the world. ~ Walt Disney

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy. ~ Thomas Carlyle

He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word. ~ Joseph Conrad

The AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide. ~ Susan Sontag

I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality— recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand — on the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community. ~ Ivan Illich

November 2009

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. ~ Mark Twain

Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize — because they set so little store by them — the immense riches accumulated by the human race on either side of the narrow furrow on which they keep their eyes fixed; by underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished. ~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you'll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourelf and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo. ~ Bruce Lee

I believe that what separates us all from one another is simply society itself, or, if you like, politics. This is what raises barriers between men, this is what creates misunderstanding.
If I may be allowed to express myself paradoxically, I should say that the truest society, the authentic human community, is extra-social — a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias. The whole history of the world has been governed by nostalgias and anxieties, which political action does no more than reflect and interpret, very imperfectly. No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa. ~ Eugène Ionesco

Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come. ~ Upton Sinclair

Fight the enemy with the weapons he lacks. ~ Alexander Suvorov

Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read! ~ Alfonso X of Castile

It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. ~ George Eliot

Although I came to doubt all revelation, I can never accept the idea that the Universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the clichés and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths which I think all of us might accept some day. There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God — a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the Cosmos. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern.~ Benoît Mandelbrot

We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities. ~ Indira Gandhi

A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately. ~ Margaret Atwood

What I say is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only, never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through. ~ Voltairine de Cleyre

There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity. ~ Nnamdi Azikiwe

Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas. ~ Erwin Rommel

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. ~ Herman Melville in Moby-Dick

It is better to be a fool than to be dead. It is better to emit a scream in the shape of a theory than to be entirely insensible to the jars and incongruities of life and take everything as it comes in a forlorn stupidity. Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens. ~ Bahá'u'lláh

Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those they have slain. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times. ~ Friedrich Schiller

History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power have destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again. ~ Carl Sagan

Charity keepeth us in Faith and Hope, and Hope leadeth us in Charity. And in the end all shall be Charity. ~ Julian of Norwich

Political progress will only take place if sufficient security exists. ~ David Petraeus

A man or woman is seldom happy unless he or she is sustaining him or herself and making a contribution to others. ~ Zig Ziglar

Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. ~ Eugene V. Debs

All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful. ~ Wilfred Owen

Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man's eternal life. ~ André Malraux

Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Some say this world of trouble
Is the only one we need
But I’m waiting for that morning
When the new world is revealed.

Oh, when the saints go marching in,
When the saints go marching in,
Oh Lord, I want to be in that number,
When the saints go marching in!

~ When the Saints Go Marching In ~

October 2009

Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Full alchemiz’d, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven!
~ John Keats ~

The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. ~ John Adams

No moral system can rest solely on authority. ~ Alfred Jules Ayer

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. ~ Jonas Salk

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
~ Dylan Thomas ~

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements. ~ Napoleon Hill

This day is call'd — the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and sees old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his friends,
And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian;"
Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words, —
Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd, —
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me,
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,
Shall think themselves accurs'd, they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks,
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

King Henry V
as portrayed in
Henry V
by
~ William Shakespeare ~

A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence. ~ Stephen Covey

Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third. And to this end the actor must forget his personality and throw aside his joys and sorrows. He must present the public with the reality of a being who for him is only a fiction. With his own eyes, he must shed the tears of the other. With his own voice, he must groan the anguish of the other. His own heart beats as if it would burst, for it is the other's heart that beats in his heart. And when he retires from a tragic or dramatic scene, if he has properly rendered his character, he must be panting and exhausted. ~ Sarah Bernhardt

If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people. ~ Timothy Leary

Should children be permitted to read Romances, & Relations of Giants & Magicians, & Genii? — I know all that has been said against it; but I have formed my faith in the affirmative. — I know no other way of giving the mind a love of "the Great," & "the Whole." — Those who have been led by the same truths step by step thro' the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess — They contemplate nothing but parts — and all parts are necessarily little — and the Universe to them is but a mass of little things. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Gonna stand my ground, won't be turned around
and I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
gonna stand my ground and I won't back down.
~ Tom Petty ~

He gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together. ~ Jonathan Swift

Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted. ~ Arthur Miller

The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience. ~ William O. Douglas

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity. ~ Hannah Arendt

The practical reason for freedom is that freedom seems to be the only condition under which any kind of substantial moral fiber can be developed — we have tried law, compulsion and authoritarianism of various kinds, and the result is nothing to be proud of. ~ Albert Jay Nock

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. ~ Aleister Crowley

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.
For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges." ~ The Norwegian Nobel Committee on the Nobel Peace Prize of 2009

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.
~ John Lennon ~

Muad'Dib could indeed see the Future, but you must understand the limits of this power. Think of sight. You have eyes, yet cannot see without light. If you are on the floor of a valley, you cannot see beyond your valley. Just so, Muad'Dib could not always choose to look across the mysterious terrain. He tells us that a single obscure decision of prophecy, perhaps the choice of one word over another, could change the entire aspect of the future. He tells us "The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door." And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning "That path leads ever down into stagnation." ~ Frank Herbert in Dune

I am doing it
the it I am doing is
the I that is doing it
the I that is doing it is
the it I am doing
it is doing the I that am doing it
I am being done by the it I am doing
it is doing it
~ Ronald David Laing ~

Every marvel of our age arose out of the critical give and take of an open society. No other civilization ever managed to incorporate this crucial innovation, weaving it into daily life. And if you disagree with this ... say so! ~ David Brin

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint. ~ Denis Diderot

The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. — How is this? ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.
We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. ~ John Perry Barlow

There is but one means to extenuate the effects of enemy fire: it is to develop a more violent fire oneself. ~ Ferdinand Foch

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good. ~ Rufus Choate

September 2009

Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.
~ Rumi ~

I must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

The way which the superior man pursues, reaches wide and far, and yet is secret. Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage does not know. Common men and women, however much below the ordinary standard of character, can carry it into practice; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage is not able to carry into practice. Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it. ~ Confucius

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present: Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. — Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, which is the wish of our enemies, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. ~ Samuel Adams

Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us — a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. ~ William Faulkner

Extremism. It is an almost infallible sign — a kind of death-rattle — when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and only those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them. ~ John Brunner

In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University, the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the ground, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
~ John Keats ~

Ah, you loved me as a loser,
But now you're worried that I just might win.
You know the way to stop me,
But you don't have the discipline.
How many nights I prayed for this,
To let my work begin.
First we take Manhattan,
Then we take Berlin.
~ Leonard Cohen ~

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical. ~ Sophia Loren

The soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathomed center. Like that ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drowned hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds.
~ Hartley Coleridge ~

As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. ~ Samuel Johnson

Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past. ~ William Carlos Williams

Descend, descend, Urania, speak
To men in their own tongue!
Leave not the breaking heart to break
Because thine own is strong.
This is the law, in dream and deed,
That heaven must walk on earth!
O, shine upon the humble creed
That holds the heavenly birth.
~ Alfred Noyes ~

Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. ~ Agatha Christie

The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely — which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion. ~ Sydney J. Harris

By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent,
And what to those we give, to Jove is lent.
~ Alexander Pope ~
in his interpretation of
The Odyssey by Homer

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down. ~ Stanisław Lem

On September 11, 2001, the world fractured. It's beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow — the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another's heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction. ~ Barack Obama

It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher. ~ Charles Sanders Peirce

All men live not by the thought they spend on their own welfare, but because love exists in man.
I knew before that God gave life to men and desires that they should live; now I understood more than that.
I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love. ~ Leo Tolstoy

What voice revisits me this night? What face
To my heart’s room returns?
From the perpetual silence where the grace
Of human sainthood burns
Hastes he once more to harmonise and heal?
I know not. Only I feel
His influence undiminished
And his life’s work, in me and many, unfinished.
~ Siegfried Sassoon ~

I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones, and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them.
I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I am satisfied with it. I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. ~ Grandma Moses

I saw a rainbow earlier today
Lately those rainbows be comin' round like everyday
Deep in the struggle I have found the beauty of me
God is watchin' and the Devil finally let me be
Here in this moment to myself.
~ Macy Gray ~

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. ~ Caspar David Friedrich

As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before. ~ François-René de Chateaubriand

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law. ~ Louis Sullivan

If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. ~ Henry George

Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof. Lev. XXV X
Inscription
on the
~ Liberty Bell ~

August 2009

There's not a war between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between extremists and moderates of all the religions. ... What is important is not to live in fear. The most dangerous thing to do is to give up and lose hope. The main enemy is not terrorism or extremism, but ignorance. ~ Queen Rania of Jordan

The animals of the Burgess Shale are holy objects — in the unconventional sense that this word conveys in some cultures. We do not place them on pedestals and worship from afar. We climb mountains and dynamite hillsides to find them. We quarry them, split them, carve them, draw them, and dissect them, struggling to wrest their secrets. We vilify and curse them for their damnable intransigence. They are grubby little creatures of a sea floor 530 million years old, but we greet them with awe because they are the Old Ones, and they are trying to tell us something. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the Creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation. The Creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing — until there is only ... the dance. ~ Michael Jackson

What is the use of being wise if we are not sometimes merry? The merriment of wise men is not the uninformed, gross fun of ignorant men, but it has more kinship with that than the pinched, frightened fun of those who are neither learned nor ignorant, gentle nor simple, bound nor free. The idea that a wise man must be solemn is bred and preserved among people who have no idea what wisdom is, and can only respect whatever makes them feel inferior. ~ Robertson Davies

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. ~ Ted Kennedy

If you can't see God in All, You can't see God at All. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant, someone who disrupts the daily drag of life just enough to leave the victim thinking there's maybe more to it all than the mere hum-drum quality of existence. ~ Elvis Costello

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
~ Robert Herrick ~

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.
~ William Ernest Henley ~

Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art. ~ Claude Debussy

People ask me... "What do you still bring from Hawaii? How does it affect your character, how does it affect your politics?" I try to explain to them something about the Aloha Spirit. I try to explain to them this basic idea that we all have obligations to each other, that we're not alone, that if we see somebody who's in need we should help... that we look out for one another, that we deal with each other with courtesy and respect, and most importantly, that when you come from Hawaii, you start understanding that what's on the surface, what people look like — that doesn't determine who they are. And that the power and strength of diversity, the ability of people from everywhere ... whether they're black or white, whether they're Japanese-Americans or Korean-Americans or Filipino-Americans or whatever they are, they are just Americans, that all of us can work together and all of us can join together to create a better country. And it's that spirit, that I'm absolutely convinced, is what America is looking for right now. ~ Barack Obama ~

Science traditionally takes the reductionist approach, saying that the collective properties of molecules, or the fundamental units of whatever system you're talking about, are enough to account for all of the system's activity. But this standard approach leaves out one very important additional factor, and that's the spacing and timing of activity — its pattern or form. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

Let those find fault whose wit's so very small,
They've need to show that they can think at all;
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
~ John Dryden ~

Tho' the world could turn from you,
This, at least, I learn from you:
Beauty and Truth, tho' never found, are worthy to be sought,
The singer, upward-springing,
Is grander than his singing,
And tranquil self-sufficing joy illumes the dark of thought.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan ~

To this day, if you ask me how I became a writer, I cannot give you an answer. To this day, if you ask me how a book is written, I cannot answer. For long periods, if I didn't know that somehow in the past I had written a book, I would have given up. ~ V. S. Naipaul

Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practising the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex. ~ T. E. Lawrence

The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of credal statement, but fruits of the soul's inner experience. ~ Sri Aurobindo

Time will rust the sharpest sword,
Time will consume the strongest cord;
That which molders hemp and steel,
Mortal arm and nerve must feel.
~ Walter Scott ~

The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. ~ Felix Adler

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers. ~ Edith Hamilton

If the world ever advances beyond what it is today, it must be led by men who express their real opinions. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.
And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value. ~ Andrew Sullivan

For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer, because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question. ~ P. L. Travers

If I can find out God, then I shall find Him,
If none can find Him, then I shall sleep soundly,
Knowing how well on earth your love sufficed me,
A lamp in darkness.
~ Sara Teasdale ~

Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car. ~ Garrison Keillor

The fate of all explanation is to close one door only to have another fly wide open. ~ Charles Fort

Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
~ Wendell Berry ~

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment. ~ Clifford D. Simak

Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain. ~ John Tyndall

In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a sacred white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, — even though it be covertly, and by snatches. ~ Herman Melville

July 2009

I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer. I am none of these; I'm a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual. ~ Primo Levi

Moving stranger,
Does it really matter,
As long as you're not afraid to feel?
Touch me, hold me.
How my open arms ache!
Try to fall for me.
~ Kate Bush ~

For all that has been —
Thanks.
For all that shall be —
Yes.
~ Dag Hammarskjöld ~

We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves. ~ Karl Popper

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. ~ Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" ~ George Bernard Shaw

Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good. ~ Eric Hoffer

The art of victory is learned in defeat. ~ Simón Bolívar

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act — and if necessary, to suffer and die — for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied. These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. ~ Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

There was sadness in being a man, but it was a proud thing too. And he showed what the pride of it was till you couldn't help feeling it. Yes, even in hell, if a man was a man, you'd know it. And he wasn't pleading for any one person any more, though his voice rang like an organ. He was telling the story and the failures and the endless journey of mankind. They got tricked and trapped and bamboozled, but it was a great journey. And no demon that was ever foaled could know the inwardness of it — it took a man to do that. ... His voice could search the heart, and that was his gift and his strength. And to one, his voice was like the forest and its secrecy, and to another like the sea and the storms of the sea; and one heard the cry of his lost nation in it, and another saw a little harmless scene he hadn't remembered for years. But each saw something. And when Dan'l Webster finished he didn't know whether or not he'd saved Jabez Stone. But he knew he'd done a miracle. For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men. ~ Stephen Vincent Benét

Now I've been happy lately
Thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be
Something good has begun.
Oh, I've been smiling lately
Dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be
Someday it's going to come.
~ Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) ~

Houston: Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. ~ Neil Armstrong

Old anchormen, you see, don't fade away; they just keep coming back for more. And that's the way it is... ~ Walter Cronkite

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

They told us not to wish in the first place, not to aspire, not to try; to be quiet, to play nice, to shoot low and aspire not at all. They are always wrong. Follow your dreams. Make your wishes. Create the future. And above all, believe in yourself. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

I have always lived in a world in which I'm just a spot in history. My life is not the important point. I'm just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on. I cannot conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that. ~ Sheri S. Tepper

Choose only one master — Nature. ~ Rembrandt

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island,
From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.
~ Woody Guthrie ~

O how I feel, just as I pluck the flower
And stick it to my breast — words can't reveal;
But there are souls that in this lovely hour
Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel.
~ John Clare ~

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow. ~ William Osler

I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum. My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right. ~ John Quincy Adams

It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. ~ William Blackstone

As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth — whatever the truth may be — that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life. ~ June Jordan

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish. ~ Jean de La Fontaine

Magic is not science, it is a collection of ways to do things — ways that work but often we don't know why. ~ Robert A. Heinlein in Glory Road

Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel. ~ Jean Cocteau

Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached. ~ Franz Kafka

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another. ~ Hermann Hesse

There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

June 2009

I think that I am here, on this earth,
To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know.
As if I were sent so that whatever takes place
Has meaning because it changes into memory.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~

What makes the desert beautiful ... is that somewhere it hides a well. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince

Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God. Think yourself, and let think. Use no constraint in matters of religion. Even those who are farthest out of the way never compel to come in by any other means than reason, truth, and love. ~ John Wesley

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope. ~ Helen Keller

Heal the world, make it a better place,
For you and for me and the entire human race,
There are people dying, but if you care enough for the living,
Make a better place for you and for me.
~ Michael Jackson ~

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. ~ George Orwell

Guilt, n. The condition of one who is known to have committed an indiscretion, as distinguished from the state of him who has covered his tracks. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I've woven them a garment that's prepared
out of poor words, those that I overheard,
and will hold fast to every word and glance
all of my days, even in new mischance,
and if a gag should bind my tortured mouth,
through which a hundred million people shout,
then let them pray for me, as I do pray
for them, this eve of my remembrance day.
~ Anna Akhmatova ~

This earth is one of the rare spots in the cosmos where mind has flowered. Man is a product of nearly three billion years of evolution, in whose person the evolutionary process has at last become conscious of itself and its possibilities. Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible for the whole further evolution of our planet. ~ Julian Huxley

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
~ Reinhold Niebuhr ~

Humor — it helps to make the vibe better — it loosens up the vibrations. ~ Brian Wilson

The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. At the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance. ~ Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons. We seem to agree today that we can share modern technology, but we still refuse to acknowledge that our values — at their very core — are shared values. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals to discovery. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses

The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool. ~ William McFee

The Zen disciple sits for long hours silent and motionless, with his eyes closed. Presently he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or the emptiness of the West. It is rather the reverse, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless. ... The disciple must, however, always be lord of his own thoughts, and must attain enlightenment through his own efforts. And the emphasis is less upon reason and argument than upon intuition, immediate feeling. Enlightenment comes not from teaching but through the eye awakened inwardly. Truth is in "the discarding of words", it lies "outside words".
~ Yasunari Kawabata ~

A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.
~ William Butler Yeats ~

My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre, taught me not to be afraid. And just as in dueling when you must concentrate on your enemy's cheek, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in. ~ Otto Skorzeny

There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful. ~ John Constable

Most joyful let the Poet be;
It is through him that all men see.
~ William Ellery Channing ~

In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, Heaven knows,
Anything goes.
~ Cole Porter ~

The scientist has marched in and taken the place of the poet. But one day somebody will find the solution to the problems of the world and remember, it will be a poet, not a scientist. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Our earth is round, and, among other things, that means that you and I can hold completely different points of view and both be right. The difference of our positions will show stars in your window I cannot even imagine. Your sky may burn with light, while mine, at the same moment, spreads beautiful to darkness. Still we must choose how we separately corner the circling universe of our experience. Once chosen, our cornering will determine the message of any star and darkness we encounter. ~ June Jordan

Do your duty, and leave the rest to heaven. ~ Pierre Corneille

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong. ~ John Maynard Keynes

I recall an old Sufi story of a good man who was granted one wish by God. The man said he would like to go about doing good without knowing about it. God granted his wish. And then God decided that it was such a good idea, he would grant that wish to all human beings.
And so it has been to this day. ~ Robert Fulghum

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little. ~ Sydney Smith

The Poet's License! — 't is the right,
Within the rule of duty,
To look on all delightful things
Throughout the world of beauty.
To gaze with rapture at the stars
That in the skies are glowing;
To see the gems of perfect dye
That in the woods are growing, —
And more than sage astronomer,
And more than learned florist,
To read the glorious homilies
Of Firmament and Forest.
~ John Godfrey Saxe ~

If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead. ~ Carl von Clausewitz

May 2009

Talk not so much ... of the great old masters, who but painted and chisell’d. Study not only their productions. There is a still higher school for him who would kindle his fire with coal from the altar of the loftiest and purest art. It is the school of all grand actions and grand virtues, of heroism, of the death of patriots and martyrs — of all the mighty deeds written in the pages of history — deeds of daring, and enthusiasm, devotion, and fortitude. ~ Walt Whitman

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick." ~ Mikhail Bakunin

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. ~ John F. Kennedy

The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world. ~ Louis Agassiz

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us the less taste we shall have for the destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. ~ Rachel Carson

You have so many things in the background that you're supposed to do, there's no room left to think. I say, forget all that and ask yourself, "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?" ~ Ward Cunningham

You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season." — then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. ... Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in Nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
~ Bob Dylan ~

Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in punishing another as criminal who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offenses. ~ Margaret Fuller

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle in "A Case of Identity"

Some Figures monstrous and mis-shap'd appear,
Consider'd singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportion'd to their Light, or Place,
Due Distance reconciles to Form and Grace.
A prudent Chief not always must display
His Pow'rs in equal Ranks, and fair Array,
But with th' Occasion and the Place comply,
Conceal his Force, nay seem sometimes to Fly.
Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem,
Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream.
~ Alexander Pope in An Essay on Criticism ~

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth. ~ John Stuart Mill

Humankind consists of two sexes, woman and man. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies? ~ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
~ Omar Khayyám ~

Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth. ~ Henri Barbusse

The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defence, to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable, to guard against mutiny and insurrection, and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement. The free-labor system educates all alike, and by opening all the fields of industrial employment and all the departments of authority, to the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes of men, at once secures universal contentment, and brings into the highest possible activity all the physical, moral, and social energies of the whole state. ~ William H. Seward

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own — even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being. ~ Katherine Anne Porter

Union and co-operation in war obviously increase the power of the individual a thousand fold. Is there the shadow of a reason why they should not produce equal effects in peace; why the principle of co-operation should not give to men the same superior powers, and advantages, (and much greater) in the creation, preservation, distribution and enjoyment of wealth? ~ Robert Owen

Not living in fear is a great gift, because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time — of anything. If you're laughing, I defy you to be afraid. ~ Stephen Colbert

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results. ~ Florence Nightingale

There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts. ~ Richard Feynman

Seeing a woman's child is like seeing a woman naked, in the way it changes how her face looks to you, how her face becomes less the whole story. ~ John Crowley

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. ~ J. M. Barrie

I want to break out — to leave this cycle of infection and death. I want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I, and death, and life, will be gathered inseparable, into the radiance of what we would become... ~ Thomas Pynchon

The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be. But I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength. ~ Edwin H. Land

When true simplicity is gain'd
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight
'Till by turning, turning we come round right.
~ Joseph Brackett ~

Is it an excellence in your love that it can love only the extraordinary, the rare? If it were love’s merit to love the extraordinary, then God would be — if I dare say so — perplexed, for to Him the extraordinary does not exist at all. The merit of being able to love only the extraordinary is therefore more like an accusation, not against the extraordinary nor against love, but against the love which can love only the extraordinary. Perfection in the object is not perfection in the love. Erotic love is determined by the object; friendship is determined by the object; only love of one’s neighbor is determined by love. Therefore genuine love is recognizable by this, that its object is without any of the more definite qualifications of difference, which means that this love is recognizable only by love. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him, a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies. ~ Horace Mann

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
~ Pete Seeger ~

We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the Universe. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

When an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.
~ Joseph Addison ~

April 2009

Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance — embracing all opposites. ~ Taisen Deshimaru

He who hopes to grow in spirit
will have to transcend obedience and respect.
He'll hold to some laws
but he'll mostly violate
both law and custom, and go beyond
the established, inadequate norm.
~ Constantine P. Cavafy ~

Too much magic could wrap time and space around itself, and that wasn't good news for the kind of person who had grown used to things like effects following things like causes. ~ Terry Pratchett in Sourcery ~

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein ~

I will either find a way, or make one. ~ Hannibal

The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it. ~ Vincent de Paul

I would not so dishonour God as to lend my voice to perpetuate all the mad and foolish things which men have dared to say of Him. I believe that we may find in the Bible the highest and purest religion ..... most of all in the history of Him in whose name we all are called. His religion — not the Christian religion, but the religion of Christ — the poor man's gospel; the message of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of love; and, oh, how gladly would I spend my life, in season and out of season, in preaching this! But I must have no hell terrors, none of these fear doctrines; they were not in the early creeds, God knows whether they were ever in the early gospels, or ever passed His lips. He went down to hell, but it was to break the chains, not to bind them. ~ James Anthony Froude

The death of dogma is the birth of morality. ~ Immanuel Kant

We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind — mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality. ~ J. G. Ballard

Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people — as may be noticed of most young children — does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years. ~ Dinah Craik

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

I believe that music can be an inspirational force in all our lives — that its eloquence and the depth of its meaning are all-important, and that all personal considerations concerning musicians and the public are relatively unimportant — that music come from the heart and returns to the heart — that music is spontaneous, impulsive expression — that its range is without limit — that music is forever growing — that music can be one element to help us build a new conception of life in which the madness and cruelty of wars will be replaced by a simple understanding of the brotherhood of man. ~ Leopold Stokowski

The real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. ~ Karen Blixen

What one man can do himself directly is but little. If however he can stir up ten others to take up the task he has accomplished much. ~ Wilbur Wright

$e^{i\pi }+1=0.\,\!$
Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.
~ Benjamin Peirce on Euler's identity ~

Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over;
One thing unshaken stays:
Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover;
Whereby decays
Each thing save one thing: — mid this strife diurnal
Of hourly change begot,
Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal,
And changes not.
~ James Branch Cabell ~

I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. ~ Thomas Jefferson

He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. ... Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses. .. The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope! ~ Charles Evans Hughes

It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world. ~ William Hazlitt

These tall and handsome ships, swaying imperceptibly on tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their inactive, nostalgic appearance, don’t they say to us in a speechless tongue: When do we cast off for happiness? ~ Charles Baudelaire

Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
~ Yip Harburg ~

Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves. ~ William Ellery Channing

Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Make our pleasant earth below
Like the heaven above.
~ Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney ~

God's own hand
Holds fast all issues of our deeds: with him
The end of all our ends is, but with us
Our ends are, just or unjust: though our works
Find righteous or unrighteous judgment, this
At least is ours, to make them righteous.
~ Algernon Charles Swinburne ~

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men. ~ Black Elk

If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough. ~ "Meggido Message" (misattributed to Edward Everett Hale)

Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. ~ Émile Zola

Very many maintain that all we know is still infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do philosophers pin their faith to others' precepts in such wise that they lose their liberty, and cease to give credence to the conclusions of their proper senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth. ~ William Harvey

March 2009

Cogito ergo sum
I think, therefore I am.
~ René Descartes ~

The best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. ~ Vincent van Gogh

On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet." ~ R. S. Thomas

I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? ... I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. ~ Teresa of Ávila

There’s a good time coming, boys!
A good time coming.
We may not live to see the day,
But earth shall glisten in the ray
Of the good time coming.
Cannon-balls may aid the truth
But thought’s a weapon stronger;
We’ll win our battles by its aid,
Wait a little longer.
~ Charles Mackay ~

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~ Robert Frost ~

Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. ~ Rudolf Rocker

Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily... ~ Wilhelm Reich

I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death." ~ Erich Fromm

I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense;
I tuned my spirit as a lute
To catch wind-music wandering mute.
Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.
Nor I am more, nor less, than these;
All are one brotherhood;
I and all creatures, plants, and trees,
The living limbs of God;
And in an hour, as this, divine,
I feel the vast pulse throb in mine.
~ Francis William Bourdillon ~

The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive. ~ Hans Hofmann

What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go. ~ Friedrich Hölderlin

"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate. ~ Wilhelm Stekel

Man dwells apart, though not alone,
He walks among his peers unread;
The best of thoughts which he hath known
For lack of listeners are not said.
~ Jean Ingelow ~

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. ~ Andrew Jackson

Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion. ~ Albert Einstein

The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. ~ Mircea Eliade

Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness. ~ William Buckland

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others. ~ Douglas Adams

In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.
~ Joaquin Miller ~

A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. ~ Shashi Tharoor

We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives. ~ Neil Postman

Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. ~ Thomas Aquinas

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who watches the Watchmen?
~ Juvenal ~

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man. ~ William Beveridge

When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others. ~ Julia Cameron

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind. ~ William Godwin

In times like these, it's helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. ~ Paul Harvey

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. ~ Napoleon I of France

February 2009

I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old. ~ Michel de Montaigne

Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal. ~ Victor Hugo

Do what you want to do
And go where you're going to
Think for yourself
'Cause I won't be there with you.
~ George Harrison ~

The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand. ~ George A. Moore

We cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them. ~ Karl Jaspers

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. ~ George Washington

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods. ~ W. H. Auden

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. ~ Frederick Douglass

And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence."
~ Paul Simon ~

The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity. ~ Giordano Bruno

All experience is an arch, to build upon. ~ Henry Brooks Adams

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation. ~ Susan B. Anthony

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~

Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!
~ Eleanor Farjeon ~

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. ~ Thomas Edison

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life. ~ Bertolt Brecht

I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man's constitution is so peculiar that his health is purely a negative matter. No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you suffer that you really understand. ~ Jules Verne

It is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day. ~ Charles Dickens

One love,
One heart,
Let's get together
And feel alright.
~ Bob Marley ~

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. All change is the result of a change in the contemporary state of mind. Don't be afraid of being out of tune with your environment, and above all pray God that you are not afraid to live, to live hard and fast. To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run. You'll have more fun, you'll do more and you'll get more, you'll give more satisfaction the more you know, the more you have worked, and the more you have lived. For yours is a great adventure at a stirring time in the annals of men. ~ Adlai Stevenson

How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life. This is our modern danger — one of the waxen wings of flight. It may cause our civilization to fall unless we act quickly to counteract it, unless we realize that human character is more important than efficiency, that education consists of more than the mere accumulation of knowledge. ~ Charles Lindbergh

The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just ... I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand. ~ Gertrude Stein

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~ Abba Eban

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
~ Langston Hughes ~

January 2009

A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing — a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit. ~ Ken Wilber

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all. ~ John Updike

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. ~ Colette

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. ~ Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman. ~ Philip José Farmer

The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength. ~ Virginia Woolf

There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.
~ Edith Wharton ~

One can acquire everything in solitude — except character. ~ Stendhal

Honor is, or should be, the place of virtue and as in nature, things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority settled and calm. All rising to great place is by a winding stair; and if there be factions, it is good to side a man's self, whilst he is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. ~ Francis Bacon

Was a revelation to be made known to us, it must be accommodated to our external senses, and also to our reason, so that we could come at the perception and understanding of it, the same as we do to that of things in general. We must perceive by our senses, before we can reflect with the mind. ~ Ethan Allen

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair. The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there. ~ Barack Obama

Thou wouldst be loved? — then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not!
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love — a simple duty.
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~

Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

We have this window of opportunity; we have a chance to make something real happen. Something possible happen, to live beyond our fear — think about that, and help us. Help lift us up, help us fight this fight to change, — transform — this country in a fundamental way.
This chance won’t come around again. ~ Michelle Obama

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. ~ Evelyn Beatrice Hall

I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today. I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate... I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we are moving against wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who has love has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

In my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase "Reverence for Life" struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us. ~ Albert Schweitzer

All religions speak about death during this life on earth. Death must come before rebirth. But what must die? False confidence in one’s own knowledge, self-love and egoism. Our egoism must be broken. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation. ~ Edmund Burke

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. ~ William James

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history. ~ John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me. ~ Simone de Beauvoir

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief. ~ Gerry Spence

There are years that ask questions and years that answer. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be. ~ Khalil Gibran

We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon. In an instant age, perhaps we must relearn the ancient truth that patience, too, has its victories. ~ Konrad Adenauer

It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).
~ R.E.M. ~

This is an ancient hallow, and ere the kings failed or the Tree withered in the court, a fruit must have been set here. For it is said that, though the fruit of the Tree comes seldom to ripeness, yet the life within may then lie sleeping through many long years, and none can foretell the time in which it will awake. ~ Gandalf in The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be ... ~ Isaac Asimov

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. ~ E. M. Forster

December 2008

It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring! ~ Calvin in the last panel of Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails. ~ Romain Rolland

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man. ~ Pablo Casals

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay

There never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost. ~ Harold Pinter

Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings,
Waves in the eye of Heav'n her many-colour'd wings.
~ Thomas Gray ~

The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has not Christmas in his heart. ~ Helen Keller

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. ~ John Muir

Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law — not the rule of force — governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again. ~ Wesley Clark

While you live ... you have a duty to life. ... The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. ... Otherwise they fade away. ~ Charles de Lint

There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. ~ John Steinbeck

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
~ Wallace Stevens ~

Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give us second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
"Glory to the new born King!"
~ Charles Wesley ~

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
~ John Greenleaf Whittier ~

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick

It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom. The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. ~ Freeman Dyson

The Art of Peace is not easy. It is a fight to the finish, the slaying of evil desires and all falsehood within. On occasion the Voice of Peace resounds like thunder, jolting human beings out of their stupor. ~ Morihei Ueshiba

Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance. ~ Heinrich Heine

Klaatu barada nikto! ~ Patricia Neal as "Helen Benson" in The Day the Earth Stood Still

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world. ~ Max Born

"Hope" is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —
And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —
~ Emily Dickinson ~

A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things. ~ Grace Hopper

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. ~ James Thurber

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is. ~ Willa Cather

The Science of Language has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship. ~ Max Müller

Fantasy, if it's really convincing, can't become dated, for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time. ~ Walt Disney

Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions. ~ Samuel Butler

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. ~ Joseph Conrad

Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship. ~ Ivan Illich

There's an old joke... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life — full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness — and it's all over much too quickly. ~ Woody Allen

November 2008

The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve. ~ Jacques Barzun

Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. ~ Wendell Phillips

One must be very naïve or dishonest to imagine that men choose their beliefs independently of their situation. ~ Claude Lévi-Strauss

Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there. ~ Bruce Lee

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
~ William Cowper ~

Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere fact of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places. ~ Lewis Thomas

Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. ~ Laurence Sterne

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? ~ John Milton in Areopagitica

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. ~ George Eliot

If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence. ~ Alexander Berkman

A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained. ~ James A. Garfield

War is what happens when language fails. ~ Margaret Atwood

When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it. ~ Christopher Paolini

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break. ~ Chinua Achebe

Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. ~ Louis Brandeis

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. ~ Abigail Adams

The dignity of mankind is in your hands; protect it!
It sinks with you! With you it will ascend.
~ Friedrich Schiller ~

Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another. ~ Carl Sagan

Once and for all
the idea of glorious victories
won by the glorious army
must be wiped out
Neither side is glorious
On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants
and they all want the same thing
Not to lie under the earth
but to walk upon it
without crutches
~ Peter Weiss ~

Do not be deceived by the way men of bad faith misuse words and names ...Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. ~ R. A. Lafferty

This is our time — to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can! ~ Barack Obama

I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages:
(i) this is worthless nonsense;
(ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;
(iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;
(iv) I always said so.
~ J. B. S. Haldane ~

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. ~ Will Rogers

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness. ~ Wilhelm Reich

You know, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein said everything had changed since the atom was split, except the way we think. We have to think anew. ~ Studs Terkel

The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all. ~ Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

October 2008

Youth is not a question of years: one is young or old from birth. ~ Natalie Clifford Barney

Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years... ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan

He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it. ~ James Boswell

Walk a single path, becoming neither cocky with victory nor broken with defeat, without forgetting caution when all is quiet or becoming frightened when danger threatens. ~ Jigoro Kano

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education. ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold

After bread, education is the first need of the people. ~ Georges Danton

I would prefer to remain in prison for another 20 years than bargain my beliefs for freedom. ~ Samir Geagea

We present a dramatically different approach to time management. This is a principle-centered approach. It transcends the traditional prescriptions of faster, harder, smarter, and more. Rather than offering you another clock, this approach provides you with a compass — because more important than how fast you're going, is where you're headed. ~ Stephen Covey

We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget. ~ Sarah Bernhardt

I often observed to my brother, You see now how little nature requires to be satisfied. Felicity, the companion of content, is rather found in our own breasts than in the enjoyment of external things; And I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. This consists in a full resignation to the will of Providence; and a resigned soul finds pleasure in a path strewed with briars and thorns. ~ Daniel Boone

You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard's power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

We're overdue for a dream come true.
Long time nothing new.
We're overdue for a dream come true.
~ Tom Petty ~

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. ~ Thomas Browne

The essential ingredient of politics is timing. ~ Pierre Trudeau

There's too much of an attempt, it seems to me, to think in terms of controlling man, rather than freeing him. Of defining him rather than letting him go. It's part of the whole ideology of this age, which is power-mad. ~ Arthur Miller

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth. ~ William O. Douglas

A nuclear war does not defend a country and it does not defend a system. I've put it the same way many times; not even the most accomplished ideologue will be able to tell the difference between the ashes of capitalism and the ashes of communism. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

I think it's a disgrace for the international community that we have allowed so many conflicts to become frozen, and we are not making a serious effort to solve them. ~ Martti Ahtisaari

The concept which assumes that everything in the Church is irrevocably set for all times appears to me to be a false one. It would be naive to disregard that the Church has a history; the Church is a human institution and like all things human, was destined to change and evolve; likewise, its development takes place often in the form of struggles. ~ Edith Stein

Your true home is in the here and the now. It is not limited by time, space, nationality, or race. Your true home is not an abstract idea. It is something you can touch and live in every moment. With mindfulness and concentration, the energies of the Buddha, you can find your true home in the full relaxation of your mind and body in the present moment. No one can take it away from you. Other people can occupy your country, they can even put you in prison, but they cannot take away your true home and your freedom. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice. ~ Lin Yutang

Builders and warriors, strengthen the steps.
Reader, if you have not grasped — read again,
after a while.
The predestined is not accidental,
The leaves fall in their time.
And winter is but the harbinger of spring.
All is revealed; all is attainable.
~ Nicholas Roerich ~

The year of jubilee has come;
Gather the gifts of Earth with equal hand;
Henceforth ye too may share the birthright soil,
The corn, drink the wine and all the harvest-home.
~ Edmund Clarence Stedman ~

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us. ~ Steven Erikson

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. ~ David Brin

Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not. ~ Václav Havel

The quicker humanity advances, the more important it is to be the one who deals the first blow. ~ Ernst Kaltenbrunner

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. ~ Gore Vidal

I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.
Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,
Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set
And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone
Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings,
Like watery words awash; like meanings said
By repetitions of half-meanings.
~ Wallace Stevens ~

Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black. ~ Henry Ford

September 2008

If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it. ~ Rumi

It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love. ~ Miguel de Unamuno

I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me. ~ Paul Newman

If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. ~ Samuel Adams

All is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail. ~ William Faulkner

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger? ~ Thomas Huxley

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one. ~ Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens,
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
~ Leonard Cohen ~

When you come right down to it, the secret of having it all is loving it all. ~ Joyce Brothers

Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose. ~ William Golding

A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still. ~ Samuel Johnson

The real crazies who are looking for a messiah... after an hour or so they realise I'm not it and go off and look somewhere else. ~ Ken Kesey

It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld

Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is. ~ Sydney J. Harris

Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. ~ Roald Dahl

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently. ~ Stanisław Lem

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn't threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do. ... I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars. ~ Stephen Hawking

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. ~ Cyril Connolly

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
~ Siegfried Sassoon ~

The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

A planet is the cradle of mind, but one cannot live in a cradle forever. ~ Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. ~ François-René de Chateaubriand

The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett

The first casualty when war comes is truth. ~ Hiram Johnson

Deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzan was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he had had it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him to live — unharmed. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

August 2008

The writer is a spiritual anarchist, as in the depth of his soul every man is. He is discontented with everything and everybody. The writer is everybody's best friend and only true enemy — the good and great enemy. He neither walks with the multitude nor cheers with them. The writer who is a writer is a rebel who never stops. ~ William Saroyan

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. ~ Warren Buffett

Mankind has advanced. Human progress is ceaseless. We can ... conclude that building just societies is a fool's errand. We are always, despite our advances, only one sin away from slipping into the abyss of terror and ignorance. But that is not so. Generations upon generations have driven the human race farther and farther from darkness. ~ John McCain

To which of the warring serpents should I turn with the problem that now faces me?
It is easy, and tempting, to choose the god of Science. Now I would not for a moment have you suppose that I am one of those idiots who scorns Science, merely because it is always twisting and turning, and sometimes shedding its skin, like the serpent that is its symbol. It is a powerful god indeed but it is what the students of ancient gods called a shape-shifter, and sometimes a trickster. ~ Robertson Davies

In every science, after having analysed the ideas, expressing the more complicated by means of the more simple, one finds a certain number that cannot be reduced among them, and that one can define no further. These are the primitive ideas of the science; it is necessary to acquire them through experience, or through induction; it is impossible to explain them by deduction. ~ Giuseppe Peano

I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras. ~ Will Cuppy

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy. ~ Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified. ~ Leon Trotsky

There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?
Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!
How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,
Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.
~ John Dryden ~

Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with! ~ Vladimir Nabokov in Lolita

Everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will — with luck — come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. ~ V. S. Naipaul

It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not. ~ Jean de La Bruyère

A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root. ~ Napoleon I of France

Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong. ~ Russell Baker

It is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient. ~ Felix Adler

It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated. ~ Edith Hamilton

There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

We are living in a time of trouble and bewilderment, in a time when none of us can foresee or foretell the future. But surely it is in times like these, when so much that we cherish is threatened or in jeopardy, that we are impelled all the more to strengthen our inner resources, to turn to the things that have no news value because they will be the same to-morrow that they were to-day and yesterday — the things that last, the things that the wisest, the most farseeing of our race and kind have been inspired to utter in forms that can inspire ourselves in turn. ~ Laurence Binyon

The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. ~ Jean Piaget

If I am peaceful, I shall see
Beauty's face continually;
Feeding on her wine and bread
I shall be wholly comforted,
For she can make one day for me
Rich as my lost eternity.
~ Sara Teasdale ~

The question isn't whether you have a good master or a bad master. It's to be your own master. That is the dignity of humanity. ~ Alan Keyes

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in "In Memoriam A.H.H." ~

Those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom. ~ Barack Obama

I have tried at times to place humans in perspective against the vastness of universal time and space. I have been concerned with where we, as a race, may be going and what may be our purpose in the universal scheme — if we have a purpose. In general, I believe we do, and perhaps an important one. ~ Clifford D. Simak

Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace. ~ James Baldwin

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. ~ Herman Melville in Moby-Dick

July 2008

The future of humanity is uncertain, even in the most prosperous countries, and the quality of life deteriorates; and yet I believe that what is being discovered about the infinitely large and infinitely small is sufficient to absolve this end of the century and millennium. What a very few are acquiring in knowledge of the physical world will perhaps cause this period not to be judged as a pure return of barbarism. ~ Primo Levi

I don't know you,
And you don't know me.
It is this that brings us together.
~ Kate Bush ~

The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind. ~ National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 creating NASA

If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, "Tell the Truth." If I got three more words, I'd add, "All the time." ~ Randy Pausch

It was my shame, and now it is my boast,
That I have loved you rather more than most.
~ Hilaire Belloc ~

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy. ~ Carl Jung

Though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, and both by converting and antagonizing he is shaping the world in his own image. And whether we are to line up with him or against him, it is well that we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities. ~ Eric Hoffer

Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end. ~ John Newton

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. ~ Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
~ Emma Lazarus ~

There's no one thing that's true. It's all true. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure. ~ Petrarch

Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The difficulty is to have it at fifty. ~ Edgar Degas

When I die, my money's not gonna come with me. My movies will live on for people to judge what I was as a person. I just want to stay curious. ~ Heath Ledger

Error is a hardy plant; it flourisheth in every soil;
In the heart of the wise and good, alike with the wicked and foolish;
For there is no error so crooked, but it hath in it some lines of truth;
Nor is any poison so deadly, that it serveth not some wholesome use.
~ Martin Farquhar Tupper ~

Ignorance perpetuates itself just as knowledge does. Men write false documents, they preach false doctrine, and those beliefs survive to inspire wickedness in later generations. ... Conversely, some men write and teach about the truth, only to be declared heretic by the wicked. In such cases evil has the advantage, for it will do anything to suppress truth, but the good man limits what he will do to suppress falsehood.
One might almost make a rule of it: "Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic." ~ Sheri S. Tepper

Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in so doing, you will in good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about. Practice what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know. ~ Rembrandt

The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine, a working machine ... don't worry — the human race will sing this way as long as there is a human to race. The human race is a pretty old place. ~ Woody Guthrie

People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they have given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria, they are bored by civilisation; but all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater. ~ Kenneth Clark

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. ~ Henry David Thoreau in Walden

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed. ~ E. B. White

Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity. ~ Nikola Tesla

Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque. ~ U. G. Krishnamurti

As far as service goes, it can take the form of a million things. To do service, you don't have to be a doctor working in the slums for free, or become a social worker. Your position in life and what you do doesn't matter as much as how you do what you do. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way. ~ John Paul Jones

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature. ~ Jean Cocteau

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. ~ Franz Kafka

There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our pain:
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.
~ Richard Henry Stoddard ~

We're on a mission from God. ~ Elwood J. Blues, in The Blues Brothers

June 2008

Audio & Images

Life is a jest, and all things show it,
I thought so once, and now I know it.
~ John Gay ~

Here is my secret. It is very simple. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses. ~ Helen Keller

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless. ~ Pearl S. Buck

By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." ... By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseperable from the desire for power. ~ George Orwell

All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love. ~ John of the Cross

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. ~ Alan Turing

If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we are at no loss to perceive that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind. ~ Wilhelm von Humboldt

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt. ~ Lillian Hellman

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. ~ Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Our security strategies have not yet caught up with the risks we are facing. The globalization that has swept away the barriers to the movement of goods, ideas and people has also swept with it barriers that confined and localized security threats. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity — but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

I protect my right to be a Catholic by preserving your right to believe as a Jew, a Protestant, or non-believer, or as anything else you choose. We know that the price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that they might some day force theirs on us. ~ Mario Cuomo

True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love's sake have in them a poetry that is immortal. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do. ~ William Butler Yeats

We are adhering to life now with our last muscle — the heart. ~ Djuna Barnes

Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks. ~ Ben Jonson

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely. ~ E. O. Wilson

Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown.
Act the fool, play the calf,
And you'll always have the last laugh.
~ Cole Porter ~

History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, "Can't you remember anything I told you?" and lets fly with a club. ~ John W. Campbell

A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man. ~ Paul Gauguin

I can be forced to live without happiness, but I will never consent to live without honor. ~ Pierre Corneille

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. ~ John Maynard Keynes

To insist on one's place in the scheme of things and to live up to that place.
To empower others in their reaching for some place in the scheme of things.
To do these things is to make fairy tales come true.
~ Robert Fulghum ~

When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place. ~ Lawrence Lessig

The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people. ~ Cornel West

There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom. ~ Carl von Clausewitz

May 2008

Audio & Images

Be composed — be at ease with me — I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ John F. Kennedy

In my books I have lifted bits from various religions in trying to come to a better understanding; I've made use of religious themes and symbols. Now, as the world becomes more pagan, one has to lead people in the same direction in a different way... ~ Patrick White

Like the wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we are, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment. ~ Harlan Ellison

Thunder only happens when it's raining.
Players only love you when they're playing.
Say... Women... they will come and they will go.
When the rain washes you clean... you'll know.
~ Stevie Nicks ~

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with. ~ Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. ~ William Whewell

Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering–pot and pruning–knife. ~ Margaret Fuller

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The flying Rumours gather'd as they roll'd,
Scarce any Tale was sooner heard than told;
And all who told it, added something new,
And all who heard it, made Enlargements too,
In ev'ry Ear it spread, on ev'ry Tongue it grew.
~ Alexander Pope ~

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~ John Stuart Mill

Mankind is a single body and each nation a part of that body. We must never say "What does it matter to me if some part of the world is ailing?" If there is such an illness, we must concern ourselves with it as though we were having that illness. ~ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true. ~ Bertrand Russell

I believe, in spite of all, in truth's victory. I believe in the momentous value, hereafter inviolable, of those few truly fraternal men in all the countries of the world, who, in the oscillation of national egoisms let loose, stand up and stand out, steadfast as the glorious statues of Right and Duty. ~ Henri Barbusse

Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory. ~ Irena Sendler

Errors now almost universally exist, and must be overcome solely by the force of reason; and as reason, to effect the most beneficial purposes, makes her advance by slow degrees, and progressively substantiates one truth of high import after another, it will be evident, to minds of comprehensive and accurate thought, that by these and similar compromises alone can success be rationally expected in practice. For such compromises bring truth and error before the public; and whenever they are fairly exhibited together, truth must ultimately prevail. ~ Robert Owen

Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty. ~ Roger Zelazny in Lord of Light

I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself. ~ Florence Nightingale

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. ~ Richard Feynman

We're one, but we're not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other... one.
~ Bono ~

Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. ~ J. M. Barrie

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom. ~ Friedrich Hayek

If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons. ~ David Hume

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. ~ Sigmund Freud

If I have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty. But if I haven't ventured at all, who helps me then? ~ Søren Kierkegaard

A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering cold iron. ~ Horace Mann

The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli

Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. ~ Novalis

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul. ~ Joseph Addison

April 2008

Audio & Images

The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. ~ Larry Niven

The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. ~ Henri Poincaré

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp. ~ Terry Pratchett

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools. ~ Herbert Spencer

I had the good fortune and opportunity to come home and to tell the truth; many soldiers, like Pat Tillman ... did not have that opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype. ~ Jessica Lynch

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The poem... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see — it is, rather, a light by which we may see — and what we see is life. ~ Robert Penn Warren

We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again:
And by that destiny, to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
~ William Shakespeare in The Tempest ~

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. ~ Marshall McLuhan

How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make — leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone — we all dwell in a house of one room — the world with the firmament for its roof — and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track. ~ John Muir

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. ... Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. ~ Peter S. Beagle in The Last Unicorn

When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist. ~ Albert Hofmann

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free. ~ Clarence Darrow

I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy. ~ Karen Blixen

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~ Anatole France

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative — much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius — it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations. ~ Henry James

What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. ... But you, I think, have always comprehended this. ~ James Branch Cabell

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments. ~ Henry Clay

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free. ~ Charles Evans Hughes

They knew me from the dawn of time: if Hermes beats his rainbow wings,
If Angus shakes his locks of light, or golden-haired Apollo sings,
It matters not the name, the land; my joy in all the gods abides:
Even in the cricket in the grass some dimness of me smiles and hides.
~ Æ ~

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Look, look, look to the rainbow
Follow it over the hill and stream
Look, look, look to the rainbow
Follow the fellow who follows a dream.
~ Yip Harburg ~

I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself. ~ Charlton Heston

I have never looked for dream in reality or reality in dream. I have allowed my imagination free play, and I have not been led astray by it. ~ Gustave Moreau

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak. ~ Booker T. Washington

All we are saying is give peace a chance. ~ John Lennon

Stretch or contract me, Thy poor debtor;
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the music better.
Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there;
Thy power and love, my love and trust
Make one place ev'rywhere.
~ George Herbert ~

Forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who delights in nursing it in his bosom. ~ Giacomo Casanova

What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered. ~ Milan Kundera

March 2008

Audio & Images

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
~ Andrew Marvell ~

Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives. ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have known exile and a wild passion
Of longing changing to a cold ache.
King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns,
Knowing the body’s sweetness, the mind’s treason;
Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen,
Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart’s need.
~ R. S. Thomas ~

Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, revolving as they do with such speed, so we cannot restrain our thought. And then we send all the faculties of the soul after it, thinking we are lost, and have misused the time that we are spending in the presence of God. Yet the soul may perhaps be wholly united with Him in the Mansions very near His presence, while thought remains in the outskirts of the castle, suffering the assaults of a thousand wild and venomous creatures and from this suffering winning merit. So this must not upset us, and we must not abandon the struggle, as the devil tries to make us do. Most of these trials and times of unrest come from the fact that we do not understand ourselves. ~ Teresa of Avila

At this point in history when all things which concern man and the structure and elements of history itself are suddenly revealed to us in a new light, it behooves us in our scientific thinking to become masters of the situation, for it is not inconceivable that sooner than we suspect, as has often been the case before in history, this vision may disappear, the opportunity may be lost, and the world will once again present a static, uniform, and inflexible countenance. ~ Karl Mannheim

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about. ~ Joseph Campbell

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace. Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution. One compels respect from others when he knows how to defend his dignity as a human being. ~ Rudolf Rocker

I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. ~ William Morris

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) ~

Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music. ~ Marcel Marceau

If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run — and often in the short one — the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. ~ Wilhelm Stekel

Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time. ~ Saint Patrick

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. ~ James Madison

As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending. ~ Andrew Jackson

Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars ... The stakes are immense, the task colossal, the time is short. But we may hope — we must hope — that man’s own creation, man’s own genius, will not destroy him. ~ Albert Einstein

Don’t give up! I believe in you all
A person’s a person, no matter how small!
And you very small persons will not have to die
If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!
~ Dr. Seuss ~

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. ~ Jack Kerouac

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it. ~ Vannevar Bush

We are tired of having a "sphere" doled out to us, and of being told that anything outside that sphere is "unwomanly". We want to be natural just for a change … we must be ourselves at all risks. ~ Kate Sheppard

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes. ~ Mickey Spillane

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh enrichment. ~ Johannes Kepler

Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game. ~ Gary Gygax

You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand ... someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

Technology adds nothing to art. Two thousand years ago, I could tell you a story, and at any point during the story I could stop, and ask, Now do you want the hero to be kidnapped, or not? But that would, of course, have ruined the story. Part of the experience of being entertained is sitting back and plugging into someone else's vision. ~ Penn Jillette

Philosophy is based on speculation, on logic, on thought, on the synthesis of what we know and on the analysis of what we do not know. Philosophy must include within its confines the whole content of science, religion and art. ~ P. D. Ouspensky

Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
So all we know of what they do above,
Is that they happy are, and that they love.
Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
But with our nobler part invades the sky.
~ Edmund Waller ~

I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.
My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!
... So, on beyond Z!
It's high time you were shown
That you really don't know
All there is to be known.
~ Dr. Seuss ~

Try to remember this: what you project
Is what you will perceive; what you perceive
With any passion, be it love or terror,
May take on whims and powers of its own.
~ Richard Wilbur ~

February 2008

Audio & Images

God bless the King! (I mean our faith's defender!)
God bless! (No harm in blessing) the Pretender.
But who Pretender is, and who is King,
God bless us all! That's quite another thing!
~ John Byrom ~

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour. ~ Victor Hugo in Les Misérables

Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don't make sense. ~ John Leonard

When you're young, you look at television and think, "There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down." But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth. ~ Steve Jobs

There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois

Life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ~ Anaïs Nin

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. ~ Frederick Douglass

Now that your rose is in bloom,
A light hits the gloom on the grave,
I've been kissed by a rose on the grave.
~ Seal ~

My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you. My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn
Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
It's there that my heart is calling
All for the love of you.
~ Loreena McKennitt ~

Public opinion, or what passes for public opinion, is not invariably a moderating force in the jungle of politics. It may be true, and I suspect it is, that the mass of people everywhere are normally peace-loving and would accept many restraints and sacrifices in preference to the monstrous calamities of war. But I also suspect that what purports to be public opinion in most countries that consider themselves to have popular government is often not really the consensus of the feelings of the mass of the people at all, but rather the expression of the interests of special highly vocal minorities — politicians, commentators, and publicity-seekers of all sorts: people who live by their ability to draw attention to themselves and die, like fish out of water, if they are compelled to remain silent. ~ George F. Kennan

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. ~ Paul of Tarsus

Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. ~ Charles Darwin

In Common Sense Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. ~ Thomas Alva Edison

Our theater must stimulate a desire for understanding, a delight in changing reality. Our audience must experience not only the ways to free Prometheus, but be schooled in the very desire to free him. Theater must teach all the pleasures and joys of discovery, all the feelings of triumph associated with liberation. ~ Bertolt Brecht

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
The people gonna treat you better,
You're gonna find, yes you will,
That you're beautiful as you feel.
~ Carole King ~

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one. ~ John Ruskin

A man acts suitably to his nature, when he conquers his enemy in such a way as that no other creature but a man could be capable of, and that is by the strength of his understanding. ~ Sir Thomas More

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we're in a time when there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look. ~ Ronald Reagan

Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each. ~ Adlai Stevenson

Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player. ~ Alice Cooper

When war is waged it is for the purpose of safeguarding or increasing one's capacity to make war. International politics are wholly involved in this vicious cycle. What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralize other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. What is called national security is an imaginary state of affairs in which one would retain the capacity to make war while depriving all other countries of it. ~ Simone Weil

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses

Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. ~ Edward Coke

January 2008

Audio & Images

At this point in history, the most radical, pervasive, and earth-shaking transformation would occur simply if everybody truly evolved to a mature, rational, and responsible ego, capable of freely participating in the open exchange of mutual self-esteem. There is the "edge of history." There would be a real New Age. ~ Ken Wilber

We do not see faith, hope, and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a nation fighting the fight for freedom in a modern civilization.
Faith — in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships.
Hope — renewed because we know so well the progress we have made.
Charity — in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. ~ Germaine Greer

For the sincere friend
Who gives me his frank hand.
And for the cruel man who pulls out of me
the heart with which I live,
I grow neither nettles nor thorns:
I grow a white rose.
~ José Martí ~

"In that direction," the Cat said, waving its right paw round, "lives a Hatter: and in that direction," waving the other paw, "lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
~ Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ~

Prometheus, I have no Titan's might,
Yet I, too, must each dusk renew my heart,
For daytime's vulture talons tear apart
The tender alcoves built by love at night.
~ Philip José Farmer ~

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive. ~ Edith Wharton

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness. ~ Stendhal

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
~ George Gordon, Lord Byron ~

If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils. ~ Stonewall Jackson

I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child. When you're a child, something as simple as a tree doesn't make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow — you haven't got a handle on the rules when you're a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination. ~ David Lynch

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone.
~ Edgar Allan Poe ~

The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed. ~ Charles de Montesquieu

All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this be the case with my history or not, I am hardly competent to judge. I sometimes think it might prove useful to some, and entertaining to others; but the world may judge for itself. Shielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture; and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend. ~ Anne Brontë

I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up. ~ Susan Sontag

I'm concerned about justice. I'm concerned about brotherhood. I'm concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about these, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

At no time are we ever in such complete possession of a journey, down to its last nook and cranny, as when we are busy with preparations for it. After that, there remains only the journey itself, which is nothing but the process through which we lose our ownership of it. ~ Yukio Mishima

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. ~ Edmund Burke

I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly. ~ William James

I believe that the Universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine. ~ Robinson Jeffers

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion. ~ Simone de Beauvoir

If you cannot make knowledge your servant, make it your friend. ~ Baltasar Gracián

You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that you have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is not only vital for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself — a point that seems to escape many people. ~ Gerald Durrell

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. ~ Khalil Gibran

A dreaded society is not a civilized society. The most progressive and powerful society in the civilized sense, is a society which has recognized its ethos, and come to terms with the past and the present, with religion and science, with modernism and mysticism, with materialism and spirituality; a society free of tension, a society rich in culture. Such a society cannot come with hocus-pocus formulas and with fraud. It has to flow from the depth of a divine search. ~ Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

The main Business of natural Philosophy is to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which certainly is not mechanical. ~ Isaac Newton

The rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. ~ "Gandalf" in The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field. ~ Isaac Asimov

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse. ~ E. M. Forster

December 2007

Audio

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself. ~ Henri Matisse

The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest. ~ Romain Rolland

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated. ... Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it. ~ Benazir Bhutto

I am utterly convinced that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will eventually unite not to destroy but to edify, and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for the sake of suffering humanity. ~ Louis Pasteur

The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not to dominate the world. ~ Harry S. Truman

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.
~ Isaac Watts ~

Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. ~ Francis Pharcellus Church in "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"

I think we should be very clear on this... this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment... It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can’t lose that in this country. We've got to get it back. ~ Wesley Clark

The holiness of the real
Is always there, accessible
In total immanence. The nodes
Of transcendence coagulate
In you, the experiencer,
And in the other, the lover.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~

If there is a God, I don't think He would demand that anyone bow down or stand up to Him. I often have a suspicion that God is still trying to work things out and hasn't finished. ~ Rebecca West

This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost. ~ John Steinbeck

In such an ugly time the true protest is beauty. ~ Phil Ochs

I cannot be grasped in the here and now. For I reside just as much with the dead as with the unborn. Somewhat closer to the heart of creation than usual. But not nearly close enough. ~ Paul Klee

It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me. ~ Ford Madox Ford

Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

It is not the right angle that attracts me,
Nor the hard, inflexible straight line, man-made.
What attracts me are free and sensual curves.
The curves in my country’s mountains,
In the sinuous flow of its rivers,
In the beloved woman’s body.
~ Oscar Niemeyer ~

I had determined to go as far as declaring in abstruse and puzzling utterances the future causes of the "common advent", even those truly cogent ones that I have foreseen. Yet lest whatever human changes may be to come should scandalise delicate ears, the whole thing is written in nebulous form, rather than as a clear prophecy of any kind. ~ Nostradamus

Where they burn books, they will also burn people. ~ Heinrich Heine

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. ... I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. ~ William Lloyd Garrison

Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~ Desmond Tutu

Man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support — not mutual struggle — has had the leading part. ~ Peter Kropotkin

A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war. ~ Jim Morrison

It's an alethiometer. It's one of only six that were ever made. Lyra, I urge you again: keep it private. ... It tells you the truth. As for how to read it, you'll have to learn by yourself. Now go — it's getting lighter... ~ Philip Pullman in The Golden Compass

It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun
And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men:
But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done,
Would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.
~ Joyce Kilmer ~

Leadership means that a group, large or small, is willing to entrust authority to a person who has shown judgement, wisdom, personal appeal, and proven competence. ~ Walt Disney

You don't get very far in life without having to be brave an awful lot. Because we all have our frightening moments and difficult trials and we don't have much of a choice but to get through 'em, and it takes a lot of bravery to do that. The most important thing about bravery is this — It's not about not being scared — it's about being scared and doing it anyway — that's bravery. ~ Ysabella Brave

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality. ~ Joseph Conrad

Ultimately, leadership requires action: daring to take steps that are necessary but unpopular, challenging the status quo in order to reach a brighter future. And to push for peace is ultimately personal sacrifice, for leadership is not easy. It is born of a passion, and it is a commitment. Leadership is a commitment to an idea, to a dream, and to a vision of what can be. And my dream is for my land and my people to cease fighting and allow our children to reach their full potential regardless of sex, status, or belief. ~ Benazir Bhutto

December will be magic again.
Don't miss the brightest star.
Kiss under mistletoe.
I want to hear you laugh.
Don't let the mystery go now.
~ Kate Bush ~

November 2007

Audio

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it. ~ Jacques Barzun

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. ~ C. S. Lewis

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
~ William Blake ~

Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. ~ Bruce Lee

It is not earthly rank, nor birth, nor nationality, nor religious privilege, which proves that we are members of the family of God; it is love, a love that embraces all humanity. ~ Ellen G. White

Loving truth and living honestly is my attitude to life. Be true to yourself and be true to others, thus you can be the judge of your behavior. ~ Ba Jin

Hatred which is completely vanquished by love passes into love: and love is thereupon greater than if hatred had not preceded it. ~ Baruch Spinoza

There's only us, there's only this.
Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
No other road, no other way, no day but today.
I can't control my destiny.
I trust my soul. My only goal is just to be.
There's only now, there's only here.
Give in to love, or live in fear.
No other path, no other way.
No day but today.
~ Jonathan Larson in "Another Day" from Rent ~

This is life to come, —
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, — be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
~ George Eliot ~

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him. ~ Voltaire

Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly. ... Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown. ~ James A. Garfield

Whatever the scientists may come up with, writers and artists will continue to portray altered mental states, simply because few aspects of our nature fascinate people so much. The so-called mad person will always represent a possible future for every member of the audience — who knows when such a malady may strike? ~ Margaret Atwood

The paramount question of the day is not political, is not religious, but is economic. The crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence. ~ Voltairine de Cleyre

We must face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, that we are only six percent of the world's population, that we cannot impose our will upon the other ninety-four percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem. ~ John F. Kennedy

The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.
~ Marianne Moore ~

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods. ~ Norman Mailer

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous. ~ "Mr. Wednesday" in American Gods by Neil Gaiman

To love another is something
like prayer and it can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.
~ Anne Sexton ~

The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes.
~ Peter Weiss ~

Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day. ~ Albert Camus

I don’t think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice. I won’t even accept these words as terms of human reference any more. And anyway, hell, they don’t even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become. ~ James Jones

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot;
I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
~ Traditional rhyme for Guy Fawkes Night. ~

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. ~ Will Rogers

Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan. ~ Wilhelm Reich

By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression. ~ James K. Polk

You cannot choose your battlefield,
God does that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew.
~ Nathalia Crane ~

October 2007

There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.
~ Aleister Crowley ~

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. ~ John Adams

This is a terrific outburst. And since it doesn’t have a tail right now, some observers have confused it with a nova. We’ve had at least two reports of a new star. ~ Brian G. Marsden

I have dreams, and I have nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams. ~ Jonas Salk

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Contempt loves the silence
it thrives in the dark
with fine winding tendrils
that strangle the heart.
~ Natalie Merchant ~

For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this new corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.
~ Geoffrey Chaucer ~

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. ...
I love them
for finding what
I can't find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines
in other
happenings.
~ Denise Levertov ~

Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich. ~ Sarah Bernhardt

Think for yourself and question authority. ~ Timothy Leary

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~

I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing.
~ Tom Petty ~

Nothing is unthinkable, nothing impossible to the balanced person, provided it comes out of the needs of life and is dedicated to life's further development. ~ Lewis Mumford

There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone. ~ Arthur Miller

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out. ~ Oscar Wilde

Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There's an old African proverb that says "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We have to go far — quickly. And that means we have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing, and why we have to work to solve it. ~ Al Gore

I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. ~ Doris Lessing

Everything abstract is ultimately part of the concrete. Everything inanimate finally serves the living. That is why every activity dealing in abstraction stands in ultimate service to a living whole. ~ Edith Stein

At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom from want — for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world — and the most dangerous. ~ James Clavell

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. ~ John Lennon

The sequential nature of actual events is not illuminated with lengthy precision by the powers of prescience except under the most extraordinary circumstances. The oracle grasps incidents cut out of the historic chain. Eternity moves. It inflicts itself upon the oracle and the supplicant alike. Let Muad'Dib's subjects doubt his majesty and his oracular visions. Let them deny his powers. Let them never doubt Eternity. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune Messiah

We depend on our words ... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character ... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly. ~ Niels Bohr

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life...
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. ... He does not confuse truth with plausibility; he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. ... The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy. ~ Denis Diderot

Personally I do not resort to force — not even the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

I'm an optimist. In order to be libertarian, you have to be an optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that human beings left to their own devices are basically good. But I'm not so sure about human institutions, and I think the real point of argument here is whether or not large corporations are human institutions or some other entity we need to be thinking about curtailing. Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government. ~ John Perry Barlow

If there must be a god in the house, must be,
Saying things in the room and on the stair,
Let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor,
Or moonlight, silently, as Plato's ghost
Or Aristotle's skeleton. Let him hang out
His stars on the wall. He must dwell quietly.
~ Wallace Stevens ~

Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story — a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

September 2007

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. ~ Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi

Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself. ~ Georges Clemenceau

You can decide what you want to eat for dinner, you can decide to go away for the weekend, and you can decide what clothes you’re going to wear in the morning, but when it comes to artistic things, there’s never a rhyme or reason. It’s, like, they just happen. And they happen when they happen. ~ Meat Loaf

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

We live in a time when the words impossible and unsolvable are no longer part of the scientific community's vocabulary. Each day we move closer to trials that will not just minimize the symptoms of disease and injury but eliminate them. ~ Christopher Reeve

My generation of radicals and breakers-down never found anything to take the place of the old virtues of work and courage and the old graces of courtesy and politeness. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

Slight not what's near through aiming at what's far. ~ Euripides

Just practice good, do good for others, without thinking of making yourself known so that you may gain reward. Really bring benefit to others, gaining nothing for yourself. This is the primary requisite for breaking free of attachments to the Self. ~ Dōgen

Life begins perpetually. Gathered together at last under the leadership of man, the student-teacher of the universe... unified, disciplined, armed with the secret powers of the atom, and with knowledge as yet beyond dreaming, Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars. ~ H. G. Wells

In each of us are places where we have never gone. Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them. ~ Joyce Brothers

I think everybody who has a brain should get involved in politics. Working within. Not criticizing it from the outside. Become an active participant, no matter how feeble you think the effort is. ~ Cass Elliot

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the single stroke of the pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and the last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled and oceans bounded by the slender force of human beings. ~ Samuel Johnson

You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. ~ Ken Kesey

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld

The vast majority of the peoples of the world are against war and against aggression. If they make their wishes known and effective, war can be stopped. It all depends on whether they are willing to make the effort necessary for the purpose. For, that it will require an effort, no one who considers the history of the world on these subjects can doubt. ~ Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood

Worldly renown is naught but a breath of wind, which now comes this way and now comes that, and changes name because it changes quarter. ~ Dante Alighieri

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule — and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds. ~ H. L. Mencken

Our best destiny, as planetary cohabitants, is the development of what has been called "species consciousness" — something over and above nationalisms, blocs, religions, ethnicities ... I have been trying to apply such a consciousness, and such a sensibility. Thinking of the victims, the perpetrators, and the near future, I felt species grief, then species shame, then species fear. ~ Martin Amis on the terrorist attacks of 11^th September 2001

The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream. ~ Cyril Connolly

You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I'm not a politician, I'm a musician. I care about giving people a place where they can go to enjoy themselves and to begin to live again. To the man you have to give the spirit, and when you give him the spirit, you have done everything. ~ Luciano Pavarotti

Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? ~ Edith Sitwell

Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake. ~ Frances Wright

The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art. ... All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it. ~ Caspar David Friedrich

Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant. ~ François-René de Chateaubriand

A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett

There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood. ~ Paul Bourget

I have always felt that humor was a wonderful vehicle to let us become connected with each other and ourselves… I try to portray the similarities and polarities in men and women, so that we can acknowledge and embrace our collective consciousness. ~ Lily Tomlin

August 2007

Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it. ~ William Saroyan

Live, and be happy, and make others so. ~ Mary Shelley

The truth that seems discouraging does in reality only transform the courage of those strong enough to accept it; and, in any event, a truth that disheartens, because it is true, is still of far more value than the most stimulating of falsehoods. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity: rather it is an elaborate balancing-act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites. ~ Robertson Davies

The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions — none more so than the most capable. ~ Theodore Dreiser

Our sufferings have taught us that no nation is sufficient unto itself, and that our prosperity depends in the long run, not upon the failure of our neighbors but their successes. ~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir

The humourless as a bunch don't just not know what's funny, they don't know what's serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn't be trusted with anything. ~ Martin Amis

It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
~ William Ernest Henley ~

I wish to write down my musical dreams in a spirit of utter self-detachment. I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naïve candour of a child. No doubt, this simple musical grammar will jar on some people. It is bound to offend the partisans of deceit and artifice. I foresee that and rejoice at it. ~ Claude Debussy

Another day goes by
Still the children cry
Put a little love in your heart.
~ Jackie DeShannon ~

The world we live in is driven not solely by mindless physical forces but, more crucially, by subjective human values. Human values become the underlying key to world change. ~ Roger Wolcott Sperry

Vast is the field of Science ... the more a man knows, the more he will find he has to know. ~ Samuel Richardson

What we say is the truth is what everybody accepts ... Psychiatry: it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not. I'm in trouble here. I'm losing my faith. ~ Madeleine Stowe as "Dr. Kathryn Railly" in Twelve Monkeys

I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized. ~ Davy Crockett

The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander. ~ T. E. Lawrence

The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality. ~ Sri Aurobindo

It's always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary. ~ John Galsworthy

The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thy self. ~ Felix Adler

Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong. ~ George Soros

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

It has occasionally been remarked upon that it is as easy to overlook something large and obvious as it is to overlook something small and niggling, and that the large things one overlooks can often cause problems. ~ Neil Gaiman in Stardust

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for — if you are honest — you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one. ~ P. L. Travers

There is a quiet at the heart of love,
And I have pierced the pain and come to peace.
~ Sara Teasdale ~

Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal. ~ Jimmy Wales

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower — but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
~ Alfred Tennyson ~

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. ~ Guy de Maupassant

In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man’s estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out of the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith — and, indeed, our hope — the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid. ~ Clifford D. Simak

The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development — whether psychological or material — one must pass on to the actual realization. ~ Michelangelo Antonioni

People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. ~ Ingmar Bergman

July 2007

In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them, and that’s why you’re not a Fascist; it wants everybody to be the same, and you are not. But immaculate virtue does not exist either, or if it exists it is detestable. ~ Primo Levi

Just being alive
It can really hurt.
These moments given
Are a gift from time.
Just let us try
To give these moments back
To those we love
To those who will survive.
~ Kate Bush ~

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. ~ Dag Hammarskjöld

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure. ~ Karl Popper

A heart, a heart that hurts, is a heart, a heart that works. ~ Juliana Hatfield‎

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. ~ Aldous Huxley

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance. ~ Eric Hoffer

New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return.
~ Robert Graves ~

Our system presumes that there are certain principles that are more important than the temper of the times. ~ Anthony Kennedy

Life is not lost by dying! Life is lost
Minute by minute, day by dragging day,
In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways,
The smooth appeasing compromises of time,
Which are King Herod and King Herod's men,
Always and always. Life can be
Lost without vision but not lost by death,
Lost by not caring, willing, going on
Beyond the ragged edge of fortitude
To something more — something no man has ever seen.
~ Stephen Vincent Benét ~

If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. ~ J. K. Rowling in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation. ~ Edgar Degas

The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Maintain a constant watch at all times against a dogmatical spirit: fix not your assent to any proposition in a firm and unalterable manner, till you have some firm and unalterable ground for it, and till you have arrived at some clear and sure evidence. ~ Isaac Watts

You'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry. ~ J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality. ~ Iris Murdoch

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking my freedom highway
Nobody living can make me turn back
This land is made for you and me.
~ Woody Guthrie ~

Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which persuades human beings to change their basic assumptions is usually contained in a few phrases. ~ Kenneth Clark

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. ~ E. B. White

The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. ~ Marcel Proust

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death. ~ Bertrand Russell in the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Our destiny is frequently met in the very paths we take to avoid it. ~ Jean de La Fontaine

Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. ~ Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them. ~ Jean Cocteau

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. ~ Franz Kafka

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.
Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.
In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come can't be undone.
~ Wisława Szymborska ~

It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody’s beard. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

June 2007

Love means to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills —
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
~ Czesław Miłosz ~

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince

To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships. ~ Helen Keller

A knowledge of history as detailed as possible is essential if we are to comprehend the present and be prepared for the future. Fate ... is not the blind superstition or helplessness that waits stupidly for what may happen. Fate is unalterable only in the sense that given a cause, a certain result must follow, but no cause is inevitable in itself, and man can shape his world if he does not resign himself to ignorance. ~ Pearl S. Buck

I always disagree ... when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence. In the same way, a man can kill a tiger because he is not like a tiger and uses his brain to invent the rifle, which no tiger could ever do. ~ George Orwell

Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild. ~ KT Tunstall

Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling…
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~

If there's not love present, it's much, much harder to function. When there's love present, it's easier to deal with life. ~ Brian Wilson

We are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us. They are saying that everyone is brutal, and the heroes must be as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools. There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. ... Yet surely, when night after night atrocities are served up to us as entertainment, it's worth some anxiety. ... How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience? ~ Pauline Kael

The day after Columbine, I was interviewed... The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that... The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song ... The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous..." ~ Roger Ebert

Nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail. ~ Ken Livingstone

It's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses

All that you know is at an end. ~ The "Silver Surfer" in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary. ~ Yasunari Kawabata

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
~ William Butler Yeats ~

I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again. ~ Anne Frank

The world is wide; no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from one another. ~ John Constable

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love. ~ Saul Bellow

What is this thing called love?
This funny thing called love?
~ Cole Porter ~

I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, given time, comes to be the face itself. ~ Marguerite Yourcenar

Exhaust the little moment.
Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.
~ Gwendolyn Brooks ~

Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them. ~ Thomas Mann

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. ~ John Maynard Keynes

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
~ Robert Fulghum ~

We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut." ~ Lawrence Lessig

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction — every kind of evidence in the logician's list — have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation. ~ Thomas Hardy

Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them. Even with the violence of emotion, judgment and principle must still function like a ship’s compass, which records the slightest variations however rough the sea. ~ Carl von Clausewitz

May 2007

Who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles ...
To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle...
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~

I myself am human and free only to the extent that I acknowledge the humanity and liberty of all my fellows... I am properly free when all the men and women about me are equally free. Far from being a limitation or a denial of my liberty, the liberty of another is its necessary condition and confirmation. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

The pessimist is commonly spoken of as the man in revolt. He is not. Firstly, because it requires some cheerfulness to continue in revolt, and secondly, because pessimism appeals to the weaker side of everybody, and the pessimist, therefore, drives as roaring a trade as the publican. The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade all the other people how good they are. It has been proved a hundred times over that if you really wish to enrage people and make them angry, even unto death, the right way to do it is to tell them that they are all the sons of God. ~ G. K. Chesterton

I have the same idea with all my books: an attempt to come close to the core of reality, the structure of reality, as opposed to the merely superficial. The realistic novel is remote from art. A novel should heighten life, should give one an illuminating experience; it shouldn't set out what you know already. I just muddle away at it. One gets flashes here and there, which help. I am not a philosopher or an intellectual. Practically anything I have done of any worth I feel I have done through my intuition, not my mind... ~ Patrick White

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
~ Julia Ward Howe ~

I'm not a fan of classification. It's very difficult to come up with a classification scheme that's useful when what you're most interested in is things that don't fit in, things that you didn't expect. ~ Ward Cunningham

Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain,
And found out what I could of all desire;
I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone
In the deep center of the voice and fire.
I know the motion of the deepest stone.
Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone.
~ Theodore Roethke ~

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. ~ Benjamin N. Cardozo

What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. ... should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth. ~ Margaret Fuller

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Life — a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter. ~ Charles Lindbergh

The prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement. ~ John Stuart Mill

With all reverence, I would say, let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles. ~ Abraham Davenport

The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new. ~ Bertrand Russell

We are all, always, the desire not to die. This desire is as immeasurable and varied as life's complexity, but at bottom this is what it is: To continue to be, to be more and more, to develop and to endure. All the force we have, all our energy and clearness of mind serve to intensify themselves in one way or another. We intensify ourselves with new impressions, new sensations, new ideas. We endeavour to take what we do not have and to add it to ourselves. Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon the fear of death. That is what it is. ~ Henri Barbusse

The universe is flux, life is opinion. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist — the only thing he's good for — is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it's only his view of a meaning. That's what he's for — to give his view of life. ~ Katherine Anne Porter

I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living his life, and who had good friends, a fine family. I don't think I could ask for anything more than that, actually. ~ Frank Sinatra

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~ Washington Irving

Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti ~

The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. ~ Jean de La Bruyère

Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did. ~ Sophie Scholl of the White Rose

And, oh! what beautiful years were these
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.
Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
~ Langdon Smith ~

Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular. ~ David Hume

Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society ... may unexpectedly come forth ... to enjoy its perfect summer life at last! ... such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. ... Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star. ~ Henry David Thoreau in Walden

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both. ~ Søren Kierkegaard in Either/Or

The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. ~ T. H. Huxley

The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be. ~ Pete Seeger

Love works magic.
It is the final purpose
Of the world story,
The Amen of the universe.
~ Novalis ~

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles. ~ Joseph Addison

April 2007

In a political struggle, never get personal — else the dagger digs too deep. ~ Jack Valenti

I have been in a multitude of shapes,
Before I assumed a consistent form.
I have been a sword, narrow, variegated,
I will believe when it is apparent.
I have been a tear in the air,
I have been the dullest of stars.
I have been a word among letters,
I have been a book in the origin.
~ Taliesin ~

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret. ~ Terry Pratchett

Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other. ~ Eugène Delacroix

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts. ~ Boris Yeltsin

I judge a man by his actions with men, much more than by his declarations Godwards. When I find him to be envious, carping, spiteful, hating the successes of others, and complaining that the world has never done enough for him, I am apt to doubt whether his humility before God will atone for his want of manliness. ~ Anthony Trollope

We defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. ~ "Hamlet" in Hamlet by William Shakespeare

It is certainly not then — not in dreams — but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the past and its castle-tower. And although nothing much can be seen through the mist, there is somehow the blissful feeling that one is looking in the right direction. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. ~ Charlotte Brontë

It may often be noticed, the less virtuous people are, the more they shrink away from the slightest whiff of the odour of un-sanctity. The good are ever the most charitable, the pure are the most brave. ~ Dinah Craik

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth. ~ Jehanne Darc (Joan of Arc)

History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history. ~ Clarence Darrow

Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day. ~ Thornton Wilder

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. ~ Anatole France

We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. ~ Henry James

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist... It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever... Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes." ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle. ~ Tom Clancy

Extremists think "communication" means agreeing with them. ~ Leo Rosten

To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead. ~ William Hazlitt

It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one’s eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Blessed are the poor in spirit:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn:
for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek:
for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:
for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful:
for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart:
for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake:
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) ~

In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs — in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. ~ William Wordsworth

I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art. ~ Gustave Moreau

The world is fast learning that of all forms of slavery there is none that is so harmful and degrading as that form of slavery which tempts one human being to hate another by reason of his race or color. One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him. ~ Booker T. Washington

He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despite, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
~ Aeschylus ~

There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. ~ Washington Irving

How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself. ~ Kenneth Tynan

Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread. ~ Alexander Pope

March 2007

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there. ... I do not deny that sometimes in these wanderings they are lucky enough to find something true. But I do not allow that this argues greater industry on their part, but only better luck. ~ René Descartes

Accept the truth from whatever source it comes. ~ Maimonides

I have been all men known to history,
Wondering at the world and at time passing;
I have seen evil, and the light blessing
Innocent love under a spring sky.
~ R. S. Thomas ~

We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God... ~ Teresa of Avila

History is a novel written by the people. ~ Alfred de Vigny

The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand. ~ Richard Dawkins

I am an Anarchist not because I believe Anarchism is the final goal, but because there is no such thing as a final goal. ~ Rudolf Rocker

What is humility but truthfulness? There is no real difference. ~ Walter Hilton

No work which is destined to become a classic can look like the classics which have preceded it. In art, as in biology, there is heredity but no identity with the ascendants. Painters inherit characteristics acquired by their forerunners; that is why no important work of art can belong to any period but its own, to the very moment of its creation. It is necessarily dated by its own appearance. The conscious will of the painter cannot intervene. ~ Juan Gris

Man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish. ~ Marcel Marceau

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly — and Lo! The Bird is on the Wing.
~ Omar Khayyám ~

It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us. ~ Henrik Ibsen

All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory. ~ Grover Cleveland

Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top.
~ Nat King Cole ~

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. ~ James Madison

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. ~ Andrew Jackson

Let us not forget that human knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the enquiring and constructive mind.
What these blessed men have given us we must guard and try to keep alive with all our strength if humanity is not to lose its dignity, the security of its existence, and its joy in living. ~ Albert Einstein

Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane... something sacred shows itself to us ... something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural "profane" world. ~ Mircea Eliade

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!" ~ Jack Kerouac

Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries. ~ Vannevar Bush

I'm not aware of too many things.
I know what I know if you know what I mean.
~ Edie Brickell ~

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book. ~ Mickey Spillane

Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past — they never do; they're too busy. ~ Kenneth Grahame

Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement. ~ Aristotle

For all eternity has God not occupied His intellect with the cabbage's birth as well as yours? It also seems that He has necessarily provided more for the birth of the vegetable than for the thinking being... Will anyone say that we are born in the image of the Sovereign Being, while cabbages are not? ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

I've always wanted to make the world a more rational place. I'm still working on it. ~ Penn Jillette

In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions. ~ P. D. Ouspensky

You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America. ~ Russ Feingold

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. ~ Tzvetan Todorov

February 2007

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are feted in the waving grass
And by the streamers of the white cloud
And whispers of the wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
~ Stephen Spender ~

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing.
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better. ~ Victor Hugo

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning.
While my guitar gently weeps.
With every mistake we must surely be learning,
Still my guitar gently weeps.
~ George Harrison ~

Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so irreparably his. ~ George A. Moore

The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. ~ W.E.B. DuBois

Promote... as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. ~ George Washington

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
~ W. H. Auden ~

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. ~ Frederick Douglass

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.
~ Paul Simon ~

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Even to have come forth is something, since I see that being able to conquer is placed in the hands of fate. However, there was in me, whatever I was able to do, that which no future century will deny to be mine, that which a victor could have for his own: Not to have feared to die, not to have yielded to any equal in firmness of nature, and to have preferred a courageous death to a noncombatant life. ~ Giordano Bruno

The counsels of impatience and hatred can always be supported by the crudest and cheapest symbols; for the counsels of moderation, the reasons are often intricate, rather than emotional, and difficult to explain. And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed way: plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless dance on the prospects for human progress, drawing the shadow of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And until people learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in themselves — as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done to the cause of popular government — this sort of thing will continue to occur. ~ George F. Kennan

The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires. ~ Susan B. Anthony

When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Every man's life (and ... every woman's life), awaits the hour of blossoming that makes it immortal ... love is a divinity above all accidents, and guards his own with extraordinary obstinacy. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius? ~ Leó Szilárd

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there. ~ Charles de Montesquieu

Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run. ~ J. M. Coetzee

One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good. ~ Peter Kropotkin

Throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people we most despise. ~ Charles Dickens

I swing big, with everything I've got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can. ~ Babe Ruth

God needeth not the help of a material sword of steel to assist the sword of the Spirit in the affairs of conscience. ~ Roger Williams

Men weren't really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill. ~ Betty Friedan

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being. ~ Simone Weil

Well, it's Groundhog Day... again... ~ Bill Murray as "Phil" in Groundhog Day

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.
~ Langston Hughes ~

January 2007

Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable... if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precarious. ~ Ken Wilber

If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good. ~ Thomas Paine

Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself. ~ José Martí

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all."
~ Lewis Carroll, in Through the Looking-Glass ~

The only gold is love,
A coin that we have minted from the light
Of others who have cared for us on Earth
And who have deposited in us the power
That nerves our nerves to seize the burning stars.
~ Philip José Farmer ~

I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. ~ Sharon Tate

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. ~ William Pitt the Younger

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them. ~ Francis Bacon

A revelation, that may be supposed to be really of the institution of God, must also be supposed to be perfectly consistent or uniform, and to be able to stand the test of truth... Reason therefore must be the standard by which we determine the respective claims of revelation; for otherwise we may as well subscribe to the divinity of the one as of the other, or to the whole of them, or to none at all. ~ Ethan Allen

What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one.... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one — which is really the realm of the artist. ~ Federico Fellini

Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. ~ Art Buchwald

It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ~ Benjamin Franklin

To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one's feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same. ~ Susan Sontag

I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

I still feel that sincerity and realism are avant-garde, or can be, just as I did when I started out. ~ Edmund White

Society is indeed a contract... it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. ~ Edmund Burke

Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~

I think it is possible, and that is the most dramatic element in modern civilization, that a human truth is opposed to another human truth no less human, ideal against ideal, positive worth against worth no less positive, instead of the struggle being as we are so often told, one between noble truth and vile selfish error. ~ Karel Čapek

Some marry the first information they receive, and turn what comes later into their concubine. Since deceit is always first to arrive, there is no room left for truth. ~ Baltasar Gracián

It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? ~ Richard Feynman

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth. ~ E. L. Doctorow

All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. ~ Principia Discordia

Men learn little from others' experience. But in the life of one man, never the same time returns. ~ T. S. Eliot, in Murder in the Cathedral

Each comprehended only that part of the mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Isaac Asimov

I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long. ~ E. M. Forster

December 2006

When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective. ~ George Marshall

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too...
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son!
~ Rudyard Kipling ~

If I am to be shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet. ~ Andrew Johnson

The length of one's days matters less than the love of one's family and friends. ~ Gerald Ford

I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner. ~ Louis Pasteur

Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right. ~ Norman Angell

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. ~ Calvin Coolidge

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~ John Muir

The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations. ~ Wesley Clark

It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center is also the circumference of all.
We are awake in the night.
We turn the Wheel to bring the light.
We call the sun from the womb of night.
Blessed Be!
~ Starhawk ~

Learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. ~ Edwin Abbott Abbott

It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life. ~ Phil Ochs

Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental. ~ Paul Klee

To even mention all the things the bird must constantly keep in mind in order to fly securely through the air would take a considerable part of the evening... The bird has learned this art of equilibrium, and learned it so thoroughly that its skill is not apparent to our sight. We only learn to appreciate it when we try to imitate it. ~ Wilbur Wright

What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art. ~ George Santayana

To talk about the end of science is just as foolish as to talk about the end of religion. Science and religion are both still close to their beginnings, with no ends in sight. ~ Freeman Dyson

My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect. ~ Ellen Willis

We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race. We all share the same basic values. ~ Kofi Annan

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments. ~ Gustave Flaubert

In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim — that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people. ~ George Mason

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. ~ Elie Wiesel

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties. ~ John Milton in Areopagitica

May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
~ Delmore Schwartz ~

I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for. ~ Thornton Wilder

Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning. ~ Anthony Trollope

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. ~ Werner Heisenberg

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. ~ Thomas Carlyle

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. ~ Joseph Conrad

The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. ~ Ivan Illich

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. ~ Woody Allen

November 2006

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. ~ Winston Churchill

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity" and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man. ~ C.S. Lewis

Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge. ~ Enrico Fermi

Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it. ~ Bruce Lee

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me?" And the voice says, "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up." ~ Charles M. Schulz

If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do. ~ Lewis Thomas

Only the brave know how to forgive... A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature. ~ Laurence Sterne

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~ Thornton Wilder

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? ~ George Eliot

Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire

Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off. ~ Margaret Atwood

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. ~ Milton Friedman

We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves. ~ Alan Watts

He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. ~ Louis Brandeis

No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
~ John McCrae ~

Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom. ~ Friedrich Schiller

Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. ~ Carl Sagan

No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. ~ Bram Stoker

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness. ~ Albert Camus

Me, I shall be an autocrat: that is my trade; and The Good God will forgive me: that is His. ~ Catherine the Great

Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty. ~ Will Durant

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it. ~ William Styron

Art is a revolt against fate. ~ André Malraux

It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. ~ Marie Antoinette

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."
~ Stephen Crane ~

October 2006

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
~ John Keats ~

The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. ~ John Adams

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. ~ James Boswell

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time. ~ Sylvia Plath

The youth are not always right, but the society which ignores them and beats, is always wrong. ~ François Mitterrand

A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable. ~ Richard E. Byrd

Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument. Where Wallace Stevens says, “God and the imagination are one,” I would say that the imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God. ~ Denise Levertov

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world. ~ Michael Crichton

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility. ~ Doris Lessing

He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~

We sometimes talk as if "original research" were a peculiar prerogative of scientists or at least of advanced students. But all thinking is research, and all research is native, original, with him who carries it on, even if everybody else in the world already is sure of what he is still looking for. ~ John Dewey

There is surely a piece of divinity within us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. ~ Thomas Browne

Give me my freedom for as long as I be
All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me
All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me
And all I ask of dyin' is to go naturally...
And when I die, and when I'm gone
There'll be one child born, in our world
To carry on, to carry on...
~ Laura Nyro ~

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. ~ Arthur Miller

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. ~ Oscar Wilde

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

I am totally convinced from my experience of working with poor people that they can get themselves out of poverty if we give them the same or similar opportunities we give to others. The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world — all we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them. ~ Muhammad Yunus

If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I have always read that the world, both land and water, was spherical, as the authority and researches of Ptolemy and all the others who have written on this subject demonstrate and prove, as do the eclipses of the moon and other experiments that are made from east to west, and the elevation of the North Star from north to south. ~ Christopher Columbus

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I would like to make the point that we cannot undo the past but we can learn from it, and we cannot predict the future but we can shape and build it. ~ Epeli Ganilau

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
~ John Lennon ~

Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? ~ Frank Herbert in Dune

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature. ~ Niels Bohr

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last — far off — at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

Almost all men, and those that seem to be very miserable, love life, because they cannot bear to lose sight of such a beautiful and lovely world. The ideas, that every moment whilst we live have a beauty that we take not distinct notice of, brings a pleasure that, when we come to the trial, we had rather live in much pain and misery than lose. ~ Jonathan Edwards

A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny. ~ Buster Keaton

The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. ~ Gore Vidal

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
~ Wallace Stevens ~

Love and music and happiness and family, that's what it's all about. I believe in these things. It would be awful not to, wouldn't it? ~ Julie Andrews

September 2006

Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other. ~ Elie Wiesel

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. ~ Miguel de Unamuno

When once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely. ~ Francis Turner Palgrave

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule. ~ Samuel Adams

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~

No battle is ever won... They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. ~ William Faulkner

To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy, to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is, and despise affectation. ~ Horace Walpole

There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change. ~ Euripides

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it. ~ Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
~ Leonard Cohen ~

We control fifty percent of a relationship. We influence one hundred percent of it. ~ Joyce Brothers

His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. ~ William Golding

I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. ~ Samuel Johnson

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
~ William Carlos Williams ~

The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense. ~ Ann Richards

We hardly find any persons of good sense, save those who agree with us. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld

The acceptance of the principle of international cooperation is of immense importance for all states. Even the states which are most tempted to believe that they can stand by themselves have very much to gain by such cooperation. And for the smaller states — the weaker states — it is vital to all their hopes of liberty and justice. ~ Lord Robert Cecil

What I need is a good defense
'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I've sinned against
Because he's all I ever knew of love.
~ Fiona Apple ~

When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either. ~ Jesse Owens

On September 11 — what happened? Picture this: two upended matchboxes, knocked over by the sheer force of paper-darts.
Only it was much, much worse than that. In fact, words alone cannot adduce how much worse it was than that. September 11 was an attack on words: we felt a general deficit. ~ Martin Amis

Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat. ~ Peter Sellers

Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. ~ Edith Sitwell

My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

I've probably saved thousands of peoples' lives with my educational message on snake bites — how to get in around venomous anything. Yeah, I'm a thrill seeker, but crikey, education's the most important thing. ~ Steve Irwin

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. ~ L. P. Jacks (originally attributed to François-René de Chateaubriand, born 4 September 1768, because of a widespread misattribution.)

Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it. ~ Oliver Cromwell

Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process. ~ Salma Hayek

I like a huge range of comedy — from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated — but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it. ~ Lily Tomlin

August 2006

Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. ~ William Saroyan

We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves — such a friend ought to be — do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.. ~ Mary Shelley

Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts. ~ John Locke

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves. ~ John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir

Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture. ~ Martin Amis

If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." ~ Howard Zinn

I have brought you to the ring, now see if you can dance. ~ William Wallace

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense. ~ Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury

Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and vileness, and enjoy it to the full. ~ Leon Trotsky

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~

How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves. ~ Ogden Nash

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay. ~ Brian Aldiss

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas — and you have to work through it all. ~ V. S. Naipaul

The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action. ~ Winston Churchill

Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that? It is that man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. ~ Thomas De Quincey

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things. ~ Russell Baker

Make the world better. ~ Lucy Stone

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. ~ Erwin Schrödinger

Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. ~ Herbert Hoover

Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society... But for me, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists. ~ Jean Piaget

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees! ~ Emiliano Zapata

We help the internet not suck. ~ Jimmy Wales

One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underpriviliged. ~ Richard Hofstadter

Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread... ~ Conrad Aiken

If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared...
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries. ~ Clifford D. Simak

Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. ~ James Baldwin

And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go
Oh, oh — You were the first one.
Oh, oh — You were the last one.
Video killed the radio star.
~ The Buggles ~

July 2006

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. ~ Milton Friedman

What am I singing?
A song of seeds
The food of love.
Eat the music.
~ Kate Bush ~

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong. ~ Karl Popper

In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night. ~ Hilaire Belloc

Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. ~ George Bernard Shaw

There seem to be magic days once in a while, with some rare quality of light that hold a body spellbound... Then comes the hard part: how to plan a picture so as to give to others what has happened to you. To render in paint an experience, to suggest the sense of light and color, air and space... ~ Maxfield Parrish

There is one story and one story only.
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the long ninth wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild.
But nothing promised that is not performed.
~ Robert Graves ~

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. ~ Raymond Chandler

We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.
~ Stephen Vincent Benét ~

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. ~ Ernest Hemingway

You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary

Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs. ~ Edgar Degas

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness? ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul;
The mind's the standard of the man.
~ Isaac Watts ~

If you build it, he will come. ~ "The Voice" in Field of Dreams

Patriotism is voluntary. It is a feeling of loyalty and allegiance that is the result of knowledge and belief. A patriot shows their patriotism through their actions, by their choice... No law will make a citizen a patriot. ~ Jesse Ventura

Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral. ~ Ingmar Bergman

To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,
And empty shadow of what is to be;
Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,
And ends but only when our being ends.
~ John Clare ~

In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king. ~ Desiderius Erasmus

Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. ~ John Quincy Adams

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes. ~ Nikola Tesla

I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is. ~ David Hockney

It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive — to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality. ~ Frida Kahlo

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing. ~ Jean Cocteau

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead. ~ Tom Stoppard

When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. ~ Hermann Hesse

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

June 2006

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. ~ Albert Einstein

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principal of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think. ~ Helen Keller

For the future, let all people live in harmony ... Men should be taught and won over by reason, not by blows, insults, and corporal punishments. ~ Julian

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ George Orwell

There is nothing better or more necessary than love. ~ John of the Cross

We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and — our former riches. ~ Anna Akhmatova

The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior. ~ Mary McCarthy

We wanted to bring some love to the world. I thought we were good at doing that. Bringin' love to the world. ~ Brian Wilson

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

Will you still need me,
Will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
~ Paul McCartney ~

Some would say that it is too idealistic to believe in a society based on tolerance and the sanctity of human life, where borders, nationalities and ideologies are of marginal importance. To those I say, this is not idealism, but rather realism, because history has taught us that war rarely resolves our differences. Force does not heal old wounds; it opens new ones. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Responsibility's like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight. ~ William McFee

The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others. To all Ways there are side-tracks. If you study a Way daily, and your spirit diverges, you may think you are obeying a good way, but objectively it is not the true Way. If you are following the true Way and diverge a little, this will later become a large divergence. You must realise this. ~ Miyamoto Musashi

If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo

In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
~ Ben Jonson ~

All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses with Love,
All flows from Love —
No, once again, all is Love!
~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi ~

When you were born in this world
Everyone laughed while you cried
Conduct not yourself in manner such
That they laugh when you are gone.
~ Kabir ~

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means. ~ Paul Gauguin

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~ The Book of Revelation

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.
~ Federico García Lorca ~

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul. ~ Victor Hugo in Les Misérables

It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. ~ Lawrence Lessig

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. ~ Thomas Hardy

Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war. ~ Carl von Clausewitz

May 2006

I am for those that have never been master'd,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole... I receive and I give — such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. ~ G. K. Chesterton

What I do know for certain is that what is regarded as success in a rational materialistic society only impresses superficial minds. It amounts to nothing and will not help us rout the destructive forces threatening us today. What may be our salvation is the discovery of the identity hidden deep in any one of us, and which may be found in even the most desperate individual, if he cares to search the spiritual womb which contains the embryo of what can be one's personal contribution to truth and life. ~ Patrick White

Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver. ~ Harlan Ellison

When you get in situations where you cannot afford to make a mistake, it's very hard to do the right thing. So if you're trying to do the right thing, the right thing might be to eliminate the cost of making a mistake rather than try to guess what's right. ~ Ward Cunningham

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Every failure is a step to success. ~ William Whewell

Cynicism isn't smarter, it's only safer. There's nothing fluffy about optimism. ~ Jewel

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
~ Alexander Pope ~

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. ~ Alexander Pope

Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation. ~ Honoré de Balzac

Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious — that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. ~ Dan Brown

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
~ Omar Khayyám ~

There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey... It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting. ~ Enya

I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you. ~ Studs Terkel

The voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away. ~ Katherine Anne Porter

It is confidently expected that the period is at hand, when man, through ignorance, shall not much longer inflict unnecessary misery on man; because the mass of mankind will become enlightened, and will clearly discern that by so acting they will inevitably create misery to themselves. ~ Robert Owen

'Fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. ~ Roger Zelazny in Lord of Light

Duty, Honor, Country — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. ~ Douglas MacArthur

Positive vibrations man. That's what makes it work. That's reggae music. You can't look away because it's real. You listen to what I sing because I mean what I sing, there's no secret, no big deal. Just honesty, that's all. ~ Bob Marley

The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise. ~ Karl Barth

The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us. ~ Nelson Mandela

While in the physical sciences the investigator will be able to measure what, on the basis of a prima facie theory, he thinks important, in the social sciences often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement. This is sometimes carried to the point where it is demanded that our theories must be formulated in such terms that they refer only to measurable magnitudes. ~ Friedrich Hayek

The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action. ~ Sigmund Freud

Once you label me you negate me. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this. ~ T. H. Huxley

Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. ~ Pete Seeger

We are near waking when we dream that we dream. ~ Novalis

I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, 'I'm in favor of privatization,' or, 'I'm deeply in favor of public ownership.' I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

April 2006

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

Despite the best that has been done by everyone — the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of Our servants of the State, and the devoted service of Our one hundred million people — the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. ~ Hirohito

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost. ~ Karl Kraus

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. ~ Edward Gibbon

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him. ~ Robert Penn Warren

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. ~ William Shakespeare in As You Like It

I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. ~ John Muir

Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~ Dinah Craik

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means. ~ Clarence Darrow

Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence. ~ Karen Blixen

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena. ~ Leonhard Euler

Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed. ~ Tom Clancy

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others. ~ Leo Rosten

Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality. ~ George William Russell

I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings — and I hate people like that! ~ Tom Lehrer

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule. ~ Gautama Buddha

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
~ William Wordsworth ~

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Isaac Asimov

Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe. ~ Thomas Hobbes

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory. ~ Sir Francis Drake

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place. ~ Washington Irving

Whether it is happy or unhappy, a man's life is the only treasure he can ever possess. ~ Giacomo Casanova

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year. ~ Mark Twain

March 2006

When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So, it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. ~ Cesar Chavez

Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. ~ Archilochus

Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. ~ Stanisław Lem

I'd like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time. ~ Buck Owens

All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower. ~ Karl Mannheim

He acts without contact,
instructs without meeting,
guides without pointing.
Desires do not conflict with Him,
thoughts do not mingle with Him:
His essence is without qualification,
His action without effort.
~ Mansur al-Hallaj ~

A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know. ~ Ward Cunningham

With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on. ~ William Morris

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! ~ Patrick Henry

As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. ~ Anne Hutchinson

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. ~ Jean Cocteau

The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society. ~ Henrik Ibsen

Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?
"You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say,
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day."
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~

The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party. ~ John C. Calhoun

Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. There is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof. ~ "V" in V for Vendetta

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. ~ Raymond Chandler

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces. ~ Julius Caesar

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. ~ Albert Einstein

Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world. ~ Hugh Walpole

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. ~ Edward Albee

Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. ~ Douglas Adams

All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome. ~ Kate Sheppard

Some choices will choose you. How you face these choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life. ~ Dana Reeve

The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
They stir us up against our kind;
And worse, against ourselves.
We have a passion — make a law,
Too false to guide us or control!
And for the law itself we fight
In bitterness of soul.
And, puzzled, blinded thus, we lose
Distinctions that are plain and few:
These find I graven on my heart:
That tells me what to do.
~ William Wordsworth in "Rob Roy's Grave" ~

Give thought to life and liberty. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. ~ Rosa Luxemburg

There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.
~ George Gamow ~

In mathematics the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems. ~ Georg Cantor

Our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.' ~ Carl Schurz

I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.
~ Richard Wilbur ~

February 2006

If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away. ~ Linus Pauling

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters. ~ Anthony Burgess

Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves. ~ Chester Nimitz

Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process... ~ Karl Jaspers

I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. ~ George Washington

When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. ~ Anaïs Nin

We picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself. ~ Amy Tan

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can. ~ Toni Morrison

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen. ~ Michael Jordan

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. ~ Henry Adams

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. ~ Galileo Galilei

Some things you don't need until they leave you; they're the things that you miss. ~ Rob Thomas

Life is what it is, and you take what's handed, and you work as hard as you can, and hopefully you'll be successful, but I just don't spend too much time worrying about that. ~ Jerry Springer

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. ~ Abraham Lincoln

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear. ~ René Descartes

What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth. ~ Boris Pasternak

Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses? ~ Mrs Patrick Campbell

There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess. ~ John Ruskin

He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. ~ Thomas More

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down — up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. ~ Ronald Reagan

What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us—what convictions, what courage, what faith—win or lose. ~ Adlai Stevenson

If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one’s outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. ~ Charles Lindbergh

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. ~ James A. Michener

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens. ~ Coretta Scott King

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
~ Langston Hughes ~

January 2006

Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. 'Life' plus 'significance' = magic. ~ Grant Morrison

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace. ~ Milan Kundera

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~ Colette

If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. ~ Lewis Carroll

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. ~ Douglas MacArthur

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace. ~ Virginia Woolf in Orlando: A Biography

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
~ William Congreve ~

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ~ Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. ~ Robert E. Howard

So far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly. ~ Ethan Allen

I don't understand politics. I don't understand the concept of two sides. And I think that probably there's good on both sides, bad on both sides, and there's a middle ground. But it never seems to come to the middle ground. And it's very frustrating watching it, and seemingly we're not moving forward. ~ David Lynch

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. ~ Benjamin Franklin

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love... I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. ~ Jimmy Wales

Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. ~ Albert Schweitzer

I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. ~ Émile Zola

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. ~ Edmund Burke

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. ~ Alexander Hamilton

Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful...
... the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~

Life will not perish! It will begin anew with love; it will start out naked and tiny; it will take root in the wilderness, and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing — our towns and factories, our art, our ideas will all mean nothing, and yet life will not perish! Only we have perished. Our houses and machines will be in ruins, our systems will collapse, and the names of our great will fall away like dry leaves. Only you, love, will blossom on this rubbish heap and commit the seed of life to the winds. ~ Karel Čapek

For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk. ~ Stephen Hawking

There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in. ~ Gerald Durrell

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want... everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear... anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of spreading even against it. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. ~ Isaac Newton

Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age? ~ Cicero

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection...That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers. ~ Isaac Asimov

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. ~ E. M. Forster

December 2005

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!
~ "Auld Lang Syne" by Robert Burns ~

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise . . .
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son!
~ Rudyard Kipling ~

If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet. ~ Andrew Johnson

No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between. ~ Sarah Vowell

It is not the facts which guide the conduct of men, but their opinions about facts; which may be entirely wrong. We can only make them right by discussion. ~ Norman Angell

My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that? ~ Bob Hope

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
~ "A Visit from St. Nicholas" ~

Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way . . . out of that a new holiday was born . . . a Festivus for the rest of us! ~ Jerry Stiller as "Frank Costanza" in Seinfeld, on the origins of Festivus.

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy. ~ George Eliot

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom. ~ George S. Patton

For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers. ~ Carl Sagan

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him, they crush those beneath them. ~ Emily Brontë

It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die. ~ Steve Biko

I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. ~ Charles Dickens

Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy. If you're afraid you don't commit yourself to life completely; fear makes you always, always hold something back. ~ Philip K. Dick

Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. ~ Freeman Dyson

My creed is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly. It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought. ~ Margaret Chase Smith

The maple tree that night
Without a wind or rain
Let go its leaves
Because its time had come.
~ Eugene McCarthy ~

I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst... In other words, I had a life. ~ Richard Pryor

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
~ Emily Dickinson ~

We take men for what they are worth — and that is why we hate the government of man by man, and that we work with all our might — perhaps not strong enough — to put an end to it. ~ Peter Kropotkin

It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers. ~ James Thurber

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. ~ Willa Cather

Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
~ Joyce Kilmer ~

If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse. ~ Walt Disney

Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

All idealisation makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it. ~ Joseph Conrad

I do not believe that friendship today can flower out — can come out — of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life-to-be — to remain for us, in this world of technology — then it begins with friendship. ~ Ivan Illich

The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter... if it turns about that there is a God, I don't think that he is evil. I think that the worst thing you could say is that he is, basically, an under-achiever. ~ Woody Allen

November 2005

Hello. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. ~ Mandy Patinkin as "Iñigo Montoya" in The Princess Bride

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ~ C.S. Lewis

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. ~ William Blake

Put every great teacher together in a room, and they'd agree about everything; put their disciples in there and they'd argue about everything. ~ Bruce Lee

If I were to be given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself. ~ Charles M. Schulz

Only by not forgetting the past can we be the master of the future. ~ Ba Jin

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. ~ Charles Darwin

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. ~ John Milton in Areopagitica

O may I join the choir invisible of those immortal dead who live again in minds made better by their presence; live in pulses stirred to generosity, in deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn for miserable aims that end with self, in thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, and with their mild persistence urge men's search to vaster issues. ~ George Eliot

We must believe in free will — we have no choice. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is. ~ Nadine Gordimer

In a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. ~ Abraham Lincoln

We’re all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings. ~ Alan Moore in Watchmen

It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily. ~ Martin Scorsese

From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen. ~ Robert Nozick

Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.
~ William Cowper ~

The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good. ~ Augustine of Hippo

Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements. ~ Bahá'u'lláh

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory. ~ George S. Patton

We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world. ~ Neil Gaiman

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. ~ Carl Sagan

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. ~ John F. Kennedy

I found a book on how to be invisible —
On the edge of the labyrinth —
Under a veil you must never lift —
Pages you must never turn —
In the labyrinth.
~ Kate Bush ~

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

I feel for all faiths the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun. ~ Will Durant

After looking at mothers-in-law and seeing sons-in-law — I always felt that the jokes were on the wrong ones. No sir, you can look through everything I ever did write or say, and you never did hear me tell a joke about any mother-in-law — or any creed, color or religion, either. ~ Will Rogers

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high,
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
~ Judy Garland as "Dorothy Gale" in The Wizard of Oz ~

Courage! I have shown it for years; think you I shall lose it at the moment when my sufferings are to end? ~ Marie Antoinette

I am everything —
Tonight I'll be your mother — I will
Do such things to ease your pain —
Free your mind and you won't feel ashamed.
~ Sophie B. Hawkins ~

October 2005

I can see lights in the distance trembling in the dark cloak of night
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing a waltz on All Souls Night.
~ Loreena McKennitt ~

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. ~ John Adams

All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly. ~ Muhammad

Life is an error-making and an error-correcting process, and nature in marking man's papers will grade him for wisdom as measured both by survival and by the quality of life of those who survive. ~ Jonas Salk

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I know that it will hurt, I know that it will break your heart, the way things are, and the way they've been. Don't spread the discontent, don't spread the lies, don't make the same mistakes with your own life. ~ Natalie Merchant

Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used. ~ Richard E. Byrd

The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel. ~ Horace Walpole

Reality is always greater — much greater — than what we know, than whatever we can say about it. ~ Michael Crichton

I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life. ~ Timothy Leary

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. ~ Thomas Alva Edison

I think for it to be unhip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me had some sense of hope in them. ~ Tom Petty

Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past. ~ Lewis Mumford

We take the position that there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. ~ Pierre Trudeau

Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El — they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. ~ Marlon Brando as "Jor-El" in Superman: The Movie

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ~ Oscar Wilde

Behold the believers of all beliefs! Whom do they hate most? Him who breaketh up their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker — he, however, is the creator. Companions, the creator seeketh, not corpses — and not herds or believers either. Fellow-creators the creator seeketh — those who grave new values on new tables. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

love is the every only god ~ e. e. cummings

Forgive us the breach of positive commands and negative commands, whether or not they involve an act, whether or not they are known to us. ~ Liturgy for Yom Kippur

Tragedy blows through your life like a tornado, uprooting everything, creating chaos. You wait for the dust to settle, and then you choose. You can live in the wreckage and pretend it's still the mansion you remember. Or you can crawl from the rubble and slowly rebuild. ~ Kristen Bell, as "Veronica Mars"

You always fall when you’re training, that’s sort of part of the process. If you’re not falling, you’re not training hard enough. ~ Michelle Trachtenberg

The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity — love. And the story of a love is not important — what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity. ~ Helen Hayes

I think the ultimate sense of security will be when we come to recognize that we are all part of one human race. Our primary allegiance is to the human race and not to one particular color or border. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~ Niels Bohr

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. ~ Václav Havel

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God. ~ Stephen Hawking

Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age. ~ John Perry Barlow

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. ~ Rod Serling in The Twilight Zone

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. ~ Jimmy Carter

September 2005

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~ Helen Schucman

There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery. ~ Enrico Fermi

In the season of white wild roses
We two went hand in hand:
But now in the ruddy autumn
Together already we stand.
~ Francis Turner Palgrave ~

Could you see the storm rising?
Could you see the guy who was driving?
Could you climb higher and higher?
Could you climb right over the top?
~ Kate Bush ~

The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.
~ T. S. Eliot ~

Between grief and nothing I will take grief. ~ William Faulkner

I wait... wait for the mists and for the blacker rain— heavier winds that stir the veil of fate, happier winds that pile her hair; Again they tear me, teach me, strew the heavy air upon me, winds that I know, and storm. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

There's something happening somewhere — baby I just know that there is.
You can't start a fire — you can't start a fire without a spark.
This gun's for hire — even if we're just dancing in the dark.
~ Bruce Springsteen ~

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. ~ George Eliot

Hope is a good thing — maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies. ~ "Andy Dufresne" in The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age. ~ Sophia Loren

There comes a point when a dream becomes reality and reality becomes a dream. ~ Frances Farmer

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought; our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. ~ Samuel Johnson

I've never seen anybody really find the answer — they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. ~ Ken Kesey

A planned life is a dead life. ~ Lauren Bacall

Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions. ~ Agatha Christie

I've had enough of breakdowns and diagrams— judging from picture books, apparently Heaven is a partly cloudy place. ~ Jenny Lewis

Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets. ~ Judith Martin, widely known as "Miss Manners"

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of the truth — that error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. ~ H. L. Mencken

September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life. ~ Tony Blair

I strongly reject any conceptual scheme that places our options on a line, and holds that the only alternative to a pair of extreme positions lies somewhere between them. More fruitful perspectives often require that we step off the line to a site outside the dichotomy. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. ~ David O. McKay

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. ~ Edith Sitwell

No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

The role of the Supreme Court is to uphold those claims of individual liberty that it finds are well-founded in the Constitution, and to reject other claims against the government that it concludes are not well-founded. Its role is no more to exclusively uphold the claims of the individual than it is to exclusively uphold the claims of the government: It must hold the constitutional balance true between these claims. ~ William Rehnquist

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise? ~ Federico Fellini

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. ~ Frederick Douglass

Speak softly and carry a big stick. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls. ~ Bruce Fairchild Barton

August 2005

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. ~ William Saroyan

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. ~ Mary Shelley

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it— but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today... ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved. ~ Confucius

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. ~ John Buchan

We have met the enemy and he is us. ~ Walt Kelly

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I could not be a traitor to Edward, for I was never his subject. ~ William Wallace

By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like. ~ Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury

If you want the world to know
We won't let hatred grow
Put a little love in your heart.
~ Jackie DeShannon ~

The Government of the State of Israel and the Palestinian team representing the Palestinian people agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security to achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process. ~ The Oslo Accords

Truth has such a face and such a mien as to be lov'd needs only to be seen. ~ John Dryden

It’s a new generation. If you continue to hate, you are entering into the same philosophy that began the war. You have to look forward at people and new times. ~ Roman Polański

Be sure that you are right, and then go ahead. ~ Davy Crockett

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. ~ T. E. Lawrence

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. ~ Sri Aurobindo

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. ~ G. K. Chesterton

I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned. ~ Lucy Stone

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes. ~ George Soros

I do not believe that the tendency is to make men and women brave and glorious when you tell them that there are certain ideas upon certain subjects that they must never express; that they must go through life with a pretence as a shield; that their neighbors will think much more of them if they will only keep still; and that above all is a God who despises one who honestly expresses what he believes. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

There's a whole industry of conservatives saying, 'Ah, it's those damn liberals,' and a whole group of liberals saying, 'It's all those damn conservatives.'... ~ Peter Jennings

TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. ~ Jon Postel

It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress. ~ Paul Dirac

Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places. ~ Garrison Keillor

The Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. ~ Clifford D. Simak

When are you people going to learn? It's not about who's right or wrong. No denomination's nailed it yet, and they never will because they're all too self-righteous to realize that it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith. Your hearts are in the right place, but your brains need to wake up. I have issues with anyone who treats faith as a burden instead of a blessing. You people don't celebrate your faith; you mourn it. ~ "Serendipity" in Dogma, by Kevin Smith

From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space. ~ Herman Melville

July 2005

I think I'd most like to spend a day with Harry. I'd take him out for a meal and apologise for everything I've put him through. ~ J. K. Rowling

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
~ Emily Brontë ~

All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer. ~ IBM maintenance manual (1925)

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve. ~ Karl Popper

From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends. ~ Hilaire Belloc

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. ~ Carl Jung

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~

Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. ~ John Newton

The private detective of fiction is a fantastic creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can be completely realistic in every sense but one, that one sense being that in life as we know it such a man would not be a private detective. ~ Raymond Chandler

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
~ Emma Lazarus ~

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for awhile, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces. ~ Carl Sagan

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. ~ Neil Armstrong on first stepping onto the surface of the moon, 20th July 1969.

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war. ~ Otto von Bismarck

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ~ Nelson Mandela

Most of the books, music and movies ever released are not available for sale, anywhere in the world. In the brief time that P2P nets have flourished, the ad-hoc masses of the Internet have managed to put just about everything online. What’s more, they’ve done it far cheaper than any other archiving/revival effort ever. ~ Cory Doctorow

By the declining day, lo! man is in a state of loss, save those who believe and do good works, and exhort one another to truth and exhort one another to endurance. ~ The Qur'an

Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief. ~ Jesse Ventura

We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. ~ Ingmar Bergman

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others— that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail. ~ Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~ Bill Cosby

All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse. ~ John Quincy Adams

All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed— only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle. ~ Nikola Tesla

God never deserted our people. Right through the ages there were Jews. Through the ages they suffered, but it also made us strong. ~ Anne Frank

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people. ~ Jean de La Fontaine

The more you love, the more you can love— and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I have not yet begun to fight! ~ John Paul Jones

From time to time the exceptional is necessary. For events as well as for men, the stock company is not enough; geniuses are needed among men, and revolutions among events. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot get along without them; and, to see the apparitions of comets, one would be tempted to believe that Heaven itself is in need of star actors. ~ Victor Hugo in Les Misérables

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ~ The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America

The splendor of life forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though; not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. ~ Franz Kafka

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. ~ Hermann Hesse

We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased, it's just like old times. ~ "Sir Humphrey" on European unity, in the comedy series Yes, Minister

June 2005

It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing— a somewhat unfamilar conception for the average mind. Furthermore, the equation E = mc†, in which energy is put equal to mass, multiplied by the square of the velocity of light, showed that very small amounts of mass may be converted into a very large amount of energy and vice versa. ~ Albert Einstein

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Now you see, Lone Starr, that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb. ~ "Dark Helmet" in Spaceballs by Mel Brooks

Some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry— the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth. ~ Emma Goldman

The sons of torture victims make good terrorists. ~ André Malraux

Political language— and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists— is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ~ George Orwell

Conservative, n. A statesman enamored of existing evils, as opposed to a Liberal, who wants to replace them with new ones. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition. ~ Alan Turing

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient... Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach— waiting for a gift from the sea. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Life has no meaning a priori... It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. ~ Lillian Hellman

True eloquence makes light of eloquence, true morality makes light of morality... To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher. ~ Blaise Pascal

In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. ~ Paul McCartney

I observed, 'Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment.' It is not only 'the first and great' command, but all the commandments in one. 'Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,' they are all comprised in this one word, love. ~ John Wesley

I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each. ~ Geronimo

If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow. ~ William McFee

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force. ~ Che Guevara

Talent perceives differences, Genius unity. ~ William Butler Yeats

I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop and to express all that's inside me! ~ Anne Frank

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads. ~ William Styron

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony and even justice. ~ Saul Bellow

There are always good parts. They may not pay what you want, and they may not have as many days' work as you want, they may not have the billing that you want, they may not have a lot of things, but—the content of the role itself—I find there are many roles. ~ Anne Bancroft

I have something to tell you today. Mac OS X has been leading a secret double life— for the past five years. ~ Steve Jobs

Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Fearing no insult, asking for no crown, receive with indifference both flattery and slander, and do not argue with a fool. ~ Aleksandr Pushkin

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. ~ John Maynard Keynes

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. ~ Socrates

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity... In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt. ~ Lawrence Lessig

I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat. ~ W. Mark Felt

I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it. ~ Alanis Morissette

May 2005

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs, And when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth, Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth, And the infidel come into full possession. ~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass

The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn. ~ T. H. White

We have gotten some terrible reviews at times but if we depended on the judgment of the studios or critics, we never would have made more than one movie. ~ Ismail Merchant

The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness. ~ Julia Ward Howe

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility. ~ Rachel Carson

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. ~ Bob Dylan

It seems that it is madder never to abandon one's self than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive and a slave, than always to walk in armor. ~ Margaret Fuller

The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

May the Force be with you. ~ Jedi saying; used in all Star Wars episodes.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. ~ John Stuart Mill

Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else. ~ Malcolm X

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~ Bertrand Russell

I had a stick of Carefree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality. ~ Mitch Hedberg

You say that you are my judge. I don't know if you are— but take care not to judge wrongly, lest you place yourself in great danger. ~ Jehanne Darc (Jeanne d'Arc; Joan of Arc)

Things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams— day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing— are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. ~ L. Frank Baum

If I had my way, if I was lucky enough, if I could be on the brink my entire life— that great sense of expectation and excitement without the disappointment— that would be the perfect state. ~ Cate Blanchett

It behoved that there should be sin— but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. ~ Julian of Norwich

Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better. ~ Florence Nightingale

When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is trying to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. ~ J. Krishnamurti

The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape. ~ Bono

Life is a long lesson in humility. ~ J. M. Barrie

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities. ~ David Hume

If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Democracy is the destiny of humanity; freedom its indestructible arm. ~ Benito Juárez

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. ~ Horace Mann

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. ~ Niccolò Machiavelli

You know more than you think you do. ~ Benjamin Spock

DON'T PANIC
~ Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy ~

April 2005

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. ~ Jerry Seinfeld

It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done. ~ Terry Pratchett

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices— just recognize them. ~ Edward R. Murrow

Everything seems an echo of something else. ~ Robert Penn Warren

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. ~ "Prospero" in The Tempest by William Shakespeare

Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. ~ Immanuel Kant

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. ~ John Muir

Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the Lord's vineyard. The fact that the Lord can work and act even with insufficient means consoles me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Music can be all things to all persons. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction.... Music makes us feel that the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands. ~ Leopold Stokowski

We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. ~ Thornton Wilder

In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. ~ Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator

Here forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing ... Oh! marvellous, O stupendous Necessity— by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. These are miracles... ~ Leonardo da Vinci

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. ~ James Branch Cabell

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. ~ Thomas Jefferson

A living body is not merely an integration of limbs and flesh but it is the abode of the soul which potentially has perfect perception, perfect knowledge, perfect power, and perfect bliss. ~ Mahavira

Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed'. ~ Charles Evans Hughes

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. ~ William Hazlitt

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. ~ Richard Feynman

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. ~ Gautama Buddha

Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are, and what this life is for. At the center humankind struggles with collective powers for its freedom, the individual struggles with dehumanization for the possession of his soul. ~ Saul Bellow

See, I write jokes for a living, man. I sit in my hotel at night and think of something that's funny and then I go get a pen and write 'em down. Or, if the pen's too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny. ~ Mitch Hedberg

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them; but they are the money of fools. ~ Thomas Hobbes

It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth...
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.
~ Maya Angelou ~

Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece. ~ Pope John Paul II

To be an artist is a blessing and a privilege. Artists must never betray their true hearts. Artists must look beneath the surface and show that there is more to this world than what meets the eye. ~ Marvin Gaye

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth. ~ Otto von Bismarck

March 2005

Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks he is so well supplied with it, that even those most difficult to please in all other matters never desire more of it than they already possess. ~ René Descartes

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. ~ Vincent van Gogh

If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted. ~ Eric Idle

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice. ~ James Callaghan

Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down. ~ Robert Frost

If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. ~ Erich Fromm

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? ~ Marcel Marceau

Between individuals, as between nations, respect for the rights of others is peace. ~ Benito Juárez

Everything comes gradually and at its appointed hour. ~ Ovid

The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior. ~ Earl Warren

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. ~ John Updike

I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul's desire. ~ Saint Patrick

If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it. ~ Richard Stallman

Beware the ides of March. ~ William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar

Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest. ~ Albert Einstein

What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others. ~ Joseph Priestley

I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down. ~ Jack Kerouac

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. ~ Douglas Adams

A loser doesn't know what he'll do if he loses, but talks about what he'll do if he wins, and a winner doesn't talk about what he'll do if he wins, but knows what he'll do if he loses. ~ Eric Berne

When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it! ~ Yuri Gagarin

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design. ~ John Herschel

Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: but only he who sees, takes off his shoes, the rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, and daub their natural faces unaware... ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way." ~ Grace Hopper

One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it. ~ Knute Rockne

Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something you have never seen before. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere. ~ Dr. Seuss

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. ~ Jef Raskin

February 2005

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being. ~ Michel de Montaigne

The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit— for gallantry in defeat— for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature. ~ John Steinbeck

The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge. ~ Victor Hugo

Little darling,
I feel that ice is slowly melting.
Little darling,
It seems like years since it's been clear.
Here comes the sun...
Here comes the sun,
And I say
It's alright.
~ George Harrison ~

We think basically you watch television to turn your brain off, and you work on your computer when you want to turn your brain on. ~ Steve Jobs

If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity. ~ George Washington

For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
~ W. H. Auden ~

All in all is all we are. ~ Kurt Cobain

I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. I am aware that a philosopher's ideas are not subject to the judgement of ordinary persons, because it is his endeavor to seek the truth in all things, to the extent permitted to human reason by God. Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus

Teachers are those who use themselves as bridges, over which they invite their students to cross; then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

There is one simple Divinity found in all things, everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being. ~ Giordano Bruno

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. ~ Henry Adams

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. ~ Galileo Galilei

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. ~ Robert A. Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land

In this moment, I need to be needed,
With this darkness all around me, I like to be liked,
In this emptiness and fear, I want to be wanted,
'Cause I love to be loved,
I love to be loved.
~ Peter Gabriel ~

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

If one knows only what one is told, one does not know enough to be able to arrive at a well-balanced decision. ~ Leó Szilárd

Be nice to people on your way up, because you're going to meet them all on your way down. ~ Jimmy Durante

My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue,
An everlasting vision of the everchanging view,
A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold,
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.
~ Carole King ~

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. ~ Martin Buber

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. ~ Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down— up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order— or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. ~ Ronald Reagan

I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self. The significance of a smaller world will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph of the heartbeat over the drumbeat. ~ Adlai Stevenson

Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation, in turn, becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on to the future. ~ Charles Lindbergh

The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn. ~ H. G. Wells

Anything different is good. ~ Bill Murray as "Phil" in Groundhog Day

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. ~ American proverb

January 2005

I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody— including me— has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. ~ Ken Wilber

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe... No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. ~ Winston Churchill

Time's glory is to command contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.
~ William Shakespeare ~

Wise men don't need to prove their point;
men who need to prove their point aren't wise.
The Master has no possessions.
The more he does for others, the happier he is.
The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is.
The Tao nourishes by not forcing.
By not dominating, the Master leads.
~ Lao Zi ~

Remind yourself that all men assert that wisdom is the greatest good, but that there are few who strenuously seek out that greatest good. ~ Pythagoras

Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world. ~ Archimedes

If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. ~ Isaac Newton on his intellectual debt to those who preceded him.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. ~ Albert Einstein

So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it. ~ Bertrand Russell

Even as the fingers of the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers. ~ Muhammad

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. ~ Thomas Paine

The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world. ~ George W. Bush

My experience of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them, or indisposed me to serve them; nor in spite of failures, which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge; or of the present aspect of affairs; do I despair of the future.
The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope. ~ Robert E. Lee

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class. ~ Lord Acton

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. ~ Ernest Hemingway

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen. ~ Æschylus

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance. ~ Anthony de Mello

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. ~ Horace Mann

If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world. ~ Joseph Addison

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I know the biggest crime is just to throw up your hands and say "This has nothing to do with me, I just want to live as comfortably as I can." ~ Ani DiFranco

I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do. ~ Helen Keller

I know this in no way alleviates the enormous amounts of pain and loss experienced by those who have suffered from the tsunami, but I hope it can make a difference. ~ Sandra Bullock on her large donation to tsunami relief efforts of the American Red Cross

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee… ~ John Donne

We are all in this together. ~ English proverb

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

December 2004

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe...
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Idylls of the King ~

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers; I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is. ~ Richard Feynman
- This statement has been discovered to very probably be a misattribution, and seems to have been created as part of a paraphrase of Feynman's note to the mother of Marcus Chown: "Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science — for to fill your heart with love is enough." ~ Kalki 01:29, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight— always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? ~ J. M. Barrie
- Wikiqoute Quote of the day for the 100th anniversary of the first public performance of Peter Pan.

There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know— listen to me, now— don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy. ~ J. D. Salinger

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
~ Sydney Carter ~

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
~ Joseph Brackett ~

Good fortune attend each merry man's friend
That doth but the best that he may,
Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs
To drive the cold winter away.
~ "All Hail to The Days" (or "The Praise of Christmas") ~
Traditional 17th century English carol

i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday... ~ e. e. cummings

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. ~ Joseph Campbell

In the winter season, for seven days of calm, Alcyone broods over her nest on the surface of the waters while the sea-waves are quiet. Through this time Aeolus keeps his winds at home, and ocean is smooth for his descendants’ sake. ~ Ovid

The Tree that was withered shall be renewed, and he shall plant it in the high places, and the City shall be blessed. Sing all ye people! ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
- From The Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King (Book VI, Chapter 5, "The Steward and the King"); in the novel this is a song of a great Eagle heralding the victory of Aragorn's forces against those of Sauron and the Dark Tower.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring,
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
~ "Arwen" in the film The Return of the King ~
- Based upon The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien; In the novel The Lord of the Rings this statement first occurs in The Fellowship of the Ring (Book I, Chapter 10, "Strider") in a letter by Gandalf to Frodo.

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange. ~ G. K. Chesterton

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. ~ Albert Einstein

Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies. ~ The Talmud

How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway... And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness! ~ Anne Frank

Every single moment of a person's life, both of the understanding and of the will, is a new beginning. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another. ~ Ellen Goodman

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, therefore, The General Assembly, Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations...
~ From the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ~
Adopted and proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, 10 December 1948

Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one; I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one. ~ John Lennon

Oh, if a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died what one man's life could be worth, I wonder what would happen to this world? ~ Harry Chapin

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. ~ Samuel Butler

To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction. ~ Theodore Zeldin

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society. ~ Emma Goldman

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. ~ Helen Keller

Ooh, with a little luck— December will be magic again. ~ Kate Bush

November 2004

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. ~ William James

Find the good— and praise it. ~ Alex Haley

Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness. ~ George Washington

I would rather be able to appreciate things I cannot have than to have things I am not able to appreciate. ~ Elbert Hubbard

When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude. ~ Elie Wiesel

Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. ~ Tecumseh

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them. ~ Washington Irving

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. ~ Václav Havel

I'd rather be a climbing ape than a falling angel. ~ Terry Pratchett

Fame is something which must be won; honor is something which must not be lost. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous. ~ Margot Fonteyn

Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have. ~ Oprah Winfrey

Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation. ~ James Thurber

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. ~ Henry David Thoreau

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. ~ Jimi Hendrix

Every now and then a clear harmonic cry gave new suggestions of a tune that would someday be the only tune in the world and would raise men's souls to joy. ~ Jack Kerouac in On The Road

If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. ~ J. Krishnamurti

Anyone who believes in God and the Last Day should not harm his neighbor. Anyone who believes in God and the Last Day should entertain his guest generously. And anyone who believes in God and the Last Day should say what is good or keep quiet. ~ Muhammad

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time. ~ Thomas Carlyle

All the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

When war is declared, truth is the first casualty. ~ Arthur Ponsonby

"The time has come", the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and Kings—
And why the Sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."
~ Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass ~

It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? ~ Spider Robinson

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. ~ Wendell Berry

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made. ~ Jean Giraudoux

America has spoken, and I'm humbled by the trust and the confidence of my fellow citizens. ~ George W. Bush

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US. ~ CATS of Zero Wing

I remain just one thing, and one thing only— and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. ~ Charlie Chaplin

We’d all like t’vote fer th’best man, but he’s never a candidate. ~ Kin Hubbard

The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

October 2004

Merry meet, and merry part, and Blessed Be. ~ A pagan expression of blessing.

It’s always worthwhile to make others aware of their worth. ~ Malcolm Forbes

The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination. ~ John Schaar

We're just being ourselves and having fun playing baseball. The biggest thing is when people look at our team, they can see that we're having a lot of fun. ~ Johnny Damon

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious— fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance. ~ T. H. Huxley

I'm not against God. I'm against the misuse of God. ~ Marilyn Manson

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. ~ John Wesley

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. ~ Dorothy Thompson

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it. ~ Maya Angelou

There’s a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool would continue. The truth is, I’ve always been a fool. ~ Albert Finney as "Ed Bloom" in Big Fish

It doesn't matter if we were down 3-0. You've just got to keep the faith. The game is not over until the last out. ~ David Ortiz

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~ George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four

These children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what they're going through... ~ David Bowie

Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try. ~ "Yoda" in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Nothing endures but change. ~ Heraclitus

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. ~ Margaret Mead

It is better to debate a question without deciding it than to decide it without debate. ~ Joseph Joubert

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't. ~ Richard Bach

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ~ Christopher Reeve

I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me. All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet. ~ Wangari Maathai

You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence. ~ Robert Frost

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. ~ Groucho Marx

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else. ~ Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend

Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves. ~ U Thant

I don't get no respect! ~ Rodney Dangerfield

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. ~ Marie Curie

As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher. ~ Giacomo Casanova

Given the choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. ~ "Blore's Razor" (Author unknown)

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before. ~ Mae West

When you get to a fork in the road, take it. ~ Yogi Berra

September 2004

Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed. ~ William Blake

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects. ~ Henry Melvill (also widely misattributed to Herman Melville)

Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect. ~ Hermann Hesse

Those who think they know it all are very annoying to those of us who do. ~ Anonymous
- The above variant was how this quotation was originally posted. It seems to be derived from this statement attributed to a specific author: Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. ~ Isaac Asimov

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. ~ Jonathan Swift

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. ~ Blaise Pascal

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals. ~ William Penn

Goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil. ~ Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols. ~ Aldous Huxley

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. ~ H. G. Wells

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil

A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love... Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love. ~ Leonard Cohen

The cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are the enemies of God. ~ Andrew Dickson White

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world. ~ Tony Benn

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. ~ Wilhelm Stekel

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him. ~ Carlos Castaneda

We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. ~ Anaïs Nin

He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave. ~ William Drummond

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. ~ Carl Sagan

Only tragedy allows the release of love and grief never normally seen. ~ Kate Bush

He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged— keep on— there are divine things, well envelop'd; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell. ~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear. ~ George Eliot

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Be silent as to services you have rendered, but speak of favours you have received. ~ Seneca

The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails. ~ William Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale

I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff— I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy. ~ J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~ George Bernard Shaw

There is no sudden entrance into Heaven. Slow is the ascent by the path of Love. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

August 2004

Know Thyself ~ Ancient proverb that was inscribed upon the temple of the Oracle of Delphi.

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. ~ William Cowper

It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing. ~ Muhammad

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. ~ Elie Wiesel

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

It’s no use crying over spilt evils. It’s better to mop them up laughing. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. ~ Friedrich Schiller

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. ~ Oscar Wilde

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. ~ Thomas Carlyle

One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent. ~ H. L. Mencken

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. ~ Peter Ustinov

The best mind-altering drug is the truth. ~ Lily Tomlin

Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
~ T. S. Eliot ~

Life itself is the proper binge. ~ Julia Child

Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. ~ Romain Gary

There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble. ~ Washington Irving

The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others. ~ Dag Hammarskjöld

Nobody can be said to have attained the pinnacle of Truth until a thousand sincere people have denounced him for blasphemy. ~ Anthony de Mello

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies. ~ Robinson Jeffers

It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion. ~ Tertullian

A man should be upright, not kept upright. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Character does count. For too long we have gotten by in a society that says the only thing right is to get by and the only thing wrong is to get caught. Character is doing what's right when nobody is looking... ~ J. C. Watts

Your strength is but an accident arising from the weakness of others. ~ Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness

We are defined by how we use our power. ~ Gerry Spence

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children. ~ Khalil Gibran

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts... ~ William Shakespeare in As You Like It

Called or uncalled, God is there. ~ Ancient proverb, said to be Spartan, popularized by Carl Jung
- This is a translation of the Latin phrase Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit. which Jung used as an inscription on his house, and also on his tomb. It is also commonly translated as " Called or uncalled, God is present." or sometimes "Invoked or not invoked...", "Bidden or unbidden", or "Summoned or not summoned..." God is present.

July 2004

Blue Moon, now I'm no longer alone, without a dream in my heart, without a love of my own. ~ Lorenz Hart

I just know that something good is going to happen. I don't know when— but just saying it could even make it happen. ~ Kate Bush

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less, and the good or bad I say of myself I say of them. ~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down. ~ Oprah Winfrey

When I was a kid my parents used to tell me: "Don't go near the cellar door, Emo!" One day when they were away, I went to the door and opened it... and I saw birds and trees... ~ Emo Philips

Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is. ~ Carl Jung

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern. ~ William Blake

Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, Lady, were no crime. ~ Andrew Marvell

I'll tell you this— No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn. ~ Jim Morrison

What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal. ~ John Howe

Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. ~ Elbert Hubbard

We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom. ~ Charles H. Spurgeon

Of all the creatures that creep, swim or fly,
Peopling the earth, waters and the sky,
From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan,
I really think, the greatest fool is man.
~ Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux ~

When we wish to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only failed to see all sides. ~ Blaise Pascal

Thar’s only two possibilities: Thar is life out there in the universe which is smarter than we are, or we’re the most intelligent life in the universe. Either way, it’s a mighty sobering thought. ~ Walt Kelly

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox ~

Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity. ~ G. K. Chesterton

What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children— not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women— not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. ~ John F. Kennedy

The old order changeth, yielding place to new, and God fulfils himself in many ways lest one good custom should corrupt the world. ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Idylls of the King

You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! ~ Michael Palin as "Dennis" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad. ~ T. H. White in The Once and Future King

Why is all around us here as if some lesser god had made the world, but had not force to shape it as he would, till the High God behold it from beyond, and enter it, and make it beautiful? Or else as if the world were wholly fair, but that these eyes of men are dense and dim, and have not power to see it as it is: perchance, because we see not to the close... ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson in Idylls of the King

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. ~ Søren Kierkegaard

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ~ Opening statement of The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America, composed primarily by Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. ~ Thomas Jefferson in an early draft of The Declaration of Independence.

...for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. ~ closing lines of The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States Of America written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, and approved as an official document of united will and determination, July 4, 1776.

You don't understand. I could'a had class. I could'a been a contender. ~ Marlon Brando as "Terry Malloy" in On the Waterfront

With great power comes great responsibility. ~ Stan Lee

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

June 2004

Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the tablets of eternity. ~ James Anthony Froude (long misattributed to Lord Acton)

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read. ~ Karl Kraus

They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again? ~ Michael Moore

Faith and doubt both are needed— not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve. ~ Lillian Smith

It is circumstances which show what men are. ~ Epictetus

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out. ~ Hugh Latimer

Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. ~ Alfred Whitney Griswold

Every man should be capable of all ideas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. ~ Niels Bohr

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against it want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it... ~ Blaise Pascal

I'm not a prettier everywoman. I am an everywoman that they clean up awfully well for TV. ~ Kelly Ripa

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great. ~ G. K. Chesterton

Love loves to love love. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses

Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who need help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. ~ Arnold J. Toynbee

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. ~ Bertrand Russell

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts. My dream is that you will travel the road ahead with liberty’s lamp guiding your steps and opportunity’s arm steadying your way. ~ Ronald Reagan

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. ~ Ronald Reagan

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. ~ David Hume

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action. ~ Lin Yutang

Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe. ~ Euripides

Do nothing, and everything is done. ~ Lao Zi; Variant: When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

We all have ability. The difference is how we use it. ~ Stevie Wonder

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. That little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative. ~ W. Clement Stone

The difference between a hooker and a ho ain't nothin' but a fee. ~ Cheryl James ("Salt" of the rap group "Salt 'N' Pepa")

In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him. ~ G. I. Gurdjieff

May 2004

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. ~ Maya Angelou

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. ~ Steven Wright

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures— in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed. ~ Joseph Addison

I got some new underwear the other day. Well, new to me. ~ Emo Philips

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ~ Carl Jung

I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal. ~ Bill Watterson

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow you gotta be willing to put up with the rain. ~ Dolly Parton

The road to wisdom? —Well, it's plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again but less and less and less. ~ Piet Hein

No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has ever been written will save the world. I cleave to no system. I am a true seeker. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

It is love alone that gives worth to all things. ~ St. Teresa of Avila (Teresa de Jesús)

Love me for love's sake, that evermore thou may'st love on, through love's eternity. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Explanations exist; they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every human problems— neat, plausible, and wrong. ~ H. L. Mencken

If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; if we begin with doubts, and are patient, we shall end in certainties. ~ Marcus Aurelius

In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind. ~ Louis Pasteur

In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad. ~ Freeman Dyson

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. ~ William Faulkner

It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people. ~ Good Omens (by Gaiman & Pratchett)

The integral vision embodies an attempt to take the best of both worlds, ancient and modern. But that demands a critical stance willing to reject unflinchingly the worst of both as well. ~ Ken Wilber

There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other. ~ P. L. Travers

All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her. ~ George Washington

There are very few human beings who receive the truth , complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. ~ Anaïs Nin

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. ~ Emily Dickinson

That best portion of a good man's life,— His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. ~ William Wordsworth

Everything in the universe relates to the number 5, one way or another, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. ~ Principia Discordia, The Law of Fives

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. ~ eden ahbez

In nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read. ~ William Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May. ~ Sir Thomas Malory

April 2004

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. ~ Robert J. Hanlon

Prejudice comes from being in the dark; sunlight disinfects it. ~ Muhammad Ali

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it. ~ Anatole France

Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality. ~ Steve Allen

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~ Gautama Buddha

In war, you win or lose, live or die— and the difference is just an eyelash. ~ Douglas MacArthur

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds wherever we go. ~ Martha Washington

I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. ~ Anne Frank

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do. ~ Molière

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. ~ Elbert Hubbard

Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ G. K. Chesterton

The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one. ~ Bill Hicks

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. ~ B. F. Skinner

Curse on all laws but those which love has made! ~ Alexander Pope

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr. ~ Will Rogers

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Living next to [the US] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt. ~ Pierre Trudeau

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. ~ Yeshua of Galilee (Jesus Christ)

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind. ~ Henry James

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears. ~ John Vance Cheney

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous. ~ Zhuang Zi

The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of hell. ~ Saint Augustine

There is no sincerer love than the love of food. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Life is too deep for words, so don't try to describe it, just live it. ~ C.S. Lewis

Where there is great love there are always miracles. ~ Willa Cather

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they might have been. ~ William Hazlitt

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life— It goes on. ~ Robert Frost

Years ago my mother used to say to me... 'In this world, Elwood, you must be Oh-so-smart, or Oh-so-pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart— I recommend pleasant. You may quote me. ~ Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in the film Harvey

March 2004

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder. ~ Æschylus

There's no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day ~ Alexander Woolcott

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. ~ Peter Ustinov

If a man would pursue Philosophy, his first task is to throw away conceit. For it is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he has a conceit that he already knows. ~ Epictetus

In critical moments even the very powerful have need of the weakest. ~ Aesop

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. ~ Aldous Huxley

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. ~ Thomas Paine

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. ~ Albert Einstein

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. ~ Martin Luther King

Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you. ~ Samuel Johnson

Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. ~ Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ~ Booker T. Washington

Try to have a good day today, wherever you are, whatever you do, whoever is near, if no one is near. Try to be happy, because you may not see tomorrow. There is someone this morning, who didn't wake up, who will never see this day. Try to feel lucky that this is not you. ~ Margaret Cho

Do not say, "I follow the one true path of the Spirit", but rather, "I have found the Spirit walking on my path", for the Spirit walks on all paths. ~ Khalil Gibran

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against. ~ Malcolm X

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace. ~ Helen Keller

The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. ~ André Gide

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed. That can make life a garden. ~ Goethe

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. ~ Carl Jung

People often say to me, ‘I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don’t really feel it, I don’t realize it,' and I am apt to reply, ‘I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.' ~ Alan Watts

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's. ~ J. D. Salinger

May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. ~ John Milton

When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth. ~ Dawn of the Dead (by George Romero).

The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair. ~ Winston Churchill

It is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true. ~ James Branch Cabell

We may afirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. ~ Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. ~ John Stuart Mill

February 2004

Just because it's old doesn't mean you have to read it. ~ Jolene Sugarbaker, the Trailer Park Queen, as portrayed by actor Jayson Saffer.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. ~ Oscar Wilde

It must be so humiliating to have such a public break-up. ~ Ellen Degeneres to Justin Timberlake

An interesting thing has happened since San Francisco started granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples: my marriage is just fine! Even though there are thousands of gay and lesbian couples affirming their love for and commitment to each other, my marriage— my affirmation of love and commitment to (my wife)— isn't threatened at all. As a matter of fact, the only people who can really "threaten" my marriage are the two of us. ~ Wil Wheaton

An amicable divorce is like a ventilated condom; it just doesn't work. ~ Rita Rudner

Ethics and Aesthetics are one. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. ~ Dr. Seuss

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~ Isaac Asimov

Careful the things you say, children will listen. Guide them along the way, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will look to you for which way to turn; to learn what to be! Careful before you say "Listen to Me." Children will listen. ~ Into the Woods (Sondheim/Lapine)

There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in streight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill is meant; nay, where it is, ’twill easily forgive, and forget too, upon small Acknowledgments. ~ William Penn

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us ~ Bill Watterson

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be. ~ Anonymous

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. ~ e. e. cummings

True love is inexhaustible; the more you give, the more you have. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. ~ John F. Kennedy

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. ~ George Santayana

Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence. ~ Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. ~ Eric Hoffer

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things. ~ Isaac Newton

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel. ~ Jim Morrison

The things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. ~ Buckminster Fuller

My years are not advancing as fast as you might think. ~ Bill Murray as "Phil" in Groundhog Day

January 2004

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. ~ Stephen Grellet

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus

All the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. ~ Douglas Adams

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable. ~ G. K. Chesterton

No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another ~ Sir Thomas Browne

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. ... There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ~ Douglas Adams

Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy —in fact, they are almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other ~ Robert Heinlein in Stranger In A Strange Land

There may be love without jealousy, but there is none without fear. ~ Miguel de Cervantes

Dignity does not come in possessing honors, but in deserving them. ~ Aristotle

Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased —thus do we refute entropy. ~ Spider Robinson

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly —right now. ~ Buckminster Fuller

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. ~ Carl Sagan

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. ~ Albert Einstein

Jackie Biskupski is running for a seat in the Utah Legislature, and she's attracting a lot of attention because she's a lesbian. Her Republican opponent, Dan Alderson, is a staunch Mormon, and is running a negative ad campaign calling her lifestyle abnormal and deviant. His six wives agree. ~ Rick Mercer, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, October 12, 1998

December 2003

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity. ~ David Sedaris

The time is always right to do what is right ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it. ~ Thomas Jefferson

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as anothers. We see so much only as we possess. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. ~ Bertrand Russell

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. ~ Emo Phillips

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong. I do not say give them up, for they may be all you have, but conceal them like a vice lest they spoil the lives of better and simpler people. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. ~ George Carlin

I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education. ~ Mark Twain

For myself, I am an optimist— it does not seem to be much use being anything else. ~ Winston Churchill

November 2003

Security is mostly a superstition... Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. ~ Helen Keller

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'Thank You', that would suffice. ~ Meister Eckhart

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. ~ Mohandas Gandhi

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. ~ Frank Herbert in Dune

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. ~ George Eliot

The Enlightened take things Lightly. ~ Principia Discordia

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. ~ Anaïs Nin

God is an Iron ~ Spider Robinson

October 2003

I really believe that if there's any kind of God, he wouldn't be in any one of us— not you, not me, but just this space in between. If there's some magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone else, sharing something. ~ Before Sunrise (motion picture)

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Sex is only dirty if it's done right. ~ Woody Allen

The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication. ~ Terry Pratchett

We've moved away from being a culture of people who think about movies to one made up of people who believe that spouting a list of preferences is the same as registering an opinion. ~ Stephanie Zacharek

One of the basic tenets of Zen Buddhism is that there is no way to characterize what Zen is. No matter what verbal space you try to enclose Zen in, it resists, and spills over... ~ Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

That man is an Euclidian point: position without substance. ~ Ernest Rutherford

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
~ The Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot ~

September 2003

Outside of the killings, DC has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. ~ Marion Barry

If homosexuality is a disease, let's all call in queer to work. 'Hello, can't work today. Still queer.' ~ Robin Tyler

You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long. ~ Boris Yeltsin

We have a firm commitment to NATO; we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe; we are a part of Europe. ~ Dan Quayle

As for the future, your task is not to forsee it, but to enable it. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

When smashing monuments, save the pedestals— they always come in handy. ~ Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. ~ Samuel Johnson

Remember that time is money. ~ Benjamin Franklin

It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens. ~ Woody Allen

One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power. ~ Human, All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche

Our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
~ A Song of Defeat by Gilbert Keith Chesterton ~

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. ~ Niels Bohr

Never burn a penny candle looking for a halfpenny. ~ Irish proverb

It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant. ~ Richard Ferris

What's another word for Thesaurus? ~ Steven Wright

Dare to be naïve. ~ Buckminster Fuller

Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe ... every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy. ~ Hannes Alfven

Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old. ~ Jonathan Swift

There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos. ~ Jim Hightower

Ars longa, vita brevis. ("Art is long, life is short.") ~ Horace

August 2003

Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. ~ Chester Bowles

I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it. ~ Clarence Darrow

Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. ~ The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

He caught glimpses of everything, but saw nothing. ~ Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ~ Emma by Jane Austen

What can be said at all can be said clearly. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up every bird watcher in the country. ~ John Mitchell

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. ~ Elvis Presley

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. ~ Aesop

There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. ~ Hartley Shawcross

It's a thingy! A fiendish thingy! ~ Help by George Harrison

I don't mind making jokes, but I don't want to look like one. ~ Marilyn Monroe

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

I never met a man so stupid I could not learn something from him. ~ Galileo Galilei

As long as I am mayor of this city the great industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.' You never hear a real American talk like that. ~ Frank Hague

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. ~ Adlai Stevenson

The battle of the sexes will never be won as long as we keep sleeping with the enemy. ~ Emo Phillips

A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." ~ Stephen Crane

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. ~ Andrew Jackson

When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the plane will fly. ~ Donald Douglas

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

I can't die. It would ruin my image. ~ Jack La Lanne

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. ~ Aristotle

July 2003

History would be an excellent thing if only it were true. ~ Leo Tolstoy

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. ~ Charles Babbage

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. ~ Paul Wolfowitz

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. ~ Albert Einstein

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer. ~ Will Rogers

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, 'Verify your quotations.' ~ Winston Churchill

One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called a tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse. ~ Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The barge she sat in, like a burnishd throne, burnd on the water; the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails, and so perfumed, that the winds were love-sick with them, the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggard all description ~ (Enobarbus, II.ii) Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race. ~ Education and the Social Order by Bertrand Russell

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. ~ Macbeth by William Shakespeare

All animals are equal— but some animals are more equal than others. ~ Animal Farm by George Orwell

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. ~ Oscar Wilde

Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so. ~ Bertrand Russell

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? ~ Albert Einstein

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. ~ Harry S. Truman

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ~ Martin Luther King

The first "Quote of the Day" at Wikiquote was the above quotation of Martin Luther King, selected by Nanobug on July 11, 2003.