-
A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on
the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in
order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein
-
There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no
causes that I am prepared to kill for.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
-
Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently
from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
Albert Einstein
-
Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can
eliminate prejudices --- just recognize them.
Edward R. Murrow
-
Invention requires an excited mind; execution, a calm one.
Johann Peter Eckermann, poet (1792-1854)
-
Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your
own fears.
Rudyard Kipling
-
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of
mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza
-
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we
despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Noam Chomsky
-
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them
to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas Kempis
-
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
William Shakespeare
-
Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us
than the injury that provokes it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
-
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad.
That's my religion.
Abraham Lincoln
-
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not
mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy
you will be good.
Bertrand Russell
-
People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this,
that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.
John Jay Chapman
-
Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds
on?
James Richardson, poet, professor (b. 1950)
-
No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking
into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)
-
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a
democratic country.
Alexis de Tocqueville, statesman and historian
(1805-1859)
-
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as
their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one
pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the
cosmos.
Stephen Jay Gould
-
[Nature] knows the people are a tide That swells and in
time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter
our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become
confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
Robinson Jeffers
-
The past is never dead - it is not even past.
William Faulkner
-
People often say that this or that person has not yet found
himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that
one creates.
Thomas Szasz
-
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is
the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
-
Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to
fail in good spirits.
Robert Louis Stevenson
-
Victory breeds enmity; the defeated live in pain. The
peaceful live happily, avoiding both victory and defeat.
Buddha (c. 563-483 BCE)
-
Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words
that equal what is given by the senses.
Hannah Arendt
-
A dying man needs to die as a sleepy man needs to sleep,
and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.
Stewart Alsop
-
I find that principles have no real force except when one
is well fed.
Mark Twain
-
The great corrupter of public man is the ego…. Looking at
the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.
Dean Acheson
-
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be
kindled.
Plutarch
-
The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one
language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and
degrees of human comprehension.
Ezra Pound, poet (1885-1972)
-
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for
taking things for granted.
Aldous Huxley
-
I know that you believe that you understood what you think
I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I
meant.
Robert McCloskey
-
I am aware that no man is a villain in his own eyes.
James Baldwin
-
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent
people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest
critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to
find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a
healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even
one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have
succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
With or without religion, you would have good people doing
good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do
evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg
-
Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid
talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about
their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball.
Deborah Tannen
-
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more
than ruin—more even than death. ... Thought is subversive and revolutionary,
destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established
institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and
is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world,
and the chief glory of man.
Bertrand Russell
-
The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness,
and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be
turned off at five o'clock.
Margaret Halsey, novelist (1910-1997)
-
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of
talking is waiting.
Fran Lebowitz
-
To others we are not ourselves but a performer in their
lives cast for a part we do not even know that we are playing.
Elizabeth Bibesco
-
It is more fun to arrive at a conclusion than to justify
it.
-Malcolm Forbes
-
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything
without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Robert Frost
-
True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it
is a regret over motive.
Mignon McLaughlin, author (1915-)
-
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or
freed a human soul.
Mark Twain
-
Nature neither cares about us nor ensures our survival.
She's not liberal, conservative or cognizant of our vainglory and pettiness.
Our survival as a species is strictly up to us.
John Herman (letter to Time Magazine, April 13,
2007)
-
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the
hijacking of morality by religion.
Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )
-
"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but
man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
Reinhold Niebuhr
-
"Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and,
while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly
committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed
with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values."
Michael Lewis
-
The proper study of mankind is woman.
Henry Adams
-
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto
you. Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and
Superman (1903), Maxims for Revolutionists
-
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov
-
Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is
made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous
things can be justified and established.
Ludwig Feuerbach, philosopher (1804-1872)
-
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-
)
-
We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among
those who don't. -
Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )
-
"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the
wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits
down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again -
and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
Mark Twain
-
The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any
thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of
evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost
every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound
of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is
continually demanded.
Abraham Lincoln
-
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish
Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by
the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my
own church.
Thomas Paine
-
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an
understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung
-
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange
apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an
idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will
have two ideas.
George Bernard Shaw
-
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
W. Somerset Maugham
-
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent
people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest
critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to
find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a
healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even
one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have
succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
-
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain
of improving, and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
-
Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave
irrationally in the name of reason.
Ashley Montagu
-
Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear.
Mark Twain
-
When a lute is played, there is no previous store of
playing that it comes from. When the music stops, it does not go anywhere
else. It came into existence by way of the structure of the lute and the
playing of the performer. When the playing ceases, the music goes out of
existence.
In the same way all the components of being, both material and nonmaterial,
come into existence, play their part, and pass away.
That which we call a person is the bringing together of components and their
actions with each other. It is impossible to find a permanent self there.
And yet there is a paradox. For there is a path to follow and there is
walking to be done, and yet there is no walker. There are actions but there
is no actor. The air moves but there is no wind. The idea of a specific self
is a mistake. Existence is clarity and emptiness.
Visuddhi Magga
-
If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a
juniper tree or the wings of a vulture - that is immortality enough for me.
Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
-
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
-
E. B. White, writer
-
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is
bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.
G. K. Chesterton
-
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are
twenty gods or no God.
Thomas Jefferson
-
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest
of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of
everyone.
John Maynard Keynes
-
"With breathtaking rapidity, we are destroying all that was
lovely to look at and turning America into a prison house of the spirit. The
affluent society, with relentless single-minded energy, is turning our
cities, most of suburbia and most of our roadways into the most affluent
slum on earth."
Eric Sevareid
-
"If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us
candidates."
Jay Leno
-
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)
-
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you
really stop to look fear in the face. ... You must do the thing you think
you cannot do."
Eleanor Roosevelt
-
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
Edward R. Murrow, journalist (1908-1965)
-
You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
Moses ben Maimon, philosopher (1135-1204)
-
The Founding Fathers and presidents down the ages
have believed in a God who brought forth the heavens and the earth, and who
gave humankind the liberty to believe in Him or not, to love Him or not, to
obey Him or not. God had created man with free will, for love coerced is no
love at all, only submission. That is why the religious should be on the
front lines of defending freedom of religion.
Our finest hours—the Revolutionary War, abolition, the expansion of the
rights of women, hot and cold wars against terror and tyranny, Martin Luther
King Jr.'s battle against Jim Crow—can partly be traced to religious ideas
about liberty, justice, and charity. Yet theology and scripture have also
been used to justify our worst hours—from enslaving people based on the
color of their skin to treating women as second-class citizens.
Jon Meacham, Newsweek
-
The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to
be so.
David Hume
-
Be like the bird, who halting in his
flight /
On limb too slight, /
Feels it give way beneath him, yet sings /
Knowing he has wings.
Victor Hugo, writer
(1802-1885)
-
Once upon a time a man whose ax was
missing suspected his neighbor's son.
The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief.
But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he
saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other
child.
Lao-tzu, philosopher (6th
century BCE)
-
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- )
-
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision
for the limits of the world.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
-
"I think I've discovered the secret of life --- you just hang
around until you get used to it."
- Charles Schulz