Richard Bach, _One_: You gave your life to become the person you are right now. Was it worth it? Einstein, 1931: Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors, concern for the great unsolved problems of organization of labor and the distribution of goods -- in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations. Punch magazine 1845: Advice to persons about to marry. -- "Don't." 1876: It's worse than wicked, my dear, it's vulgar. 1884: Don't look at me, sir, with -- ah -- in that tone of voice. E.M. Forster: Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it admits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Will Rogers [1924]: More men have been elected between sundown and sunup than ever were elected between sunup and sundown. Dixon Merritt: A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week, But I'm damned if I see how the helican. Robert von Edler Musil: One spent tremendous amounts on the army; but just enough to assure one of remaining the second weakest among the great powers. Spock: Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end. Arnold Schwarzenegger, _Twins_: You have no respect for logic, and i have no respect for those who have no respect for logic. "If you can't giggle, tickle, scream, laugh, run around the room naked, pour liqueur on each other and lick it off, tie each other down, have whipped cream fights, dance and sing with each other, then you are having sex with the person too soon." == Lorra Moore 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 "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." - Paul Dirac "Arguing with an engineer is like mud wrestling with a pig. Pretty soon, you realize that the pig actually likes it." -- Unknown The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. -- Yeats, "The Second Coming" Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom; Wisdom is not Truth; Truth is not Beauty; Beauty is not Love; Love is not Music. Music is the best. -- Frank Zappa "Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life." Sandra Carey Sideshow Bob: "Your guilty consciences may *force* you to vote Democrat, but deep down, you secretly *long* for a cold-hearted Republican to *cut* taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule you like a *king*" Edith Wharton: bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate Shirly Temple: "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph." The energy of arrogance is wasted on the young --Andy McCluskey Lily Tomlin: "I always wanted to be somebody. Now I realize that I should have been more specific." In his science-fiction novel, The Rolling Stones, Robert A. Heinlein comments: Every technology goes through three stages: first a crudely simple and quite unsatisfactory gadget; second, an enormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcome the shortcomings of the original and achieving thereby somewhat satisfactory performance through extremely complex compromise; third, a final proper design therefrom. Kinky Friedman: "If you took all the people that fall asleep in church and line them up head to toe in a line, then they would be more comfortable." Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. -Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910) Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. -Henry David Thoreau The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. -Thomas Paine I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. -J.D. Salinger The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. -Henry David Thoreau A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. -Saul Bellow. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell. -Simone Weil The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. -Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." \ And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful." -Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) [Sand and Foam] 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 Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a flea, yet he makes gods by the dozens. -Montaigne O senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm and yet will make Gods by the dozen! -Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) But they are useless. They can only give you answers. -Picasso, on computers. Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. -B.F. Skinner If I try to be like him, who will be like me? -Yiddish proverb Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. -Henri Bergson A note of music gains significance from the silence on either side. -Anne Morrow Lindberg Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good. -Albert Schweitzer [The Thoughts of Albert Schweitzer] For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you're lucky to find one who's hacking at the roots. -Henry David Thoreau It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust. -Samuel Johnson Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. -Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910) Live as you will have wished to have lived when you are dying. -Christian Furchtegott Gellert There are only two enterprises that refer to their customers as users, and one is illegal. -Michael Hammer Be the change you want to see in the world. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. -J.B. Phillips War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. -Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) [The New Dictionary of Thoughts] If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery We'd all like a reputation for generosity and we'd all like to buy it cheap. -Mignon McLaughlin A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. -Charles Baudelaire The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. -Henry David Thoreau It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly; or to live prudently, honorably, and justly, without living pleasurably. -Epicurus (B.C. 341-270) Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow. -Alice M. Swaim When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us. -Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968) For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted. -Jean Paul Richter It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. -Alfred Adler (1870-1937) He has no hope who never had a fear. -William Cowper (1731-1800) Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary] The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them. -Antoine De Saint-Exupery [Wind, Sand, Stars] God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh. -Voltaire (1694-1778) There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. -James Thurber Whoever heard of a hundred thousand animals rushing together to butcher each other, as men do everywhere [during war]? -- Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. -Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. -William Somerset Maugham "Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary. -Louisa May Alcott [1832-1888], American writer, reformist "We ascribe beauty to that which is simple, which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end, which stands related to all things, which is the mean of many extremes." - -Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. -Haida Indian Saying When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld Knowing all truth is less than doing a little bit of good. -Albert Schweitzer [The Thoughts of Albert Schweitzer] apologize, v.i.: To lay the foundation for a future offence. -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1906) I don't want yes men around me. I want everyone to tell the truth, even if it costs them their jobs. -Samuel Goldwyn dmail phil Son, when you grow up you will know who I really am. I am just a child like you who has been forced to act responsibly. -Rod Byrnes If a man points at the moon, an idiot will look at the finger. --Sufi wisdom It is easier to buy books than to read them, and easier to read them than to absorb them. -William Osler, Canadian-born British physician (1849-1919) [Mark Twain:] When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness. -Chuang-tzu (B.C. 350) You can't say civilization isn't advancing; in every war they kill you in a new way. --Will Rogers, American humorist (1879-1935) I never would believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. --Walt Whitman, American poet (1819-1892) Gravity is the soul of wt. --John Langdon (1946-) [Wordplay] If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe. -Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness. -Ouida, pen name of Marie Louise de la Ramee (1839-1908) The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father. --Austin O'Malley Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism and doubt. --Henri Frederic Amiel Remarriage: A triumph of hope over experience. --Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. --Francis Bacon (1561-1626) How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception. -Louis Charles Alfred de Musset, French writer (1810-1857) It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher (1803-1882) All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. -Mark Twain (1835-1910) A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed--I well know. For it is a sign that he has tried to surpass himself. -Georges Clemenceau, French politician (1841-1929) It's not the voting that's democracy -- it's the counting. --Tom Stoppard To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs. -Aurobindo Ghose, Indian philosopher (1872-1950) We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. -Aesop, Greek fabulist It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher (1803-1882) There are two perfect men; one dead, and the other unborn. -Chinese proverb It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them. --De la Rochefoucauld, French writer (1613-1680) It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us. -Epicurus, Greek philosopher (341-270 BC) Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one. -Ivern Ball Just remember--when you think all is lost, the future remains. -Bob Goddard The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. -George Bernard Shaw Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore once said, "Every child comes with the message that God is not yet tired of the man." We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Friedrich Nietzsche The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. -Ralph Waldo Emerson [The Conduct of Life] Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as for the body. -Aldous Huxley Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -Abraham Lincoln A doctor saves lives--it's up to people to create lives that are worth saving. -Philip Gold, immunologist I will love the light for it shows me the way, Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. -Og Mandino The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. -Alice Walker (1944-) If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. -Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Son, when you grow up you will know who I really am. I am just a child like you who has been forced to act responsibly. -Rod Byrnes Robert Browning's "Andrea del Sarto": "Ah, but a man's reach must exceed his grasp, / Or what's a heaven for?" It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion towards our fellow creatures. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. -Brigid Brophy No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. -Booker T. Washington A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good. -Steven Wright Any mother could perform the jobs of several air-traffic controllers with ease. -Lisa Alther The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back. -Abigail Van Buren This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. -Ralph Waldo Emerson The mind cannot long act the role of the heart. -Francois de la Rochefoucauld The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god. -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) [Beyond Good and Evil, 1886] Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. -Aldous Huxley Love your enemies because they bring out the best in you. -Friedrich Nietzsche Television is democracy at its ugliest. -Paddy Chayefsky Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. -Sydney J. Harris When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out. -Otto von Bismarck When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out. -Otto von Bismarck Hofstadter's Law: The time and effort required to complete a project are always more than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter. -Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism. -Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. -Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Those who write against vanity want the glory of having written well, and their readers the glory of reading well, and I who write this have the same desire, as perhaps those who read this have also. -Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages 20 years. -Changing Times If...the machine of government...is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. -Henry David Thoreau Television is an invention whereby you can be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your house. -David Frost Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire. -Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides. -David Viscott Vanity made the revolution; liberty was only a pretext. -Napoleon All a man can betray is his conscience. -Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. -Tallulah Bankhead, actress (1903-1968) Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. -Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint. --Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true. -Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth. As long as on sorely needs a certain additional amount, that man isn't rich. --Mark Twain (1835-1910) The test of ahimsa is the absence of jealousy. The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to anyone, who rejoices at the prosperity of even his greatest enemy, that man is the bhakta, he is the yogi, he is the guru of all. -Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside of us. -Franz Kafka, Austrian Writer (1883-1924) "May you live all the days of your life" --jonathan swift There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. -Theodore Rubin Fill the seats of justice with good men, not so absolute in goodness as to forget what human frailty is. -Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854) They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee (on being consigned to a mental institution, circa 17th c.) A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. -Saul Belloe I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management. -E.B. White Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. -Oscar Wilde I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. -Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Wit is educated insolence. -Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) [The Art of Rhetoric] God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest. -Swedish proverb Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others. -Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others. -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906] A woman's head is always influenced by heart; but a man's heart by his head. -Lady Marguerite Blessington (1789-1849) Pray, v. To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906] By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong. -Charles Wadsworth If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. -Socrates (469?-399 B.C.) Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase. -John Balguy Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast. -Peter Drucker (1909-) I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed. -Mark Twain (1835-1910) If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. -Socrates (469?-399 B.C.) The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. -John Milton (1608-1674) [Paradise Lost] By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. -Socrates He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly? -Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824) It's all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation. -Dr. Rob Gilbert The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -Andrew S. Tanenbaum An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. -Victor Hugo (1802-1885) In times when the government imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also the prison. -Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) 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-Exupery (1900-1944) 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-Exupery (1900-1944) Because no battle is ever won he said. 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, novelist (1897-1962) [The Sound and the Fury, 1929] The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. -Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968) There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it. -Mary Little There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts. -George Matthew Adams Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914), [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906] Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first is unpleasant and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970) Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. -Isaac Asimov, science-fiction writer (1920-1992) To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something. -Jackie Mason (1931-) Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun. -Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things. -Amelia Earhart, aviator (1897-1937) It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. -Voltaire (1694-1778) God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh. -Voltaire (1694-1778) 16:30We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift. -Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.) The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. -George Baker (1877-1965) I don't believe in political parties. For God's sake -- we have eight different types of soda, and we only have two political parties? --John Stewart (not verbatim) No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. -Harry Emerson Fosdick Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. -Franklin P. Jones Experience is the comb life gives you after you lose your hair. --Judith Stearn I wish I were either rich enough or poor enough to do a lot of things that are impossible in my present comfortable circumstances. --Don Herold Let us so live that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry. --Mark Twain The young wish to give their elders the full benefits of their inexperience. Men have become the tools of their tools. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) Genius is the gold in the mine; talent is the miner who works and brings it out. --Lady Marguerite Blessington (1789-1849) At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely. --W. Somerset Maugham, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer (1874-1965) If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble. --Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915) Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. --Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989) [A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1989] He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. -Chinese proverb The big thieves hang the little ones. -Czech proverb What if this weren't a hypothetical question? "The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep" - E. Joseph Cossman Life is a long lesson in humility. --James M. Barrie, novelist, short-story writer, and playwright (1860-1937) Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think. --Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary] Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. --Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997) One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. --Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915) Adults are obsolete children. --Dr. Seuss, humorist, illustrator, and author (1904-1991) Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind. -Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519) What is to give light must endure burning. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997) We are not retreating -- we are advancing in another direction. --General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present? -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (551-497 BC) [Analects] The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything -- or nothing. --Nancy Astor, first woman member of Parliament in England (1879-1964) All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. --Ellen Glasgow, novelist (1874-1945) I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. --Gloria Steinem, women's rights activist, editor (1934- ) If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons. -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961) I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. -Woody Allen, author, actor (1935- ) Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) All sunshine makes a desert. -Arabic proverb Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) 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. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. -Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870) Remember: Kitsch never goes out of style. Words are things; and a small drop of ink / Falling like dew upon a thought, produces / That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. -Lord Byron, (1788-1824) "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep, voting on what to have for lunch." Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can save a couple of hours in the library. -Frank H. Westheimer, chemistry professor (1912- ) Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. -Albert Camus, writer philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960) Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. --Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power. --Lao-Tzu, philosopher (6th century B.C.) Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process imbedded in the human spirit. When all today's isms have become yesterday's ancient philosophies, there'll still be reactionaries, there'll still be revolutionaries. No amount of rationalization can avoid the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on the planet - Abbie Hoffman Trust in Allah, but tie your camel. -Arabic saying "Rock music is a sociological phenomenon with no redeeming value, but i listen to it while i do the dishes." -- Hindemith Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. -Voltaire, philosopher, historian, satirist, dramatist, and essayist (1694-1778) To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. -Robert M. Pirsig, author [Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance] A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945) If a person is obviously mentally disabled, such as having Down's syndrome or Alzheimer's, decent people exercise sympathy and understanding in their interactions. So why, if someone merely has a low IQ, is he treated with ridicule and contempt? --Geoff Kuenning, computer science professor (1951- ) What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) My precept to all who build, is, that the owner should be an ornament to the house, and not the house to the owner. -Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 B.C) All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born. -Francois Fenelon, theologian and writer (1651-1715) If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) That sorrow which is the harbinger of joy is preferable to the joy which is followed by sorrow. -Saadi, poet (c.1213-1291) [Gulistan] No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same. --Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997) I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely. --Voltaire, Philosopher, historian, satirist, dramatist, and essayist (1694-1778) Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way. -E.L. Docorow, writer (1931- ) Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does. -Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885) Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. -Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832) If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626) Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. -Mark Twain, U.S. Author (1835-1910) Every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) Math anxiety: an intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 MPH. -Rick Bayan "Give me knowledge so I may have kindness for all." - Native American Proverb All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. --Mark Twain (1835-1910) For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. --Dorothy Parker The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason He makes so many of them. --Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the U.S. (1809-1865) Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. --Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us -- Franz Kafka Live a balanced life - Learn some and think some, and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. -Robert Fulghum, author (1937- ) The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. --Groucho Marx His words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command. -John Milton, poet (1608-1674) When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders. -Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941) To have and not to give is often worse than to steal. -Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the U.S (1809-1865) . Our enemies come nearer the truth in the opinions they form of us than we do in our opinion of ourselves. -La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal. -Goethe (1749-1832) Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997) As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1861-1865) When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it. -Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938) No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come. -Victor Hugo, poet, novelist and dramatist (1802-1885) The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. -Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947) Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and philosopher (1772-1834) Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents. -Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860) "We've got to be the change we want to see in the world." Gandhi Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed. -Natalie Clifford Barney, Author (1876-1972) When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer. -- Corrie Ten Boom, author and Holocaust survivor More die in the United States of too much food than of too little. -John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908- ) We should measure affection, not like youngsters by the ardour of its passion, but by its strength and constancy. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE) Walking is also an ambulation of mind. -Gretel Ehrlich, novelist, poet, and essayist (1946- ) Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody is watching. There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924) The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910) There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910) A Robin Red breast in a Cage / Puts all Heaven in a Rage. -William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827) The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. -Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321) Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man. -Benjamin Franklin Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894) Philosopher, mathematician, and writer, Bertrand Russell, once said, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." This week's word describe people falling somewhere in between the spectrum. Can you identify some of those around you in these words ? -Anu I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642) When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you. -Maya Angelou, poet (1928- ) Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. -Mignon McLaughlin, author "We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?" --George Bernard Shaw (Living Graves, 1951) A bird does not sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. -Will Durant, historian (1885-1981) "Only dead fish swim with the stream" [Graffiti on park wall in London] We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom. -Michel Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592) I am not sincere, even when I say I am not. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910) A book is a garden carried in the pocket. -Chinese proverb When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in yourself than there was before. -Cliff Fadiman There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 B.C.) Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937) Every saint has a past and every sinner a future. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900) In this world, you must be a bit too kind to be kind enough. -Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, dramatist and novelist (1688-1763) All zoos actually offer the public, in return for the taxes spent upon them, is a form of idle witless amusement, compared to which a visit to the state penitentiary, or even a state legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and philosopher (1772-1834) 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? -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918- ) If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. -Stanley Marion Garn, anthropologist (1922- ) Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. -Lao Tzu, philosopher (6th century B.C.) Kings stand more in need of the company of the intelligent than the intelligent do of the society of kings. -Saadi, poet (1184-1291) [Gulistan] The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as it if had nothing else in the universe to do. -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642) When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950) It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE) One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory. -Rita Mae Brown, author (1944- ) When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. -Edgar Allan Poe, poet and short-story writer (1809-1849) . Author and humorist Mark Twain once observed, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." There is a pleasure sure, in being mad, which none but madmen know. -John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700) Have patience! In time, even grass becomes milk. -Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990) What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910) The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) In truth everything and everyone / Is a shadow of the Beloved, / And our seeking is His seeking / And our words are His words... / We search for Him here and there, / while looking right at Him. / Sitting by His side, we ask: / "O Beloved, where is the Beloved?" -Rumi, poet and mystic (1207-1273) . What is called discretion in men is called cunning in animals. -Jean de la Fontaine, poet and fabulist (1621-1695) The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950) "Do I contradict myself? Then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. -Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer, Nobel laureate, (1904-1991) Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape. -Solon, statesman (c. 638-c558 BCE) The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language. -J. Michael Straczynski We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. -Marie Ebner von Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916) Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort. -Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870) The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little. -Mark Twain, author (1835-1910) The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature in her manner of operation. -John Cage, composer (1912-1992) You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983) Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. -Booker T. Washington, reformer, educator, and author (1856-1915) The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order. -Jean Cocteau, writer, artist, and filmmaker Pavlov did not train his dogs to salivate, they trained him to ring his bell right before they salivated. Traveling is a fool's paradise... I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there besides me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and writer (1803-1882) It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! -Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865) Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924) War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. -Thomas Jefferson, author, architect, and third U.S. president (1743-1826) In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences. -Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899) Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade in public. Never clothe them in vulgar and shoddy attire. -Dr. George W. Crane Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships. -Charles Simic Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. -Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright (1751-1816) : If I cannot understand my friend's silence, : I will never get to understand his words. O 0 : (JS Powell) /Q\/A\ : ________________________________________________/_\/_\__ No man has a prosperity so high or firm, but that two or three words can dishearten it; and there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent." ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes ~ A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. -Bill Vaughan, journalist (1915-1977) A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. -Bill Vaughan, journalist (1915-1977) Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. --thomas jefferson "and if you're not angry, then you're just stupid and you don't care...... how else can you react when you see something so unfair? when the man of the hour can kill half the world in war-- make them slaves to a superpower and let them die poor...." --ani difranco "Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all." John Maynard Keynes "The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proven that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" A. J. Muste I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. -Brendan Francis Behan, playwright (1923-1964) We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies? -Edward Young, poet (1683-1765) Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind. -Leonardo Da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519) Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. -Louis Dembitz Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941) Language is not neutral. It is not merely a vehicle which carries ideas. It is itself a shaper of ideas. -Dale Spender, writer (1943- ) I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826) It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little kinder." -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls. -Matt Cartmill, anthropology professor and author (1943- ) Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -Susan Ertz, author (1894-1985) Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need. -Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990) Simplicity doesn't mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don't want to have what you don't need. -Charan Singh, mystic (1916-1990) Nothing so soon the drooping spirits can raise / As praises from the men, whom all men praise. -Abraham Cowley, poet (1618-1667) He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. -John Ray, naturalist (1627-1705) Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -Carl Sandburg, poet (1878-1967) The question is not can they reason? Nor can they talk? But can they suffer? -Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher (1748-1832) War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) What a man says drunk he has thought sober. -Flemish proverb Every man is a damned fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. -Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915) It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck. -Louis-Hector Berlioz, composer (1803-1869) All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. -Sean O'Casey, playwright (1880-1964) Sir Walter Raleigh once said; "The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution." In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965) "You can fool some of the people all of the time" -- Mr. Bush quipped at a Washington dinner -- "and those are the ones you want to concentrate on." 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. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet and artist (1883-1931) Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. -George Jean Nathan, author and editor (1882-1958) What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? -Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and author (1712-1778) Conversation, n. A fair to the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary] Don't argue with a fool. The spectators can't tell the difference. - Charles Nalin Traveling is a fool's paradise... I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there besides me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and writer (1803-1882) So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs. -Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850-1919) Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation. -Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887) The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy. -John Galsworthy, author, Nobelist (1867-1933) Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty. -Jefferson Davis, confederate president (1808-1889) I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet and artist (1883-1931) To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900) "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." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world. -Immanuel Kant, philosopher (1724-1804) The mind commands the body and the body obeys. The mind commands itself and finds resistance. -St. Augustine (354-430) Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965) 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, poet (1807-1882) Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well. -Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885) In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. -Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963) My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier you'll be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. -Picasso The woods are lovely, dark and deep. / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep. -Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963) Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, / Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, / Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, / Will not stay still. -T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965) There was never a genius without a tincture of madness. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE) "The woods would be very silent if only those birds sang who sing the best." --anonymous There is a word sweeter than mother, home or heaven -- That word is liberty. -Epitaph on the grave of Matilda Joslyn Gage, suffragist, abolitionist (1826-1898) There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. -Alfred Hitchcock, film-maker (1899-1980) > >"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the > >poor have no food, they call me a communist."--Helder Camara > The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. -Hungarian proverb An pessimest younger than 48 knows too much; an optimist older than 48 knows too little. -- mark twain [paraphrased] God has no religion. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) Money, n. A blessing that is of no advantage to us excepting when we part with it. An evidence of culture and a passport to polite society. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions--the little, soon-forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment. -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet (1772-1834) "I guess the moral here is: you must be careful what you pretend to be because in the end you are who you're pretending to be." --Howard W. Campbell Jr. - Mother Night Art is a house that tries to be haunted. -Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886) The soul should always stand ajar. That if the heaven inquire, He will not be obliged to wait, Or shy of troubling her. -- Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886) A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world? -Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (1929-1945) Here's what Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer had to say about the language in his 1978 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "Yiddish language - a language of exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by any government, a language which possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics ... There is a quiet humor in Yiddish and a gratitude for every day of life, every crumb of success, each encounter of love. The Yiddish mentality is not haughty. It does not take victory for granted. It does not demand and command but it muddles through, sneaks by, smuggles itself amidst the powers of destruction, knowing somewhere that God's plan for Creation is still at the very beginning ... In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity." Many of the everyday English language words such as bagel, klutz, and kibitz are terms from Yiddish. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. -Anais Nin, writer (1903-1977) cBut man, proud man, / Dressed in a little brief authority, ... Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep. -William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist (1564-1616) "I know I promised, Lord, never again. But I also know that YOU know what a weak-willed person I am." A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. -Adlai Stevenson, statesman (1900-1965) A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience. -Doug Larson Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company. -George Gordon Byron, poet (1788-1824) The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. -Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and statesman (1800-1859) What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. -Hal Borland, journalist (1900-1978) "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." - Oscar Wilde I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood. -Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938) If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --Mark Twain We understand death for the first time when he puts his hand upon one whom we love. -Madame De Stael, writer (1766-1817) "The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human, not to serve as appendeges to machines, institutions, and systems." - Paul Proteus Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. -Carl Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961) Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. -William Strunk and E.B. White, authors of The Elements of Style A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. -Greek proverb The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. -e.e. cummings, poet (1894-1962) A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892) Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. -Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (1717-1797) I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful. -John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900) I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) Maybe this world is another planet's Hell. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) I'm sometimes asked "Why do you spend so much of your time and money talking about kindness to animals when there is so much cruelty to men?" I answer: "I am working at the roots." -George T. Angell, reformer (1823-1909) Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-92) Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both. -John Andrew Holmes A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. -Barnett Cocks The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist. -Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941) Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned. -Buddha (c. 566-480 BCE) Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste they hurry past it. -Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher (1813-1855) If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. -Dalai Lama We are so fond of being out among nature, because it has no opinions about us. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) If you don't execute your ideas, they die. -Roger von Oech, author and consultant A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer. -Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719) "Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for. " - Epicurus Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry. -Gustave Flaubert, novelist (1821-80) The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) "The art of life has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every man is an impossibility, until he is born; every thing impossible, until we see a success." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Experience. "The art of life has a pudency, and will not be exposed. Every man is an impossibility, until he is born; every thing impossible, until we see a success." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Experience. Every dewdrop and raindrop had a whole heaven within it. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882) A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places. -Paul Gardner, painter The great high of winning Wimbledon lasts for about a week. You go down in the record book, but you don't have anything tangible to hold on to. But having a baby -- there isn't any comparison. -Chris Evert Lloyd, tennis player (1954- ) If the secret sorrows of everyone could be read on their forehead, how many who now cause envy would suddenly become the objects of pity. -Italian proverb Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983) "Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for. " - Epicurus There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." -John Brunner, science fiction writer (1934-1995) Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience? -Thomas J. Watson, industrialist (1874-1956) You can sometimes count every orange on a tree but never all the trees in a single orange. -A.K. Ramanujan, poet (1929-1993) A good heart is better than all the heads in the world. -Edward Bulwer-Lytton, writer (1803-1873) "Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth. Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. Only so much do I know, as I have lived." Ralph Waldo Emerson, Man of Action! The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900) Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. -Maya Angelou, poet (1928- ) What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989) I will not play at tug o' war. / I'd rather play at hug o' war, / Where everyone hugs instead of tugs. -Shel Silverstein, writer (1930-1999) What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. -Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890) A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. -Charles Robert Darwin, naturalist (1809-82), The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. -Chinese Proverb "Think like a man of action and act like a man of thought." - Henn Bergson It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward. -Lewis Carroll, mathematician and writer (1832-1898) It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher and writer (c. 3 BCE - AD 65) "When every artless bosom throbs with truth, Untaught by worldly wisdom how to feign And check each impulse with prudential rein." George Gordon Byron; Childish Recollections. By trying to make things easier for their children parents can make things much harder for them. -Mardy Grothe, psychologist and author (1942- ) Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969) Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. -Nathaniel Branden, psychotherapist (1930- ) Question authority and the authorities will question you. Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play. -William Congreve, dramatist (1670-1729) Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. -John Barrington Wain, writer (1925-1994) Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have. -Edward Everett Hale, clergyman and author (1822-1909) It's splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts. -Gustave Flaubert, French novelist, letter, 1851 Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910) I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865) "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." --Theodore Roosevelt Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. -Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and writer (1884-1962) "I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building." - Charles Shultz Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. -Franklin P. Jones, businessman (1887-1929) Once you have decided to keep a certain pile, it is no longer yours; for you can't spend it. -Michel De Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592) What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. - Ralph Waldo Emerson You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive. -James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987) Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -Scott Adams, cartoonist (1957- ) If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919) The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks. -Tennessee Williams, dramatist (1911-1983) People hate as they love, unreasonably. -William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863) I don't need time. What I need is a deadline. -Duke Ellington, jazz pianist, composer, and conductor (1899-1974) Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642: "Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so." One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh, writer (1906-2001) Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. -Lewis Carroll, mathematician and writer (1832-1898) Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning. -Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971) Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. -Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998) "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten." B.F. Skinner I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president, architect and author (1743-1826) He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824) We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680) What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams. -Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957) "I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building." - Charles Shultz Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902) I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (1564-1642) Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? -Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president (1809-1865) It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us. -Peter De Vries, novelist (1910-1993) When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. -Chinese proverb A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. -Thomas Mann, novelist, Nobel laureate (1875-1955) An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. -Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962) Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906] The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over its government. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. -Ansel Adams, photographer (1902-1984) Tears are not arguments. -Machado de Assis, writer (1839-1908) Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, / and you're hampered by not having any, / the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, / is simply by spinning a penny. / No - not so that chance shall decide the affair / while you're passively standing there moping; / but the moment the penny is up in the air, / you suddenly know what you're hoping. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996) There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone. -Bjarne Stroustrup, computer science professor, designer of C++ programming language (1950- ) Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996) The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. -William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939) There lives more faith in honest doubt, / Believe me, than in half the creeds. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet (1809-1892) "Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom." Ralph Waldo Emerson, showing a little perspective The road to wisdom? Well it plain and simple to express: Err and err and err again, but less and less and less. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996) "It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere." --Agnes Repplier (1855-1950) essayist No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. -Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962) The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust. -Elizabeth Bowen, novelist (1899-1973) The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad. -James Madison, 4th US president (1751-1836) You are never too old to be what you might have been. -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880) People change and forget to tell each other. -Lillian Hellman, playwright (1905-1984) Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.-Bertrand Russell I am not one of those who believe that a great army is the means of maintaining peace, because if you build up a great profession those who form parts of it want to exercise their profession. -Woodrow Wilson, 28th US president, Nobel laureate (1856-1924) Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it. Mark Twain If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe. -Lord Salisbury, British prime minister(1830-1903) Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. -Stanley Horowitz But man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / Most ignorant of what he's most assured, / His glassy essence, like an angry ape, / Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep. -William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616) If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) 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 (1883-1963) If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963) "Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise." -- Dr. Samuel Johnson The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824) I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.- James A. Baldwin My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure. -Ashleigh Brilliant, writer (1933- ) What you are thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. -William Strunk and E.B. White, authors of The Elements of Style It is a difficult matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears. -Cato The Elder, statesman and writer (234-149 BCE) There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds. -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880) God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950) May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989) What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989) Earth laughs in flowers. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) The world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger. -W. Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965) What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give. -P.D. James, writer (1920- ) Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957) There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible. -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922) "I want, once and for all, NOT to know many things. Wisdom sets limit to knowledge too." - Nietzsche In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects. -J. William Fulbright, US Senator (1905-1995) There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. -Dalai Lama A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy. -Max Weinreich, linguist and author (1894-1969) A bit beyond perception's reach / I sometimes believe I see / that life is two locked boxes / each containing the other's key. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996) Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it. --- Richard P. Feynman Software is like sex: it's better when it's free. --- Linus Torvalds To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Oscar Wilde: "It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." Even a lie is a psychic fact. -Carl Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961) What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul. -Jewish proverb To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy. -Hippocrates, physician (460-c.377 BCE) The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. -William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863) To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish. -Yiddish proverb No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. -Zen saying "There are seven sins in the world : Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Knowledge without character Commerce without morality Science without humanity Worship without sacrifice Politics without principle." -- Mahatma Gandhi No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. -Heraclitus, philosopher (c. 540-470 BCE) Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., US Supreme Court Justice (1841-1935) Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. -Pericles, statesman (430 BCE) Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat. -Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher (1905-1980) When money speaks, the truth keeps silent. -Russian proverb When you enjoy loving your neighbor it ceases to be a virtue. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. -John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968) The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in. -Dennis Potter, dramatist What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. -Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719) The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970) Love is like war; easy to begin but very hard to stop. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. -Iris Murdoch, writer (1919-1999) All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean merges into the drop. -Kabir, reformer, poet (late 15th century) Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. -H.G. Wells, writer (1866-1946) To kill time is not murder, it's suicide. -William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910) The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950) The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages. -Virginia Woolf, writer (1882-1941) It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don't have to. -Walter Linn A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924) If you came and you found a strange man... teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it. -Jerome Singer Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. George Bernard Shaw We have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love one another. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745) One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter. -James Earl Jones, actor (1931- ) While language is forming, writers are applauded for extending its limits; when established, for restricting themselves to them. -Isaac Disraeli, statesman and novelist (1804-1881) [ What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence ] [ of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. ] [ -- Sigmund Freud ] 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, poet (1688-1744) If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969) The bluebird carries the sky on his back. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. -Ambrose Bierce, writer (1842-1914) Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground. -Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, editor and orator (1817-1895) S Never vote for the best candidate, vote for the one who will do the least harm. -Frank Dane Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense. -Mark Twain America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde Youth is too wonderful a thing to be squandered on children. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us. -Paul Valery, poet and philosopher (1871-1945) The only devils in this world are those running around in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little. -Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (1920- ) Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven. -Edward De Bono, consultant, writer, and speaker (1933- ) I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. -Susan B Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906) In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take. -Adlai Stevenson, statesman (1900-1965) "I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul." -Jean Cocteau A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) Hatred - the anger of the weak. -Alphonse Daudet, writer (1840-1897) Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. -Ralph Waldo Emerson , writer and philosopher (1803-1882) A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams. -Yiddish proverb When A Man Lies He Murders Some Part Of His World These Are The Pale Deaths Which Men Miscall Their Lives All This I Cannot Bear To Witness Any Longer Cannot The Kingdom Of Salvation Take Me Home Cliff Burton---To Live Is To Die Beauty is the purgation of superfluities. -Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, and poet (1475-1564) A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. -Theodore Roosevelt, Twenty-sixth US president (1858-1919) I and the public know. / What all schoolchildren learn. / Those to whom evil is done. / Do evil in return -W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973) One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one. -Henry Miller, writer (1891-1980) I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and the government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and the government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) You can never understand one language until you understand at least two. -Ronald Searle, artist (1920- ) There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. --Mark Twain It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defence, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defence of our nation worthwhile. -Earl Warren, jurist (1891-1974) I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed. -Matthew Henry, minister (1662-1714) A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. -German proverb "The trouble isn't that there are too many fools, but that lightning isn't distributed right."-Mark Twain Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -Donald Knuth, computer scientist (1938- ) A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882) People rarely win wars; governments rarely lose them. -Arundhati Roy, writer and activist (1961- ) A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason. -Thomas Carlyle, historian and essayist (1795-1881) It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell. -William Tecumseh Sherman, Union General in the American Civil War (1820-1891) Patience is also a form of action. -Auguste Rodin, sculptor (1840-1917) Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. -Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941) The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter. -Joshua Reynolds, painter (1723-1792) Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King Jr. Life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality. -John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900) Courage without conscience is a wild beast. -Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899) If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything. -Fred Menger, chemistry professor (1937- ) Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time. -Stephen Swid, executive 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. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894) Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963) Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997) If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you'r e doing. W. Edwards Deming I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914) Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have. -Emile Chartier, philosopher (1868-1951) Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900) The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border. -Pablo Casals, cellist, conductor, and composer (1876-1973) And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place. -Rabbi Sheila Peltz, on her visit to Auschwitz To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. -Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986) Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. -H. Jackson Brown, Jr., writer I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this. -Emo Phillips, comedian, actor (1956- ) 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, writer (1871-1900) I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) "If you tell a lie, don't believe it deceives only the other person." I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others. -Marcus Aurelius, philosopher (121-180) And none will hear the postman's knock / Without a quickening of the heart. / For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? -W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973) Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. -Jean Arp, artist and poet (1887-1948) Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. -William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827) If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all. -Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor and political activist (1928- ) A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point. -Mistinguett, singer (1875-1956)

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. -Carl Schurz, general and politician (1829-1906) The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) When I can look Life in the eyes, / Grown calm and very coldly wise, / Life will have given me the Truth, / And taken in exchange---my youth. -Sara Teasdale, poet (1884-1933) As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness. -William O. Douglas Time wears away error and polishes truth. -Gaston Pierre Marc, Duc de Levis, writer (1764-1830) It is human nature to hate the man whom you have hurt. -Publius Cornelius Tacitus, historian (c.55-c.120) The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man. -Madame de Stael, writer (1766-1817) Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me. -Bertrand Russell philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970) Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind! -Henri Frederic Amiel philosopher and writer (1821-1881) If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. -Thomas Pynchon, writer (1937- ) Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government. -Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher (1748-1832) "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 It is kindness immediately to refuse what you intend to deny. -Publilius Syrus, writer (c. 1st century BCE) He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. -John Ray, naturalist (1627-1705) The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. -Stendal (Marie Henri Beyle), novelist (1783-1842) Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine. -Hosea Ballou, preacher (1771-1852) Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. -Graham Greene, novelist and journalist (1904-1991) Abe Lincoln said it best when he observed, "I may walk slow, but I never walk backwards." So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704) Grasp the subject, the words will follow. -Cato the Elder, statesman, soldier, and writer (234-149 BCE) A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. -Hans Hofmann, painter (1880-1966) You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. -Rwandan Proverb It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time. -Mignon McLaughlin, author (1915-) Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet (1809-1892) Love truth, but pardon error. -Voltaire, philosopher and writer (1694-1778) To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up. -Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971) What's done to children, they will do to society. -Karl A. Menninger, psychiatrist (1893-1990) Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952) 'Tis with our judgements as our watches: none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. -Alexander Pope, poet (1688-1744) Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. -Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (1884-1972) If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral. -Samuel P. Ginder, US navy captain One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914) Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952) I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. -James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987) It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to one's own suffering. -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949) The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949) Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness -- And Wilderness is Paradise enow. -- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (as rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald) In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. -Iroquois Nation Maxim No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded. -Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978) A root is a flower that disdains fame. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) His words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command. -John Milton, poet (1608-1674) A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. -Leo Rosten, author (1908-1997) The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly. -Charles Reznikoff, poet (1894-1976) As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910) We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us. -Robert Hayden, poet and educator (1913-1980) We all travel the milky way together, trees and men... trees are travellers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true: but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914) Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. -Immanuel Kant, philosopher (1724-1804) Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research. -Marie Curie, scientist, Nobel laureate (1867-1934) There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. -G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936) To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704) You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. -Naguib Mahfouz, writer (1911- ) It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy. -George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937) Smoking cures weight problems... eventually. -Steven Wright, comedian (1955- ) They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797) To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797) Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.--John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968) New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704) Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824) The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it. -Madame De Stael, writer (1766-1817) Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850) You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -- Sinclair Lewis For blocks are better cleft with wedges, / Than tools of sharp or subtle edges, / And dullest nonsense has been found / By some to be the most profound. -Samuel Butler, poet (1612-1680) How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward. -Spanish proverb "The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity." --Benjamin Disraeli As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. -Calvin Trillin, writer (1935- ) "Beeing happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect... It just means that you have decided to see beyond imperfections" -- Rash Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. -Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963) It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings. -W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973) Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. -Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941) For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. -Ingrid Bengis, writer and teacher (1944- ) Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. -Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist (1905-1983) Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, / Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, / Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, / Will not stay still. -T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965) When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. -Abraham Joshua Heschel, theology professor (1907-1972) I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919) Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797) We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955) Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. -Douglas William Jerrold, playwright and humorist (1803-1857) Extreme justice is extreme injustice. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE) The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957) For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. -Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996) I don't hate my enemies. After all, I made 'em. -Red Skelton, comedian (1913-1997) What is the difference between ethical and unethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses lies to deceive the public. Ethical advertising uses the truth to deceive, instead. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970) We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it. -Dale Carnegie, author and educator (1888-1955) People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. -William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939) "All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." --Arthur Schopenhaur In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous. -Robert G. Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899) 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, writer (1925- ) It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake. -Janos Arany, poet (1817-1882) Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence. -Henri Frederic Amiel philosopher and writer (1821-1881) The satiated man and the hungry one do not see the same thing when they look upon a loaf of bread. -Rumi, poet and mystic (1207-1273) Lying is done with words and also with silence. -Adrienne Rich, writer and teacher (1929- ) When we have the courage to speak out -- to break our silence -- we inspire the rest of the "moderates" in our communities to speak up and voice their views. -Sharon Schuster It does not require many words to speak the truth. -Chief Joseph, native American leader (1840-1904) As the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) Why should I give them my mind we well? -Dalai Lama, when asked if he wasn't angry at the Chinese for taking over his country. (1935- ) Why should I give them my mind as well? -Dalai Lama, when asked if he wasn't angry at the Chinese for taking over his country (1935- ) Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws. -John Adams, 2nd US president (1735-1826) People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. -Alice Walker, writer (1944- ) It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world. -Will Durant, historian (1885-1981) I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free. -Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957) You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. -Anne Lamott, writer (1954- ) Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it. -Herbert Alexander Simon, economist, Nobel laureate (1916-2001) We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian and writer (1906-1945) There wouldn't be such a thing as counterfeit gold if there were no real gold somewhere. -Sufi proverb A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman. -Wallace Stevens, poet (1879-1955) The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation. -James Fenton, poet and professor (1949- ) I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., writer (1922- ) Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes. -Joseph Roux, priest and writer (1834-1886) Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-- / The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind. -Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886) Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it. -Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650) If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison, fourth US president (1751-1836) I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it. -George Carlin The firmest fayth is found in fewest woordes. -Edward Dyer, courtier and poet (c. 1540-1607) Rare is the person who can weigh the faults of others without putting his thumb on the scales. -Byron J. Langenfeld One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute. -William Feather, author, editor and publisher (1889-1981) We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965) We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. -Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965) We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same. -Carlos Castenada, mystic and author (1925-1998) A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE) There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. -Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971) Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy. -Max Weinreich, linguist and author (1894-1969) We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity, the intolerable labor of thought. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961) Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity. -Arnold Toynbee, historian (1889-1975) One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy. -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985) A half-truth is a whole lie. -Yiddish proverb Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. -Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947) One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence. -Charles A. Beard, historian (1874-1948) A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on 'Babe' that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian. -James Cromwell, actor (1940- ) A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. -Charles Peguy, poet and essayist (1873-1914) It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. -Bill Watterson, comic strip artist (1958- ), in his comic strip Calvin & Hobbes A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth. -Edward De Bono, consultant, writer, and speaker (1933- ) The further one grows spiritually, the more and more people one loves and the fewer and fewer people one likes. -Gale D. Webbe, clergyman and author (1909-2000) The object of most prayers is to wangle an advance on good intentions. -Robert Brault One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read. -John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006) It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that nature works as steadily in rust as in rose petals. -Esther Warner Dendel, writer and artist (1910-2002) Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957) A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., jurist (1841-1935) Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots. -Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- ) One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. -Milton Friedman, economist, Novel laureate (1912- ) If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. It it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985) "When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) [Antoine de Saint Expury:] You know you've achieved perfection in design, Not when you have nothing more to add, But when you have nothing more to take away. A child, like your stomach, doesn't need all you can afford to give it. -Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- ) The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead. -Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1972- ) To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. -Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th US president (1908-1973) Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824) The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it. -Peter. B. Medawar, scientist, Nobel laureate (1915-1987) History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure. -Thurgood Marshall, US Supreme Court Justice (1908-1993) Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. -Theodore Rubin, psychiatrist and writer (1923- ) When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion. -C.P. Snow, scientist and writer (1905-1980) No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) The more intelligent and cultured a man is, the more subtly he can humbug himself. -Carl Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961) Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors. -Lewis H. Lapham, editor (1935- ) The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. -William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994) ............................................................................ What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. -Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939) For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you're lucky to find one who's hacking at the roots. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. -Brigid Brophy, writer (1929-1995) As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher (1803-1882) As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. -Calvin Trillin, writer (1935- ) Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action. -James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891) History is a vast early warning system. -Norman Cousins, editor and author (1915-1990) A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. -Henry Ford, industrialist (1863-1947) Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983) The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach. -Aleister Crowley, author (1875-1947) Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. -Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969) "We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man. -Arnold Toynbee, historian (1889-1975) True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive. -Mignon McLaughlin, author (1915-) Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. -Guy de Maupassant, short story writer and novelist (1850-1893) The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic. -James Marston Fitch, historic preservationist (1909-2000) Do I believe God is going to take away my illness when he turned an entirely deaf ear to the six million Jews who went into the gas chambers? -Karen Armstrong, author (1944- ) The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983) An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. -Robert M. Sapolsky, neuroscientist and author (1957- ) Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. -A computer after simulating hundreds of war games in the movie WarGames (1983), written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid? -Richard Bach, writer (1936- ) Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983) If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence. -Will Cuppy, journalist (1884-1949) One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. -May Sarton, poet and novelist (1912-1995) Wit is educated insolence. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE) I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. -Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest. -Swedish proverb Selfishness (n) -- The lack of consideration we have for the selfishness of others. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. -Robert Benchley You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration. -Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. -Nathaniel Hawthorne, novelist and short-story writer (1804-1864) Victory breeds enmity; the defeated live in pain. The peaceful live happily, avoiding both victory and defeat. -Buddha (c. 563-483 BCE) 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, novelist (1894-1963) ............................................................................ The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. -Iris Murdoch, writer (1919-1999) [World Carfree Day is Sep 22: http://www.worldcarfree.net/wcfd/ ] Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy. -Thomas Merton, writer (1915-1968) To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626) There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either. -Robert Graves, poet and novelist (1895-1985) The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy. -Antoine de Rivarol, epigrammatist (1753-1801) "I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert Frost That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not. -James Kern Feibleman, philosopher and psychiatrist (1904-1987) A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes. -James Kern Feibleman, philosopher and psychiatrist (1904-1987) I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) How can we expect another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves. -Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680) A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. -John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900) I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970) Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason. -Henry Fielding, author (1707-1754) Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work. -Gustave Flaubert, novelist (1821-1880) An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does the truth become error because nobody will see it. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) For money you can have everything it is said. No that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money. -Arne Garborg, writer (1851-1924) P.S. Attached: a delightful ad from the 40's. (From a disc of Yiddish Radio stuff; I can tell you the dozen tracks I cherry-picked off eMusic, if you like.) Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) "We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." - Charles Bukowski Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily. -Jean Toomer, poet and novelist (1894-1967) It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power. -Buddha (c. 563-483 BCE) The living language is like a cow-path: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay. -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985) "It is okay to make mistakes. It is good to admit them. It is best to learn from them. It is bad to repeat them." [L. Bernstein, 1993] Words are the small change of thought. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910) He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses. -Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE) Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928) Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. -Sebastien-Roch-Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (1741-1794) Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable? -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition. -Jose Bergamin, author (1895-1983) Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on? -James Richardson, poet, professor (b. 1950) Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. -- Booker T. Washington I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989) The knife disappears with sharpening. -James Richardson, poet, professor (b. 1950) 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, clergyman (b. 1931) Wars are the side-effects of nationalism. -Yahia Lababidi, writer (b. 1973) Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. -William James, psychologist (1842-1910) When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the U.S. (1809-1865) Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970) God must have loved the people in power, for he made them so much like their own image of him. -Kenneth Patchen, poet and novelist (1911-1972) Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards. -Baltasar Gracian, philosopher and writer (1601-1658) Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in. -Sam Harris, author (1967- ) Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. -Gladys Browyn Stern, writer (1890-1973) Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it. -Albert Richard Smith, author and entertainer (1816-1860) The sun is pure communism everywhere except in cities, where it's private property. -Malcolm De Chazal, writer and painter (1902-1981) The man who can make others laugh secures more votes for a measure than the man who forces them to think. -- Malcolm De Chazal, writer and painter (1902-1981) It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. -Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (1771-1845) Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect. -Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860) Invention requires an excited mind; execution, a calm one. -Johann Peter Eckermann, poet (1792-1854) One does not advance the swimming abilities of ducks by throwing the eggs in the water. -Multatuli (pen name of Eduard Douwes Dekker), novelist (1820-1887) Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them. -Alvin Toffler, futurist and author (b. 1928) A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. -Henry Ford, industrialist (1863-1947) It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. -Andre Gide, author, Nobel laureate (1869-1951) A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988) Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. -Eli Khamarov You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. -John Wooden, sports coach (b. 1910) A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man. -Arnold Toynbee, historian (1889-1975) The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. -Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer (1917-2008) I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion, -- the religion of well-doing and daring, men of sturdy truth, men of integrity and feeling for others. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil. -Norman Mailer, author (1923-2007) Modern technology / Owes ecology / An apology. -Alan M. Eddison Corporation: n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. --Ambrose Bierce, author and editor (1842-1914) I wasn't disturbing the peace, I was disturbing the war. -Ammon Hennacy, activist (1893-1970) 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, philosopher and economist (1806-1873) Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time. -Stephen Swid, executive (b. 1941) A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage. -Marvin Kitman, author and media critic (b. 1929) Some people with great virtues are disagreeable, while others with great vices are delightful. -Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld, moralist (1613-1680) You can sometimes count every orange on a tree but never all the trees in a single orange. -A.K. Ramanujan, poet (1929-1993 Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that. -Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, preacher, journalist and activist (1802-1861) For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money. -Arne Garborg, writer (1851-1924) I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955) Words are the small change of thought. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910) The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006) The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. -E.E. Cummings, poet (1894-1962) Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902) A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan, author, journalism professor (b. 1955) Each morning puts a man on trial and each evening passes judgment. -Roy L. Smith I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865) Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product. -Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and author (1884-1962) Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless. -Lech Walesa, human rights activist, Polish president, Nobel laureate (b. 1943) Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand. -Stanislaw J. Lec, poet and aphorist (1909-1966) "Faith" is a fine invention / For gentlemen who see -- / But microscopes are prudent / In an emergency. -Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886) Faith is believing what you know ain't so. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means - either will do - the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous or young and in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum. -Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832) The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in. -Dennis Potter, dramatist (1935-1994) Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! -Andre Gide, author, Nobel laureate (1869-1951) Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. -Aharon Barak, law professor, former President of the Supreme Court of Israel (b.1936) To fully understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824) When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, -- as that a sentence must never end with a particle, -- and perceive how implicitly even the learned obey it, I think -- Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it. -Dante Alighieri, poet (1265-1321) If your morals make you dreary, depend on it they are wrong. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894) It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power. -Buddha (c. 563-483 BCE) He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses. -Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE) Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928) A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. -Miguel de Cervantes, novelist (1547-1616) The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly. -Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971) Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it. -Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (b. 1948) No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. -Alexis de Tocqueville, statesman and historian (1805-1859) Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. -Dan Barker, former preacher, musician (b. 1949) In my youth I thought of writing a satire on mankind; but now in my age I think I should write an apology for them. -Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (1717-1797) Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity 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 one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. -Martin Luther King, Jr. A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894) I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989) An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth. -Bonnie Friedman, author (b. 1958) The stateliest building man can raise is the ivy's food at last. -Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870) It is good to rub and polish your mind against that of others. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592) I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry. -Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961) I do not desire suffering; yet, fool that I am, I desire the cause of suffering. -Shantideva There will be no Homeland Security until we realize that the entire planet is our homeland. Every sentient being in the world must feel secure. -John Perkins, economist and author (b.1945) What you cannot enforce, do not command. -Sophocles, dramatist (495?-406 BCE) Society cannot exist without inequality of fortunes and the inequality of fortunes could not subsist without religion. Whenever a half-starved person is near another who is glutted, it is impossible to reconcile the difference if there is not an authority who tells him to. -Napoleon Bonaparte, general and politician (1769-1821) Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. -Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist (1821-1881) The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704) What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist. -Salman Rushdie, writer (b. 1947) All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause -- there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. -Joss Whedon, writer and film director (b. 1964) We all have handicaps. The difference is that some of us must reveal ours, while others must conceal theirs, to be treated with mercy. -Yahia Lababidi, author (b. 1973) It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. -J.K. Rowling, author (b. 1965) The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) Let no man pull you low enough to hate him. -Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968) It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves. -John Danforth, priest, ambassador, senator (b. 1936) Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian. -Robert Orben, magician and author (b. 1927) We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are. -J.K. Rowling, author (b. 1965) The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have advanced mankind and have enriched the world. -Emma Goldman, social activist (1869-1940) One law for the lion and ox is oppression. -William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827) It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. -William G. McAdoo, lawyer and politician (1863-1941) A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. -Khalil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. -Richard Dawkins, biologist and author (b. 1941) The Athenian lawmaker Solon's reform to make Draco's laws humane earned him a place in the dictionary as an eponym meaning "a wise lawgiver". It was Solon who said: Laws are the spider's webs which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break through and escape. The tragedy of modern war is not so much that young men die but that they die fighting each other, instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989) Don't surrender your loneliness / So quickly. / Let it cut more deeply. / Let it ferment and season you / As few human / Or even divine ingredients can. -Hafez, poet (1315-1390) Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. -Charles R. Magel, professor of philosophy If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all. -Joey Adams, comedian (1911-1999) The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people. -Helen Adams Keller, lecturer and author (1880-1968) Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. -Abraham Flexner, educator (1866-1959) Words / as slippery as smooth grapes, / words exploding in the light / like dormant seeds waiting / in the vaults of vocabulary, / alive again, and giving life: / once again the heart distills them. -Pablo Neruda, poet and diplomat (1904-1973) We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. -Kenji Miyazawa, poet and story writer (1896-1933) Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. -Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and writer (121-180) Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange, and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. -Banksy, street artist (b. 1974) Good men must not obey the laws too well. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be. -Louis de Bernieres, novelist (b. 1954) When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. -Leonard Matlovich, a gay Vietnam Veteran (1943-1988) Is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's? -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. -Robert Southey (1774-1843) Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier, and simpler. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America, and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. -Peter Singer, philosopher, professor of bioethics (b. 1946) What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof. -Christopher Hitchens, author and journalist (b. 1949) There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. -Marshall McLuhan, educator and philosopher (1911-1980) a comedian define holy war like this: My imaginary friend is better than your imaginary friend. ... attributed to Christopher Hitchens). Actually this is not original to CH, but instead derives from the Latin maxim, "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur." An elegant formulation of which is: That which is alleged without proof may be dismissed without explanation. Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment. -Cyril Connolly, critic and editor (1903-1974) Poverty is the worst form of violence. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. -Joyce Carol Oates, writer (b. 1938) 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, astronomer and writer (1934-1996) 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 Polya, professor of mathematics (1887-1985) Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914) He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. -John Ray, naturalist (1627-1705) Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking. -Wangari Muta Maathai, activist and Nobel laureate (b. 1940) 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, economist (1908-2006) A gun gives you the body, not the bird. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. -Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996) Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist (1917-1986) It will not do to investigate the subject of religion too closely, as it is apt to lead to infidelity. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th US President (1809-1865) A couple of months in the laboratory can save a couple of hours in the library. -Frank H. Westheimer, chemistry professor (1912-2007) 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, historian (1916-1970) Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime. -John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900) Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable. -H.R. McMaster, Brigadier General, US Army, Iraq War veteran (b. 1962) [Actually Brig. Gen. was talking about PowerPoint] Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven. -Yiddish proverb I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -Stephen Roberts, database architect (b. 1967) The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it. -George Marshall, US Army Chief, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Nobel laureate (1880-1959) The death of dogma is the birth of morality. -Immanuel Kant, philosopher (1724-1804) Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. -Hal Borland, journalist (1900-1978) 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, journalist and author (1917-1986) As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. -Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer, Nobel laureate, (1904-1991) A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan, author, journalism professor (b. 1955) As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. -Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937) There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592) Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction. -Francis Picabia, painter and poet (1879-1953) I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. -Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist (1875-1926) All men -- whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans -- have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies. -Norman Cousins, author, editor, journalist and professor (1915-1990) Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand. -Stanislaw J. Lec, poet and aphorist (1909-1966) Each morning puts a man on trial and each evening passes judgment. -Roy L. Smith I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. -Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President (1809-1865) Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless. -Lech Walesa, human rights activist, Polish president, Nobel laureate (b. 1943) As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. -Calvin Trillin, writer (b. 1935) The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities when directing one's course by it, one must still try to follow its direction. -Vincent van Gogh, painter (1853-1890) "Faith" is a fine invention / For gentlemen who see -- / But microscopes are prudent / In an emergency. -Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886) We are all of us more or less echoes, repeating involuntarily the virtues, the defects, the movements, and the characters of those among whom we live. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824) You can never understand one language until you understand at least two. -Ronald Searle, artist (b. 1920) There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -Francis Baconn, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626) It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little kinder." -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. -Aharon Barak, law professor, former President of the Supreme Court of Israel (b.1936) 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, educator and writer (1867-1963) The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. -E.E. Cummings, poet (1894-1962) Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way. -E.L. Doctorow, writer (b. 1931) Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed. -Natalie Clifford Barney, Author (1876-1972) Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797) Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. -Douglas William Jerrold, playwright and humorist (1803-1857) The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul. -Khalil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) Nothing contributes more to peace of soul than having no opinion at all. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799) To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970) When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. -Abraham Joshua Heschel, theology professor (1907-1972) Extreme justice is extreme injustice. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE) The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (What else could it be?) And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer. -John R. Searle, philosophy professor (b. 1932) In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. -Mortimer J. Adler, philosopher, educator and author (1902-2001) Several excuses are always less convincing than one. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) Don't wait for the Last Judgement. It takes place every day. -Albert Camus, writer and philosopher (1913-1960) Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering. -Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963) We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882) Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an inate resistance to innovation. -Theodore C. Sorensen, presidential advisor, lawyer, and writer (1928-2010) "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, French author and aviator Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are? -Laurence J. Peter, educator and author (1919-1990) When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favor. -Jane Welsh Carlyle, letter writer (1801-1866) n a free country there is much clamor, with little suffering: in a despotic state there is little complaint but much suffering. -Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot, statesman and engineer (1753-1823) Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983) No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind. -Miguel de Cervantes, novelist (1547-1616) It ought to be plain / how little you gain / by getting excited / and vexed. / You'll always be late / for the previous train, / and always in time / for the next. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996) The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. -John Gilmore, software engineer and activist (b. 1957) Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. -Ben Hecht, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, director, and producer (1894-1964) Habit with him was all the test of truth, / It must be right: I've done it from my youth. -George Crabbe, poet and naturalist (1754-1832) Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. -Charles de Montesquieu, philosopher and writer (1689-1755) There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought. -Pierre Bayle, philosopher and writer (1647-1706) Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions. -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., novelist (1922-2007) It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. -Jerome K. Jerome, humorist and playwright (1859-1927) Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891) Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. -William Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965) I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE) There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. -Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860) If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington Telephone Directory, such as pages 354-58, which contain listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word "National". There are, of course, the big ones, like the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Association of Broadcasters. But the pages teem with others, National Cigar Leaf Tobacco Association, National Association of Mirror Manufacturers, National Association of Miscellaneous Ornamental and Architectural Products Contractors, National Association of Margarine Manufacturers. -George Will, columnist and author (b.1941) To know how to say what other people only think is what makes men poets and sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers, or both. Elizabeth Rundle Charles, writer (1828-1896) Advertising is legalized lying. -H.G. Wells, writer (1866-1946) Think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask if your next act will be of any use to him. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out. -Rabindranath Tagore, poet, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941) "Not everything that can be counted, counts; and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? -George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880) If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882) Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008) You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008) An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970) While language is forming, writers are applauded for extending its limits; when established, for restricting themselves to them. -Isaac Disraeli, writer (1766-1848) How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. -George Washington Carver, scientist (1864-1943) No one imagines that symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. -Alan Watts, philosopher, writer, and speaker (1915-1973) It's all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. -Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968) Co-existence / or no existence. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996) A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. -Greek proverb Talking of successful rackets / modesty deserves a mention. / Exclamation marks in brackets / never fail to draw attention. -Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996) When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914) To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799) My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met. -Rodney Dangerfield, comedian (1921-2004) There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937) What a pitiable thing it is that our civilization can do no better for us than to make us slaves to indoor life, so that we have to go and take artificial exercise in order to preserve our health. -George Wharton James, journalist, author, and speaker (1858-1923) A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) Words are the small change of thought. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910) It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE) The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date. -Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832) Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989) We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don't like a Communist. -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985) 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, poet (1888-1965) It is never too late to become what you might have been. -- George Elliot When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out. -Otto von Bismarck, statesman (1815-1898) The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. -William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910 Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. -Jean de la Bruyere, essayist and moralist (1645-1696) A cult is a religion with no political power. -Tom Wolfe, author and journalist (b. 1931) 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, critic and writer (1927-1980) It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., US Supreme Court Justice (1841-1935) We have, I fear, confused power with greatness. -Stewart I. Udall, politician (1920-2010) There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind. -Hannah Senesh, poet, playwright, and paratrooper (1921-1944) Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. -Richard C. Trench, poet (1807-1886) Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway." -Mother Theresa Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. -William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939) All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry. -G.K. Chesterton, writer (1874-1936) The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799) 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, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924) They laughed when I said I was going to be a comedian. They're not laughing now. -Bob Monkhouse, comedian (1928-2003) 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, author and painter (1889-1963) Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted. -Jean Paul Richter, writer (1763-1825) If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (1900-1945) Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. -Sydney J. Harris, journalist and author (1917-1986) Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They're a different breed of dog. -Josh Billings, columnist and humorist (1818-1885) A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. -Saul Bellow, writer, Nobel laureate (1915-2005) I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. -Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (1929-1945) Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. -Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931) Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. -Leonardo da Vinci, painter, engineer, musician, and scientist (1452-1519) 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? -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008) There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. -Peter Drucker, management consultant, professor, and writer (1909-2005) Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. -John Kenneth Galbraith, economist (1908-2006) Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. -David Lloyd George, British prime minister (1863-1945) Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt. -George Sewell, physician and writer (1690-1736) If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. -Juan Ramon Jimenez, poet, Nobel Prize in literature (1881-1958) Misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) A problem well stated is a problem half solved. -Charles F. Kettering, inventor and engineer (1876-1958) 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 Polya, mathematician (1887-1985) There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. -William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863) I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. One can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a window pane. -George Orwell, writer (1903-1950) There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous. -Raymond Thornton Chandler, writer (1888-1959) Every man is a damned fool for at least five minutes every day. Wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit. -Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915) Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. -Lin Yutang, writer and translator (1895-1976) For every prohibition you create you also create an underground. -Jello Biafra, musician (b. 1958) Men shout to avoid listening to one another. -Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936) There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928) So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, While just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs. -Ella Wheeler Wilcox, poet (1850-1919) Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. -Charlie Chaplin, actor, director, and composer (1889-1977) People who dismiss the unemployed and depdendent as "parasites" fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society. -- Jason Reed Mistakes are part of the dues that one pays for a full life. -Sophia Loren, actress (b. 1934) Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. -Ben Hecht, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, director, and producer (1894-1964) Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar. -Bradley Miller, activist (b. 1956) To read fast is as bad as to eat in a hurry. -Vilhelm Ekelund, poet (1880-1949) Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. -William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616) The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. -Linus Pauling, chemist, peace activist, author, educator; Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize (1901-1994) When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful." -Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931) If what you are getting online is for free, you are not the customer, you are the product. -Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet law (b. 1969) Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE) We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he is signifying contempt for ours. -James M. Barrie, novelist, short-story writer, and playwright (1860-1937) Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. -William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994) If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. -J.B. Phillips, writer and clergyman (1906-1982) Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs. -Max Beerbohm, essayist, parodist, and caricaturist (1872-1956) Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. -Pablo Picasso, painter, and sculptor (1881-1973) What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910) I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892) Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change. -Harriet Lerner, psychologist (b. 1944) True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. -Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968) The church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: I am a fiesta. -Eduardo Galeano, journalist and novelist (b. 1940) One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering. -Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817) Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. -Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864) Every human being's essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature. -Lao-Tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE) A hungry man is not a free man. -Adlai Stevenson, statesman (1900-1965) In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy. -Fran Lebowitz, author (b. 1950) The big thieves hang the little ones. -Czech proverb The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -Andrew Carnegie, industrialist (1835-1919) Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. -Richard C. Trench, poet (1807-1886) No man was ever more than about nine meals away from crime or suicide. -Eric Sevareid, journalist (1912-1992 Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer. -Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983) Our perception that we have "no time" is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture. -Margaret Visser, writer and broadcaster (b. 1940) Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned. -Heinrich Heine, poet, journalist, and essayist (1797-1856) A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain. -Mildred Witte Stouven The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night. -Jean Baudrillard, sociologist and philosopher (1929-2007) The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy and the handicapped. -Hubert Horatio Humphrey, US Vice President (1911-1978) You can't do anything with anybody's body to make it dirty to me. Six people, eight people, one person -- you can do only one thing to make it dirty: kill it. Hiroshima was dirty. -Lenny Bruce, comedian and social critic (1925-1966) A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. -Richard Dawkins, biologist and author (b. 1941) Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. -Horace Walpole, novelist and essayist (1717-1797) Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894) Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way. -E.L. Doctorow, writer (b. 1931) For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf and take an insect view of its plain. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882) Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some, and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. -Robert Fulghum, author (b. 1937) Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. -Marie Ebner von Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916) If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time. -Chinese proverb Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind. -Ogden Nash, poet (1902-1971) There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961) There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928) Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. -Charlie Chaplin, actor, director, and composer (1889-1977) Some tortures are physical / And some are mental, / But the one that is both / Is dental. -Ogden Nash, poet (1902-1971) Mistakes are part of the dues that one pays for a full life. -Sophia Loren, actress (b. 1934) Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. -Ben Hecht, screenwriter, playwright, novelist, director, and producer (1894-1964) History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Mark Twain Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. -William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616) To read fast is as bad as to eat in a hurry. -Vilhelm Ekelund, poet (1880-1949) As freely as the firmament embraces the world, / or the sun pours forth impartially his beams, / so mercy must encircle both friend and foe. -Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, poet and dramatist (1759-1805) The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. -Linus Pauling, chemist, peace activist, author, educator; Nobel Prize in chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize (1901-1994) If only I may grow: firmer, simpler, -- quieter, warmer. -Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations, Nobel laureate (1905-1961) Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings. -Alice Miller, psychologist and author (1923-2010) We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us. -Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus), rhetorician (c. 35-100) When you see a man led to prison say in your heart, "Mayhap he is escaping from a narrower prison." And when you see a man drunken say in your heart, "Mayhap he sought escape from something still more unbeautiful." -Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (1883-1931) A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862) Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass. -Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE) Talent develops in tranquillity, character in the full current of human life. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832) Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. -J.B. Phillips, writer and clergyman (1906-1982) Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs. -Max Beerbohm, essayist, parodist, and caricaturist (1872-1956) Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956) Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910) Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. -Charles de Montesquieu, philosopher and writer (1689-1755) I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. -Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892) What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910) They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626) Life is an adventure in forgiveness. -Norman Cousins, author and editor (1915-1990) Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. -Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998) May my silences become more accurate. -Theodore Roethke, poet (1908-1963) Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change. -Harriet Lerner, psychologist (b. 1944) The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea. -Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author (1885-1962) A hungry man is not a free man. -Adlai Stevenson, statesman (1900-1965) The big thieves hang the little ones. -Czech proverb When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why people are hungry, they call me a communist. -Helder Camara, archbishop (1909-1999) The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662) Since my house burned down / I now own a better view / of the rising moon. -Mizuta Masahide, poet and samurai (1657-1723) Every human being's essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature. -Lao-Tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE) The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. -Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902) We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas, and not for things themselves. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704) The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it. -Madame De Stael, writer (1766-1817) Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence. -Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850) There is a field beyond all notions of right and wrong. Come, meet me there. -Rumi, poet and mystic (1207-1273) One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment. -Hart Crane, poet (1899-1932) Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. -Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963) It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778) The fingers of your thoughts are molding your face ceaselessly. -Charles Reznikoff, poet (1894-1976) If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. -- Mark Twain They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797) It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy. -George H. Lorimer, editor (1868-1937) You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. -Naguib Mahfouz, writer, Nobel laureate (1911-2006) To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797) In this world, you must be a bit too kind to be kind enough. -Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, dramatist and novelist (1688-1763) You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. -Rwandan proverb A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity. -Jimmy Carter, 39th US President, Nobel laureate (b. 1924) Every saint has a past and every sinner a future. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900) Never confuse motion with action. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790) Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. -Carl Sandburg, poet (1878-1967) The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. -Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947) There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. -Elie Wiesel, writer, Nobel laureate (b. 1928) The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. -John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968) We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm. -Winston Churchill If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. -Thomas Pynchon, writer (b. 1937) There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted. -Washington Irving, writer (1783-1859) A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. -Grace Hopper, computer scientist and US Navy Rear Admiral (1906-1992) any knowledge that doesn’t lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life. -- Wislawa Szymborska I have one share in corporate Earth, and I am nervous about the management. -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985) War is the unfolding of miscalculations. -Barbara Tuchman, historian (1912-1989) It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it. -Anton Chekhov, short-story writer and dramatist (1860-1904) You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. Albert Einstein You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. Albert Einstein A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy. -Max Weinreich, linguist and author (1894-1969) The power to define the situation is the ultimate power. -Jerry Rubin, activist and author (1938-1994) The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. -Iris Murdoch, writer (1919-1999) "Wisdom is learning what to overlook." William James In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary. -Kathleen Norris, novelist and columnist (1880-1966) People hate as they love, unreasonably. -William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863) "How odd, I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words." David Foster Wallace It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. -J.K. Rowling, author (b. 1965) No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. -Barbara Ehrenreich, journalist and author (b. 1941) Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784) Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (1850-1894) Compassion is not weakness and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism. -Hubert Humphrey, US Vice President (27 May 1911-1978) "Style is time's fool. Form is time's student." -- Stewart Brand, writer and editor (b. 1938) The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist! -- Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (15 Jan 1929-1968) A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint. -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (14 Jan 1875-1965) What strange machines humans are! You fill them with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out come sighs, laughter, and dreams. —Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957) [modified 'man' -> 'humans'] Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world. -Ben Okri, poet and novelist (b. 15 Mar 1959) Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison. -Mary Wollstonecraft, reformer and writer (27 Apr 1759-1797) It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair, novelist and reformer (20 Sep 1878-1968) Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.' The stranger is a theologian. -Denis Diderot, philosopher (5 Oct 1713-1784) An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field. -Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel laureate (7 Oct 1885-1962) Most men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed off wings where he never ventures. -François Mauriac, writer, Nobel laureate (11 Oct 1885-1970) The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. -Muriel Rukeyser, poet and activist (15 Dec 1913-1980) You must protest / It is your diamond duty / Ah but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty. -Phil Ochs, folksinger (19 Dec 1940-1976) The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. -L.P. Hartley, writer (30 Dec 1895-1972) The force which makes for war does not derive its strength from the interested motives of evil men; it derives its strength from the disinterested motives of good men. -Norman Angell, lecturer, author, MP, and Nobel laureate (1872-1967) I am only one, / But still I am one. / I cannot do everything, / But still I can do something; / And because I cannot do everything, / I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. -Edward Everett Hale, author (3 Apr 1822-1909) The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad. — James Madison, 4th US president (16 Mar 1975-1836) If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. -Thomas Pynchon, novelist (b. 8 May 1937) 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, writer and philosopher (21 Jun 1905-1980) There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (12 Jul 1817-1862) I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. -George McGovern, senator and author (19 Jul 1922-2012) For a long time we have gone along with some well-tested principles of conduct: that it was better to tell the truth than falsehoods; that a half-truth was no truth at all; that duties were older than and as fundamental as rights; that, as Justice Holmes put it, the mode by which the inevitable came to pass was effort; that to perpetuate a harm was always wrong, no matter how many joined in it, but to perpetuate it on a weaker person was particularly detestable ... Our institutions are founded on the assumption that most people will follow these principles most of the time because they want to, and the institutions work pretty well when this assumption is true. -Dean Acheson, statesman and lawyer (1893-1971) It was my shame, and now it is my boast, That I have loved you rather more than most. -Hilaire Belloc, writer and poet (27 Jul 1870-1953) Euphemism is a euphemism for lying. -Bobbie Gentry, singer and songwriter (b. 27 Jul 1944) People forget years and remember moments. -Ann Beattie, novelist (b. 8 Sep 1947) One definition of success might be: refining our appetites, while deepening our hunger. -Yahia Lababidi, aphorist (b. 25 Sep 1973) The Hollow Men: Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the shadow. -T.S. Eliot, poet (26 Sep 1888-1965) Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be! -Miguel de Cervantes, writer (29 Sep 1547-1616) 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, writer (3 Oct 1925-2012) Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. -Henry van Dyke, poet (10 Nov 1852-1933) There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign. -Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (13 Nov 1850-1894) Normal is the average of deviance. -Rita Mae Brown, writer (b. 28 Nov 1944) In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take. -Adlai Stevenson, statesman (5 Feb 1900-1965) Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking. -Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (6 Apr 1741-1794)I don't mind that you think slowly but I do mind that you are publishing faster than you think. -Wolfgang Pauli, physicist, Nobel laureate (25 Apr 1900-1958) Michael Pollan, on the psychedelic experience: What do you do with an insight like “love is everything”? I wondered aloud. “Is a platitude so deeply felt still just a platitude?” No, I decided: “A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is: the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight.” The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. --Philip K. Dick Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking. -- Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (6 Apr 1741--1794)The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (15 Feb 1564-1642) I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the one who sold it. -Will Rogers, humorist (4 Nov 1879-1935) And the evil is done in hopes that evil surrenders / But the deeds of the devil are burned too deep in the embers / And a world of hunger in vengeance will always remember. -Phil Ochs, folksinger (19 Dec 1940-1976) The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. -Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), novelist (23 Jan 1783-1842) If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman ... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French. -Montesquieu, philosopher, lawyer, and writer (18 Jan 1689-1755) It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy. -George H. Lorimer, editor (1867-1937) If he does not fight, it is not because he rejects all fighting as futile, but because he has finished his fights. He has overcome all dissensions between himself and the world and is now at rest... We shall have wars and soldiers so long as the brute in us is untamed. —Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher and second president of India (1888-1975) Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (28 Aug 1749-1832) An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. — Niels Bohr One law for the lion and ox is oppression. -William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (28 Nov 1757-1827) They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price. -- Kahlil Gibran