Wikiquote:Quote of the day/2006

January 2006

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. ~ E. M. Forster
How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection...That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers. ~ Isaac Asimov
Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age? ~ Cicero
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. ~ Isaac Newton
Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of spreading even against it. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want... everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear... anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
There is no first world and third world. There is only one world, for all of us to live and delight in. ~ Gerald Durrell
For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk. ~ Stephen Hawking
Life will not perish! It will begin anew with love; it will start out naked and tiny; it will take root in the wilderness, and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing — our towns and factories, our art, our ideas will all mean nothing, and yet life will not perish! Only we have perished. Our houses and machines will be in ruins, our systems will collapse, and the names of our great will fall away like dry leaves. Only you, love, will blossom on this rubbish heap and commit the seed of life to the winds. ~ Karel Čapek
Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful...
... the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
~ Robinson Jeffers ~
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. ~ Alexander Hamilton
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. ~ Edmund Burke
I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. ~ Émile Zola
Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage. ~ Albert Schweitzer
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. ~ Jimmy Wales
What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love... I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. ~ Benjamin Franklin
There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world. ~ Robert Anton Wilson
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
I don't understand politics. I don't understand the concept of two sides. And I think that probably there's good on both sides, bad on both sides, and there's a middle ground. But it never seems to come to the middle ground. And it's very frustrating watching it, and seemingly we're not moving forward. ~ David Lynch
So far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly. ~ Ethan Allen
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. ~ Robert E. Howard
To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law — a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ~ Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
~ William Congreve ~
While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace. ~ Virginia Woolf in Orlando: A Biography
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. ~ Douglas MacArthur
If you drink much from a bottle marked 'poison' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. ~ Lewis Carroll
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~ Colette
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace. ~ Milan Kundera
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. 'Life' plus 'significance' = magic. ~ Grant Morrison

February 2006

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
~ Langston Hughes ~
There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens. ~ Coretta Scott King
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. ~ James A. Michener
If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one’s outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. ~ Charles Lindbergh
What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. ~ Adlai Stevenson
You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down — up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. ~ Ronald Reagan
He judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what did not appear to him to be true. ~ Thomas More
There are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. We respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. It is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall 'inherit the earth.' Neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything; they can but consume. Only contentment can possess. ~ John Ruskin
Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses? ~ Mrs Patrick Campbell
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth. ~ Boris Pasternak
When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear. ~ René Descartes
Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Life is what it is, and you take what's handed, and you work as hard as you can, and hopefully you'll be successful, but I just don't spend too much time worrying about that. ~ Jerry Springer
Some things you don't need until they leave you; they're the things that you miss. ~ Rob Thomas
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. ~ Galileo Galilei
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. ~ Henry Adams
Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen. ~ Michael Jordan
At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can. ~ Toni Morrison
External success has to do with people who may see me as a model, or an example, or a representative. As much as I may dislike or want to reject that responsibility, this is something that comes with public success. It's important to give others a sense of hope that it is possible and you can come from really different places in the world and find your own place in the world that's unique for yourself. ~ Amy Tan
We picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. ~ Hunter S. Thompson
When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. ~ Anaïs Nin
I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. ~ George Washington
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process... ~ Karl Jaspers
Our armament must be adequate to the needs, but our faith is not primarily in these machines of defense but in ourselves. ~ Chester Nimitz
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters. ~ Anthony Burgess
Sure, ninety percent of science fiction is crud. That's because ninety percent of everything is crud. ~ Theodore Sturgeon
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~
If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away. ~ Linus Pauling

March 2006

I dreamt the past was never past redeeming:
But whether this was false or honest dreaming
I beg death's pardon now. And mourn the dead.
~ Richard Wilbur ~
Our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.' ~ Carl Schurz
In mathematics the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems. ~ Georg Cantor
There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets;
He dropped Math and took up Divinity.
~ George Gamow ~
Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party — though they are quite numerous — is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of dissenters. ~ Rosa Luxemburg
Give thought to life and liberty. ~ Cyrano de Bergerac
Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
They stir us up against our kind;
And worse, against ourselves.
We have a passion — make a law,
Too false to guide us or control!
And for the law itself we fight
In bitterness of soul.
And, puzzled, blinded thus, we lose
Distinctions that are plain and few:
These find I graven on my heart:
That tells me what to do.
~ William Wordsworth in "Rob Roy's Grave" ~
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Some choices will choose you. How you face these choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life. ~ Dana Reeve
All that separates, whether of race, class, creed, or sex, is inhuman, and must be overcome. ~ Kate Sheppard
Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. ~ Douglas Adams
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. ~ Edward Albee
Don't play for safety. It's the most dangerous thing in the world. ~ Hugh Walpole
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. ~ Albert Einstein
Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces. ~ Julius Caesar
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. ~ Raymond Chandler
Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. There is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof. ~ "V" in V for Vendetta
The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party. ~ John C. Calhoun
Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?
"You all are right, you all are wrong," we hear the careless Soofi say,
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to be the gorgeous light of day."
~ Sir Richard Francis Burton ~
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society. ~ Henrik Ibsen
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. ~ Jean Cocteau
As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. ~ Anne Hutchinson
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! ~ Patrick Henry
With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on. ~ William Morris
A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know. ~ Ward Cunningham
He acts without contact,
instructs without meeting,
guides without pointing.
Desires do not conflict with Him,
thoughts do not mingle with Him:
His essence is without qualification,
His action without effort.
~ Mansur al-Hallaj ~
All knowledge is oriented toward some object and is influenced in its approach by the nature of the object with which it is pre-occupied. But the mode of approach to the object to be known is dependent upon the nature of the knower. ~ Karl Mannheim
I'd like just to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few songs, and had a hell of a time. ~ Buck Owens
Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. ~ Stanisław Lem
Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and . . . fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. ~ Archilochus
When we are really honest with ourselves we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us. So, it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of men we are. It is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. ~ Cesar Chavez

April 2006

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year. ~ Mark Twain
Whether it is happy or unhappy, a man's life is the only treasure he can ever possess. ~ Giacomo Casanova
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place. ~ Washington Irving
There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory. ~ Sir Francis Drake
Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thy selfe. ~ Thomas Hobbes
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. ~ Isaac Asimov
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
~ William Wordsworth ~
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule. ~ Gautama Buddha
I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another, and I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings — and I hate people like that! ~ Tom Lehrer
Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality. ~ George William Russell
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others. ~ Leo Rosten
Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed. ~ Tom Clancy
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)
Although to penetrate into the intimate mysteries of nature and thence to learn the true causes of phenomena is not allowed to us, nevertheless it can happen that a certain fictive hypothesis may suffice for explaining many phenomena. ~ Leonhard Euler
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)
Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last word, will hear the voice of silence. ~ Karen Blixen
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means. ~ Clarence Darrow
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away. ~ Dinah Craik
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on seas and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. ~ John Muir
I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. ~ William Shakespeare in As You Like It
The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him. ~ Robert Penn Warren
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. ~ Edward R. Murrow
Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to. ~ Marcus Aurelius
The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. ~ Edward Gibbon
War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost. ~ Karl Kraus
Despite the best that has been done by everyone — the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of Our servants of the State, and the devoted service of Our one hundred million people — the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. ~ Hirohito
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

May 2006

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
We are near waking when we dream that we dream. ~ Novalis
Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. ~ Pete Seeger
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this. ~ T. H. Huxley
Once you label me you negate me. ~ Søren Kierkegaard
Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action. ~ Sigmund Freud
The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. ~ Rabindranath Tagore
While in the physical sciences the investigator will be able to measure what, on the basis of a prima facie theory, he thinks important, in the social sciences often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement. This is sometimes carried to the point where it is demanded that our theories must be formulated in such terms that they refer only to measurable magnitudes. ~ Friedrich Hayek
The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us. ~ Nelson Mandela
The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise. ~ Karl Barth
Positive vibrations man. That's what makes it work. That's reggae music. You can't look away because it's real. You listen to what I sing because I mean what I sing, there's no secret, no big deal. Just honesty, that's all. ~ Bob Marley
Duty, Honor, Country — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. ~ Douglas MacArthur
'Fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. ~ Roger Zelazny in Lord of Light
It is confidently expected that the period is at hand, when man, through ignorance, shall not much longer inflict unnecessary misery on man; because the mass of mankind will become enlightened, and will clearly discern that by so acting they will inevitably create misery to themselves. ~ Robert Owen
The voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and the societies, even the very civilization that produced them. They cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away. ~ Katherine Anne Porter
I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you. ~ Studs Terkel
There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey... It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting. ~ Enya
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
~ Omar Khayyám ~
Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious — that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. ~ Dan Brown
Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation. ~ Honoré de Balzac
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
A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
~ Alexander Pope ~
Cynicism isn't smarter, it's only safer. There's nothing fluffy about optimism. ~ Jewel
Every failure is a step to success. ~ William Whewell
They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~
When you get in situations where you cannot afford to make a mistake, it's very hard to do the right thing. So if you're trying to do the right thing, the right thing might be to eliminate the cost of making a mistake rather than try to guess what's right. ~ Ward Cunningham
Don't start an argument with somebody who has a microphone when you don't. They'll make you look like chopped liver. ~ Harlan Ellison
What I do know for certain is that what is regarded as success in a rational materialistic society only impresses superficial minds. It amounts to nothing and will not help us rout the destructive forces threatening us today. What may be our salvation is the discovery of the identity hidden deep in any one of us, and which may be found in even the most desperate individual, if he cares to search the spiritual womb which contains the embryo of what can be one's personal contribution to truth and life. ~ Patrick White
It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. ~ G. K. Chesterton
I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole... I receive and I give — such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination. ~ Mikhail Bakunin
I am for those that have never been master'd,
For men and women whose tempers have never been master'd,
For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master.
~ Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass ~

June 2006

Surprise becomes effective when we suddenly face the enemy at one point with far more troops than he expected. This type of numerical superiority is quite distinct from numerical superiority in general: it is the most powerful medium in the art of war. ~ Carl von Clausewitz
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. ~ Thomas Hardy
It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. ~ Lawrence Lessig
Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul. ~ Victor Hugo in Les Misérables
Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.
~ Federico García Lorca ~
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. ~ The Book of Revelation
Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means. ~ Paul Gauguin
The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
When you were born in this world
Everyone laughed while you cried
Conduct not yourself in manner such
That they laugh when you are gone.
~ Kabir ~
All that you see has appeared because of Love.
All shines from Love,
All pulses with Love,
All flows from Love —
No, once again, all is Love!
~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi ~
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measures life may perfect be.
~ Ben Jonson ~
If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo
It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others. To all Ways there are side-tracks. If you study a Way daily, and your spirit diverges, you may think you are obeying a good way, but objectively it is not the true Way. If you are following the true Way and diverge a little, this will later become a large divergence. You must realise this. ~ Miyamoto Musashi
The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
Responsibility's like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight. ~ William McFee
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Some would say that it is too idealistic to believe in a society based on tolerance and the sanctity of human life, where borders, nationalities and ideologies are of marginal importance. To those I say, this is not idealism, but rather realism, because history has taught us that war rarely resolves our differences. Force does not heal old wounds; it opens new ones. ~ Mohamed ElBaradei
Will you still need me,
Will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
~ Paul McCartney ~
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi
We wanted to bring some love to the world. I thought we were good at doing that. Bringin' love to the world. ~ Brian Wilson
Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior. ~ Mary McCarthy
The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and — our former riches. ~ Anna Akhmatova
There is nothing better or more necessary than love. ~ John of the Cross
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ George Orwell
For the future, let all people live in harmony ... Men should be taught and won over by reason, not by blows, insults, and corporal punishments. ~ Julian
The highest result of education is tolerance. Long ago men fought and died for their faith; but it took ages to teach them the other kind of courage, — the courage to recognize the faiths of their brethren and their rights of conscience. Tolerance is the first principal of community; it is the spirit which conserves the best that all men think. ~ Helen Keller
Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly. ~ Albert Einstein

July 2006

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. ~ Hermann Hesse
I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead. ~ Tom Stoppard
It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing. ~ Jean Cocteau
They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality. ~ Frida Kahlo
Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. ~ Robert A. Heinlein
It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive — to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is. ~ David Hockney
The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes. ~ Nikola Tesla
Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. ~ John Quincy Adams
In the country of the blind the one eyed man is king. ~ Desiderius Erasmus
To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day,
And empty shadow of what is to be;
Yet cheated Hope on future still depends,
And ends but only when our being ends.
~ John Clare ~
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral. ~ Ingmar Bergman
Patriotism is voluntary. It is a feeling of loyalty and allegiance that is the result of knowledge and belief. A patriot shows their patriotism through their actions, by their choice... No law will make a citizen a patriot. ~ Jesse Ventura
If you build it, he will come. ~ "The Voice" in Field of Dreams
Were I so tall to reach the pole,
Or grasp the ocean with my span,
I must be measured by my soul;
The mind's the standard of the man.
~ Isaac Watts ~
To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness? ~ William Makepeace Thackeray
Truth is never ugly when one can find in it what one needs. ~ Edgar Degas
You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus. ~ Sir Edmund Hillary
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. ~ Ernest Hemingway
We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.
Our children know and suffer the armed men.
~ Stephen Vincent Benét ~
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. ~ Raymond Chandler
There is one story and one story only.
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the long ninth wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild.
But nothing promised that is not performed.
~ Robert Graves ~
There seem to be magic days once in a while, with some rare quality of light that hold a body spellbound... Then comes the hard part: how to plan a picture so as to give to others what has happened to you. To render in paint an experience, to suggest the sense of light and color, air and space... ~ Maxfield Parrish
Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. ~ George Bernard Shaw
In soft deluding lies let fools delight. A shadow marks our days, which end in Night. ~ Hilaire Belloc
We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong. ~ Karl Popper
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
What am I singing?
A song of seeds
The food of love.
Eat the music.
~ Kate Bush ~
I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. ~ Milton Friedman

August 2006

And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go
Oh, oh — You were the first one.
Oh, oh — You were the last one.
Video killed the radio star.
~ The Buggles ~
Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. ~ James Baldwin
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries. ~ Clifford D. Simak
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared...
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~
Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread... ~ Conrad Aiken
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
We help the internet not suck. ~ Jimmy Wales
Better to die on your feet than live on your knees! ~ Emiliano Zapata
Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society... But for me, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists. ~ Jean Piaget
Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. ~ Herbert Hoover
Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist. ~ Erwin Schrödinger
Make the world better. ~ Lucy Stone
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things. ~ Russell Baker
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest. Call for the grandest of all human sentiments, what is that? It is that man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. ~ Thomas De Quincey
The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action. ~ Winston Churchill
One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas — and you have to work through it all. ~ V. S. Naipaul
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay. ~ Brian Aldiss
How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves. ~ Ogden Nash
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
~ H. P. Lovecraft ~
Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and vileness, and enjoy it to the full. ~ Leon Trotsky
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense. ~ Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury
I have brought you to the ring, now see if you can dance. ~ William Wallace
If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves. ~ Howard Zinn
Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture. ~ Martin Amis
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves. ~ John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts. ~ John Locke
We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves — such a friend ought to be — do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.. ~ Mary Shelley
Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough. ~ William Saroyan

September 2006

I like a huge range of comedy — from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated — but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it. ~ Lily Tomlin
Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process. ~ Salma Hayek
Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it. ~ Oliver Cromwell
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. . ~ L. P. Jacks (originally attributed to François-René de Chateaubriand, born 4 September 1768, because of a widespread misattribution.)
I've probably saved thousands of peoples' lives with my educational message on snake bites — how to get in around venomous anything. Yeah, I'm a thrill seeker, but crikey, education's the most important thing. ~ Steve Irwin
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all. ~ Robert M. Pirsig
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. ~ Edith Sitwell
Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat. ~ Peter Sellers
Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen. ~ Leo Tolstoy
Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways. ~ Stephen Jay Gould
On September 11 — what happened? Picture this: two upended matchboxes, knocked over by the sheer force of paper-darts.
Only it was much, much worse than that. In fact, words alone cannot adduce how much worse it was than that. September 11 was an attack on words: we felt a general deficit. ~ Martin Amis
When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either. ~ Jesse Owens
What I need is a good defense
'Cause I'm feeling like a criminal
And I need to be redeemed
To the one I've sinned against
Because he's all I ever knew of love.
~ Fiona Apple ~
The acceptance of the principle of international cooperation is of immense importance for all states. Even the states which are most tempted to believe that they can stand by themselves have very much to gain by such cooperation. And for the smaller states — the weaker states — it is vital to all their hopes of liberty and justice. ~ Lord Robert Cecil
We hardly find any persons of good sense, save those who agree with us. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld
The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense. ~ Ann Richards
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 ~
I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. ~ Samuel Johnson
His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy. ~ William Golding
We control fifty percent of a relationship. We influence one hundred percent of it. ~ Joyce Brothers
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
~ Leonard Cohen ~
The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it. ~ Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change. ~ Euripides
To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom I know; and the best philosophy, to do one's duties, take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is, and despise affectation. ~ Horace Walpole
No battle is ever won... They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. ~ William Faulkner
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule. ~ Samuel Adams
When once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely. ~ Francis Turner Palgrave
Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. ~ Miguel de Unamuno
Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other. ~ Elie Wiesel

October 2006

Love and music and happiness and family, that's what it's all about. I believe in these things. It would be awful not to, wouldn't it? ~ Julie Andrews
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
~ Wallace Stevens ~
The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. ~ Gore Vidal
A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny. ~ Buster Keaton
Almost all men, and those that seem to be very miserable, love life, because they cannot bear to lose sight of such a beautiful and lovely world. The ideas, that every moment whilst we live have a beauty that we take not distinct notice of, brings a pleasure that, when we come to the trial, we had rather live in much pain and misery than lose. ~ Jonathan Edwards
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last — far off — at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature. ~ Niels Bohr
Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife? ~ Frank Herbert in Dune
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
~ John Lennon ~
I would like to make the point that we cannot undo the past but we can learn from it, and we cannot predict the future but we can shape and build it. ~ Epeli Ganilau
It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
I have always read that the world, both land and water, was spherical, as the authority and researches of Ptolemy and all the others who have written on this subject demonstrate and prove, as do the eclipses of the moon and other experiments that are made from east to west, and the elevation of the North Star from north to south. ~ Christopher Columbus
If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it. ~ Margaret Thatcher
I am totally convinced from my experience of working with poor people that they can get themselves out of poverty if we give them the same or similar opportunities we give to others. The poor themselves can create a poverty-free world — all we have to do is to free them from the chains that we have put around them. ~ Muhammad Yunus
In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. ~ Oscar Wilde
Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. ~ Arthur Miller
Give me my freedom for as long as I be
All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me
All I ask of livin' is to have no chains on me
And all I ask of dyin' is to go naturally...
And when I die, and when I'm gone
There'll be one child born, in our world
To carry on, to carry on...
~ Laura Nyro ~
There is surely a piece of divinity within us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. ~ Thomas Browne
We sometimes talk as if "original research" were a peculiar prerogative of scientists or at least of advanced students. But all thinking is research, and all research is native, original, with him who carries it on, even if everybody else in the world already is sure of what he is still looking for. ~ John Dewey
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge ~
All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility. ~ Doris Lessing
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world. ~ Michael Crichton
Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument. Where Wallace Stevens says, “God and the imagination are one,” I would say that the imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God. ~ Denise Levertov
A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensable. ~ Richard E. Byrd
The youth are not always right, but the society which ignores them and beats, is always wrong. ~ François Mitterrand
I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time. ~ Sylvia Plath
The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish. ~ Evelyn Waugh
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. ~ James Boswell
The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratical council, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor. Equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody, and in every respect diabolical. ~ John Adams
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
~ John Keats ~

November 2006

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."
~ Stephen Crane ~
It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. ~ Marie Antoinette
Art is a revolt against fate. ~ André Malraux
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it. ~ William Styron
Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty. ~ Will Durant
Me, I shall be an autocrat: that is my trade; and The Good God will forgive me: that is His. ~ Catherine the Great
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness. ~ Albert Camus
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. ~ Bram Stoker
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. ~ Carl Sagan
Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom. ~ Friedrich Schiller
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
~ John McCrae ~
No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. ~ Louis Brandeis
Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater
We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves. ~ Alan Watts
Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. ~ Milton Friedman
It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography — but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off. ~ Margaret Atwood
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.
~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson ~
Art defies defeat by its very existence, representing the celebration of life, in spite of all attempts to degrade and destroy it. ~ Nadine Gordimer
Man is free at the instant he wants to be. ~ Voltaire
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? ~ George Eliot
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~ Thornton Wilder
Only the brave know how to forgive... A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature. ~ Laurence Sterne
If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do. ~ Lewis Thomas
"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, Why me?" And the voice says, "Nothing personal your name just happened to come up." ~ Charles M. Schulz
Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it. ~ Bruce Lee
Whatever nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge. ~ Enrico Fermi
The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity" and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man. ~ C.S. Lewis
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more. ~ Winston Churchill

December 2006

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. ~ Woody Allen
The current search for new educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring. ~ Ivan Illich
There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. ~ Joseph Conrad
No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. ~ Thomas Carlyle
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. ~ Werner Heisenberg
Never think that you're not good enough. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning. ~ Anthony Trollope
I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for. ~ Thornton Wilder
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
~ Delmore Schwartz ~
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties. ~ John Milton in Areopagitica
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. ~ Elie Wiesel
In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim — that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people. ~ George Mason
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments. ~ Gustave Flaubert
We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race. We all share the same basic values. ~ Kofi Annan
My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect. ~ Ellen Willis
To talk about the end of science is just as foolish as to talk about the end of religion. Science and religion are both still close to their beginnings, with no ends in sight. ~ Freeman Dyson
What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art. ~ George Santayana
To even mention all the things the bird must constantly keep in mind in order to fly securely through the air would take a considerable part of the evening... The bird has learned this art of equilibrium, and learned it so thoroughly that its skill is not apparent to our sight. We only learn to appreciate it when we try to imitate it. ~ Wilbur Wright
Formerly we used to represent things visible on earth, things we either liked to look at or would have liked to see. Today we reveal the reality that is behind visible things, thus expressing the belief that the visible world is merely an isolated case in relation to the universe and that there are many more other, latent realities. Things appear to assume a broader and more diversified meaning, often seemingly contradicting the rational experience of yesterday. There is a striving to emphasize the essential character of the accidental. ~ Paul Klee
It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles. The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win. Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life. ~ Phil Ochs
Learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy. ~ Edwin Abbott Abbott
This is the stillness behind motion, when time itself stops; the center is also the circumference of all.
We are awake in the night.
We turn the Wheel to bring the light.
We call the sun from the womb of night.
Blessed Be!
~ Starhawk ~
It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence. ~ Kenneth Rexroth
The final frontier is perhaps the most difficult, but it's also the most important — and that's the frontier of the human spirit. For too long, people have allowed differences on the surface — differences of color, ethnicity, and gender — to tear apart the common bonds they share. And the human spirit suffers as a result.
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations. ~ Wesley Clark
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~ John Muir
Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. ~ Calvin Coolidge
Let us face squarely the paradox that the world which goes to war is a world, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which miscarry or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right. ~ Norman Angell
I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner. ~ Louis Pasteur
The length of one's days matters less than the love of one's family and friends. ~ Gerald Ford
If I am to be shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet. ~ Andrew Johnson
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too...
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son!
~ Rudyard Kipling ~
When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective. ~ George Marshall

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