Dreamhart.org

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Quotes about Dreams

  • This, therefore, is a faded dream of the time when I went down into the dust and noise of the Eastern market-place, and with my brain and muscles, with sweat and constant thinking, made others see my visions coming true. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.
-Thomas Edward Lawrence, “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”

Poetry

  • Listen to the MUSTN’Ts, child, Listen to the DON’Ts Listen to the SHOULDN’Ts, the IMPOSSIBLEs, the WON’Ts Listen to the NEVER HAVEs, then listen close to me… ANYTHING can happen, child, ANYTHING can be.
-Shel Silverstein, “Listen to the MUSTN’Ts”

Einstein Quotes

  • In art, and in the higher ranges of science, there is a feeling of harmony which underlies all endeavor. There is no true greatness in art or science without the sense of harmony. He who lacks it can never be more than a great technician in either field.
-Albert Einstein

Quotes about Magic

  • The old gods and their magics did not dwindle away into murky memories of brownies and little fairies more at home in a Disney cartoon; rather, they changed. The coming of Christ and Christians actually freed them. They were no longer bound to people’s expectations but could now become anything that they could imagine themselves to be. They are still here, walking among us. We just don’t recognize them anymore.
-Charles de Lint, “Ghosts of Wind and Shadow”, in Dreams Underfoot
  • And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
-Roald Dahl
  • That’s the thing about magic; you’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.
-Charles de Lint
  • If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel.
-Richard Bach

Quotes about Love

  • He loves her. Love, it’s a new style… On the other hand, our old ways were once new, weren’t they?… On the other hand, they decided without parents, without a matchmaker!… On the other hand, did Adam and Eve have a matchmaker?… Well, yes, they did. And it seems these two have the same Matchmaker!
-Tevye, from “Fiddler on the Roof”

Latin Quotes

  • Nosce te ipsum!
Know thyself!
-Cicero, from the Greek gnothi seauton, on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
  • A posse ad esse non valet consequentia
From a thing’s possibility one cannot be certain of its reality.
-Latin Proverb
  • Claude os, aperi oculos!
Shut your mouth, open your eyes.
-Latin Proverb
  • Concordia salus.
Well-being through harmony.
-Latin Proverb
  • Crudelius est quam mori semper timere mortem.
It is crueller to be always afraid of dying than to die.
-Seneca
  • Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
Any man can make a mistake; only a fool keeps making the same one.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero, Philippica XII, ii, 5
  • Cuivis dolori remedium est patientia.
Patience is the cure for all suffering.
-Latin Proverb
  • Deorum iniuriae Diis curae.
Offences to the gods are the concern of the gods.
-Latin Proverb
  • Deserta faciunt et pacem appellant.
They create a desolation and they call it peace.
-Tacitus
  • Do ut des
I give, that you may give
-Latin Proverb
  • Docendo discimus.
We learn by teaching
-Seneca
  • Et ipsa scientia potestas est.
And knowledge itself, is power
-Francis Bacon, Meditationes sacrae
  • Ex astris, Scientia
From the stars, Knowledge
-the motto of Starfleet Academy in Star Trek
  • Fiat iustitia et pereat mundus
Let justice be done, though the world perish
– Ferdinand I
  • Fiat iustitia ruat caelum
Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
-Latin Proverb
  • Fide, sed qui, vide.
Trust but take care whom.
-Latin Proverb
  • Gutta cavat lapidem non bis, sed saepe cadendo; sic homo fit sapiens non bis, sed saepe legendo.
A drop hollows out the stone by falling not twice, but many times; so too is a person made wise by reading not two, but many books.
-Giordano Bruno, Il Candelaio
  • Gutta cavat lapidem non vi, sed saepe cadendo; sic homo fit doctus non vi, sed saepe legendo.
A drop hollows out the stone not by force, but by frequent dripping; so too is a person made wise not by force, but by frequent reading.
-Quoted without attribution by John Adams in his diary entry for August 19, 1770
  • Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.
There is no smooth way from the earth to the stars.
-Seneca Maior
  • Nomen est omen.
Name is omen.
Latin Proverb implying that the name is fitting for the object or person.
  • Nomina stultorum scribuntur ubique locorum
Fools have the habit of writing their names everywhere
-Latin Proverb
  • Non habes iure provocare mihi.
You don’t have the right to provoke me.
-Latin Proverb
  • Non nobis solum nati sumus
We are not born for ourselves alone
-Latin Proverb
  • Non quia difficilia sunt non audemus, sed quia non audemus, difficilia sunt.
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, but because we do not dare, things are difficult.
-Seneca Maior
  • Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Everything unknown passes for miraculous.
-Latin Proverb
  • Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci
He has gained every point who has mixed the useful and the agreeable.
-Horace
  • Omnia mea mecum porto.
All that’s mine I carry with me.
-Latin Proverb
  • Omnia munda mundis.
Everything is pure for the one who is pure
-Latin Proverb
  • Pax melior est quam iustissimum bellum.
Peace is better than the most just war.
-Latin proverb
  • Per ardua ad astra.
Through adversity to the stars
also Through the heights or difficult places, to the stars or heaven or immortality
-motto of the Royal Air Force. The Latin words offer shades of meaning so that each translation colours the others.
  • Per aspera ad astra
Through hardships to the stars”
-motto of NASA, from Seneca.
  • Philosophum non facit barba.
A beard doesn’t make a philosopher.
-Plutarch
  • Piscem natare doces
You teach a fish to swim.
-Latin Proverb
  • Post cenam non stare sed mille passus meare.
Do not rest after dinner, but walk a mile.
-Latin Proverb
  • Post Tenebras Lux
After the darkness the light
-motto of the canton Geneva, Switzerland
  • Principiis obsta
Resist the beginnings (i.e. undesirable trends should be nipped in the bud).
-Latin Proverb
  • Pro aris et focis
For altar and hearth (i.e. for our homes)
-Cicero
  • Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae
to know what to ask is already to know half
-cited by Will Durant, “The Story of Philosophy”, ch.II
  • Pulvis et umbra sumus
We are dust and shadow
-Horace, Carmina, Book IV, 7, 16.
  • Quae communiter possidentur communiter negliguntur
(Things) which are possessed in community are neglected in community.
-Latin Proverb
  • Quam bene vivas refert, non quam diu.
How well you live makes a difference, not how long.
-Seneca
  • Qui pro innocente dicit, satis est eloquens.
He who speaks for the innocent is eloquent enough.
-Publius Syrus
  • Qui non proficit, deficit.
He who does not go forward, loses ground.
He who does not accomplish anything, is a failure/has shortcomings.
-Latin Proverb
  • Qui scribit, bis legit.
Who writes, reads twice.
-Latin Proverb
  • Qui tacet, consentire videtur.
Who is silent seems to agree.
-Latin Proverb
  • Quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem!
Whatever you do, may you do it prudently, and look to the end!
-Latin Proverb
  • Quidquid discis, tibi discis
Whatever you learn, you learn it for yourself.
-Latin Proverb
  • Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Who will watch the watchers themselves?
Who will guard the guardians themselves?
-Juvenal
  • Quod erat demonstrandum.
QED
Which was to be demonstrated. (commonly translated as “That has been demonstrated”)
-Latin Proverb
  • Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.
All that is allowed to Jupiter is not necessarily allowed to an ox.
-Latin Proverb
  • Quod nocet, saepe docet
That which harms, often teaches
-Latin Proverb
  • Quos amor verus tenuit, tenebit.
Those whom true love has held, it will go on holding.
-Seneca
  • Quot linguas calles, tot homines vales.
You are worth as many people as the languages that you speak.
-Latin Proverb
  • Recta linea brevissima, recta via tutissima
Straight line is the shortest, straight road is the most safe.
-Latin Proverb
  • Salus populi suprema lex esto.
Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.
-motto of the U.S. state of Missouri.
  • Sapere aude.
Dare to be wise.
-motto of the University of New Brunswick, from Horace.
  • Sapientia est potentia.
Wisdom is power.
-Latin Proverb
  • Scientia non habet inimicum nisi ignorantem.
Science has no enemies but the ignorant.
-Latin Proverb
  • Scire aliquid laus est, pudor est nihil discere velle.
It is commendable to know some things, it is disgraceful to refuse to learn.
-Seneca
  • Sine scientia ars nihil est.
Art without knowledge is nothing.
Art and knowledge are tightly intervowen and could not exist one without the other.
-Jean Vignot
  • Si vis pacem, para iustitiam.
If you want peace, prepare justice.
-Latin Proverb
  • Sic Itur Ad Astra
Thus do we reach the stars
-motto of the Canadian Air Force
  • Sit tibi terra levitas (S.T.T.L.)
May the earth rest lightly on you
—a benediction for the dead, often inscribed on tombstones or other gravestones.
  • Summum ius summa inuria.
More law, less justice.
-Cicero, De officiis I, 10, 33
  • Sunt facta verbis difficiliora
Works are harder than words. (i.e. Easier said than done.)
-Latin Proverb
  • Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.
The times are changed, and we are changed in them.
-Cicero
  • Tempus fugit, aeternitas manet
Time flees, eternity dwells
-Latin Proverb
  • Testis unus, testis nullus.
A single witness is no witness.
-Latin Proverb
  • Tolle, lege; Tolle, lege!
Take up and read; take up and read!
-Augustinus
  • Ubi bene, ibi patria
Where one feels good, there is one’s country.
-Latin Proverb
  • Ulula cum lupis, cum quibus esse cupis.
Who keeps company with wolves, will learn to howl.
-Latin Proverb
  • Una hirundo non facit ver
One swallow doesn’t make spring
-Latin Proverb
  • Unum castigabis, centum emendabis.
If you reprove one error, you will correct a hundred.
-Latin Proverb
  • Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda voluntas
Even if the powers are missing, the will deserves praise
-Ovid
  • Vasa vana plurimum sonant
Empty pots make the most noise
-Latin Proverb
  • Verba docent, exempla trahunt.
Words instruct, illustrations lead.
-Latin Proverb
  • Veritas odium paret
Truth creates hatred
-Terence, Andria 68
  • Veritatem dies aperit.
Time discloses the truth.
-Latin Proverb
  • Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici
By the power of truth, I, a living man, have conquered the universe.
-Latin Proverb
  • Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor
I see the better and acknowledge it, but I follow the worse
-Ovid
  • Videre videnda
See what should be seen.
-Latin Proverb
  • Vita brevis, ars longa
Life is short, art is longer
-Latin Proverb
  • Vox audita perit littera scripta manet.
The spoken word perishes, the written words remain.
-Latin Proverb

Quotes from the Dalai Lama

  • Within the body there are billions of different particles. Similarly, there are many different thoughts and a variety of states of mind. It is wise to take a close look into the world of your mind and to make the distinction between beneficial and harmful states of mind. Once you can recognize the value of good states of mind, you can increase or foster them.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom (2000)
  • True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason… Compassion without attachment is possible. Therefore, we need to clarify the distinctions between compassion and attachment. True compassion is not just an emotional response but a firm commitment founded on reason. Therefore, a truly compassionate attitude towards others does not change even if they behave negatively. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs of the other…
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, The Compassionate Life (2001), Ch. 2 “How to Develop Compassion” p. 21
  • All living beings are believed to possess the nature of the Primordial Buddha Samantabhadra, the potential or seed of enlightenment, within them. I believe that at every level of society — familial, tribal, national and international — the key to a happier and more successful world is the growth of compassion. We do not need to become religious, nor do we need to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, The Compassionate Life (2001) Ch. 3 “Global Compassion” p. 37
  • We need a little more compassion, and if we cannot have it then no politician or even a magician can save the planet.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, as quoted in Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2001) edited by Margaret Gee, p. 49
  • Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, as quoted in Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2001) edited by Margaret Gee, p. 71
  • My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (2005)
  • If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, The New York Times (12 November 2005)
  • Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful
    a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, as quoted in “Tibet’s Living Buddha” by Pico Iyer, p. 32
  • Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t appreciate kindness and compassion.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, “Kindness and Compassion” p. 47
  • This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, “Kindness and Compassion” p. 52
  • To study Buddhism and then use it as a weapon in order to criticize others’ theories or ideologies is wrong. The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life with the knowledge of the Buddhist teachings.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, “A Talk to Western Buddhists” p. 87
  • It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, “A Talk to Western Buddhists” p. 89
  • Buddhism does not accept a theory of God, or a creator. According to Buddhism, one’s own actions are the creator, ultimately. Some people say that, from a certain angle, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a science of mind. Religion has much involvement with faith. Sometimes it seems that there is quite a distance between a way of thinking based on faith and one entirely based on experiment, remaining skeptical. Unless you find something through investigation, you do not want to accept it as fact. From one viewpoint, Buddhism is a religion, from another viewpoint Buddhism is a science of mind and not a religion. Buddhism can be a bridge between these two sides. Therefore, with this conviction I try to have closer ties with scientists, mainly in the fields of cosmology, psychology, neurobiology and physics. In these fields there are insights to share, and to a certain extent we can work together.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, “The Nobel Evening Address” p. 115
  • Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world.
-Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, Daily Telegraph interview (2006)

Unsorted Quotes

  • Aurora musis amica est
Dawn is a friend of muses.
-Desiderius Erasmus, De Ratione Studii
  • Cave ab homine unius libri
Beware the man of one book.
-Roman proverb.
  • Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
—Leonardo da Vinci
  • Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed its the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Mead, American Anthropologist (1901-1978)
  • In the kingdom of hope, there is no winter.
-Russian proverb.
  • The wolf will hire himself out very cheaply as a shepherd.
-Russian proverb.
  • Not cheap without reason, nor dear without value.
-Afghan proverb.
  • The world lives on hope.
-Afghan proverb.
  • Blood cannot be washed out with blood.
-Afghan proverb.
  • He who learns, teaches.
-African proverb.
  • Hope is the pillar of the world.
-African proverb.
  • An intelligent enemy is better than a stupid friend.
-African proverb.
  • An army of sheep lead by a lion would defeat an army of lions lead by a sheep.
-Arabic proverb.
  • The longer the night lasts, the more our dreams will be.
-Chinese proverb.
  • Those who do not read are not better off than those who can not.
-Chinese proverb.
  • The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.
-Chinese proverb.
  • It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.
-Chinese proverb.
  • It destroys the craft not to learn it.
-Irish proverb.
  • It’s no delay to stop to edge the tool.
-Irish proverb.
  • He who can follow his own will is a king.
-Irish proverb.
  • Hope dies last of all.
-Mexican proverb.
  • All dreams spin out from the same web.
-Native American proverb.
  • Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.
-Native American proverb.
  • Everything the power does, it does in a circle.
-Native American proverb.
  • Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; Wisdom is of the future.
-Native American proverb.
  • Everyone who is successful must have dreamed of something.
-Native American proverb.
  • Make my enemy strong and brave, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.
-Native American proverb.
  • with all things and in all things, we are relatives.
-Native American proverb.
  • The moon is not shamed by the barking of dogs.
-Native American proverb.
  • They are not dead who live in the hearts they leave behind.
-Native American proverb.
  • He falsifies who renders a verse just as it looks.
-Yiddish proverb.
  • The whole world is a dream, and death the interpreter.
-Yiddish proverb.
  • If you want your dreams to come true, don’t sleep.
-Yiddish proverb.
  • A man should live if only to satisfy his curiousity.
-Yiddish proverb.
  • If god wants people to suffer, he sends them too much understanding.
-Yiddish proverb.
  • Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.
-Japanese proverb.
  • Due to the presence of fools, wise people stand out.
-Japanese proverb.
  • The country is in ruins, and there are still mountains and rivers.
-Japanese proverb.
  • Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
-Morpheus, Dream Country by Neal Gaiman
  • Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, ‘The monk is our teacher.’ Kalamas, when you yourselves know: ‘These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,’ enter on and abide in them.
-The Kalama Sutra of Gautama Buddha
  • Water gnaws at mountains and fills valleys. If it could, it would reduce the earth to a perfect sphere.
-Leonardo da Vinci, (Codex Atlanticus, 185v)
  • Non scholae sed vitae discimus.
We learn, not for school, but for life.
-Seneca
  • A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
  • Liking or not-liking an elf is like liking or not-liking a mountain. An elf or a mountain simply is and you must accept that.
-Rick Cook, The Wizardry Cursed
  • We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi
  • The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea.
-computer saying (via Rick Cook, the Wiz Biz)
  • Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a rigged demostration.
-programmer’s restatement of Murphy’s reformulation of Clarke’s law (via Rick Cook, the Wiz Biz).
  • Nothing becomes real until it is experienced – even a proverb is no proverb to you until your life has illustrated it.
-John Keats
  • An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.
-Ernest Hemingway
  • Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
-Publilius Syrus
  • The great are great to us only because we are on our knees. Let us arise.
-Robert Collier
  • communication is a form of magik. and a way of forming magik. Either by itself or intended as magik, it still has the effects of magik (just the intended spoken word of magik is usually a bit stronger 🙂 And yes, there are natural magik and learned. A natural is just someone who didn’t have to be taught. We all have the ability to learn new magik,..just a matter of being shown what is already in us. 🙂 We all have access to what anyone else can do.
-Eyovah
  • everyone knows something… hence everyone is a guardian of wisdom and knowledge
-Eyovah
  • Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-Mark Twain
  • There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.
-William F. Halsey
  • To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.
-Marquis de Vauvenargues
  • You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-Henry Ford
  • When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
-Old Indian saying
  • People forget how fast you did a job – but they remember how well you did it.
-Howard W. Newton
  • Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
-Leonardo da Vinci
  • If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.’
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.
-Doug Larson
  • An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.
-Max Planck
  • Hacker’s Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action is one of mankind’s oldest illusions.
  • I have nothing but contempt for anyone who can spell a word in only one way.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, / And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
-John Gillespie Magee
  • Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal difference between our past, purely biological mode of change, and our current, maddening acceleration toward something new and liberating– or toward the abyss.
-Stephen Jay Gould
  • Whatever you do, stamp out abuses, and love those who love you.
-Voltaire
  • I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
-Galileo Galilei
  • It don’t make no difference how you say it, just say it in a way that makes sense. Did you ever meet anybody in your life who didn’t know what ‘ain’t’ means?
-Dizzy Dean
  • The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-Anatole France
  • The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
-Albert Einstein
  • And I have no desire to get ugly. But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
-Ogden Nash, Seeing Eye to Eye Is Believing
  • I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by education.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-Senator Soaper
  • I don’t care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.
-Boss Tweed
  • Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas
  • Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-Einstein
  • My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths.
-Harlan Ellison
  • Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
-George Bernard Shaw
  • To YOU I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.
-Woody Allen
  • The victor will always judge the defeated, and always find him guilty.
-Goering, during the Nuremberg Trials
  • Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-Abraham Lincoln
  • It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-Albert Einstein
  • The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny…”
-Isaac Asimov
  • There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.
-Richard Lederer
  • Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
-Thomas Edison
  • Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
-Mae West
  • My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
-Hermann Weyl
  • They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
  • …all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.
-H.P. Lovecraft
  • There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, or perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
  • The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed to pass through three gates. At the first gate, we ask ouselves, ‘Are these words true?’ If so, we let them pass on; if not, back they go. At the second gate, we ask, ‘Are they necessary?’ At the last gate, we ask, ‘Are they kind?’
-Eknath Easwaran
  • Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
-Hermann Goering
  • The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.
-Philip K. Dick
  • I tell you all as I understand, I am here as just a man, Perfection I strive for, And may never reach, But to try, to always become better, Is what I preach, And if you want, all I will teach. All I know is open to share, To help everyone is my goal, To be the best I can be, And help all the same, Is all I want, Life to be, Smile + be.
-Eyovah, “Teaching toward perfection”
  • He loves her! Love, it’s a new starting. On the other hand, our old ways were once new, weren’t they? On the other hand, they decided without parents, without the Matchmaker! On the other hand, did Adam and Eve have a matchmaker? Oh, yes they did. And it seems these two have the same Matchmaker.
-Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof
  • Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
-Coleridge
  • When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.
– William Blake
  • No cause is helpless if it is just. Errors, no matter how popular, carry the seeds of their own destruction.
-John W. Scoville
  • To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle.
-Confucius
  • What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
-Abraham H. Maslow
  • Am I self-righteous? Why not? It’s not like I can count on you to be righteous for me.
-Henry Rollins
  • It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.
-Epictetus
  • Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
-Oscar Wilde
  • Take the attitude of a student. Never be to big to ask questions. Never know to much to learn something new.
-Og Mandino
  • We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.
-Anais Nin
  • It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.
-Confucius
  • Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength.
-Eric Hoffer
  • We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.
-Abraham Lincoln
  • Quality is not an act. It is a habit.
-Aristotle
  • Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.
-Albert Einstein
  • If you do not have the time to read, you do not have the time to lead.
-Phillip Schlechty
  • Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
-Antisthenes
  • Some folks can look so busy doing nothing that they seem indispensable.
-Kin Hubbard
  • If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.
-Napoleon Hill
  • You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.
-Publilius Syrus
  • Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.
-Henry Ward Beecher
  • Results are often obtained by impetuosity and daring which could never have been obtained by ordinary methods.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
  • No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
-George Eliot
  • If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
-John Cleese
  • Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
-Samuel Johnson
  • You are the bows from which your children, as living arrows, are sent forth.
-Kahlil Gibran
  • Everyone alters and is altered by everyone else. We are all the time taking in portions of one another or else reacting against them, and by these involuntary acquisitions and repulsions modifying our natures.
-Gerald Brenan
  • Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
-Plato
  • Forget your opponents; always play against par.
-Sam Snead
  • If you fall in love with an idea, you won’t see the merits of alternative approaches—and will probably miss an opportunity or two. One of life’s great pleasures is letting go of a previously cherished idea. Then you’re free to look for new ones. What part of your idea are you in love with? What would happen if you kissed it goodbye?
-Roger von Oech
  • To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
-Lichtenberg
  • The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.
-Laurens Van du Post
  • Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-Publius Syrus
  • Don’t fight a battle if you don’t gain anything by winning.
-General George S Patton, Jr.
  • I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
-Albert Einstein
  • In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
-Galileo Galilei
  • I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-W.B. Yeats
  • I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
-Chuang Tzu
  • Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
-Henry David Thoreau
  • The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
-William Faulkner
  • Hold fast to dreams / for if dreams die / life is a broken winged bird / that cannot fly.
-Lanston Hughes
  • A skillful man reads his dreams for self-knowledge, yet not the details but the quality.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Our waking hours form the text of our lives, our dreams, the commentary.
-Anonymous
  • Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.
-Charles Reade
  • Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
-Aristotle
  • People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.
-Anne Tyler
  • If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.
-Benjamin Franklin
  • I am fond of children (except boys).
-Lewis Carroll
  • Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
-G. K. Chesterton
  • The broad mass of a nation… will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
-Adolf Hitler, “Mein Kampf”
  • I’m not going to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic.
-Rogers Morton, President Ford’s campaign manager, on whether he planned any change of strategy after Ford lost five of six primaries
  • Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
-Ronald Reagan
  • boy, n: A noise with dirt on it.
-Mark Twain
  • Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
-Abigail Adams
  • When a man’s willing and eager, the gods join in.
-Aeschylus
  • You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.
-Alan Alda
  • Anyone desperate enough for suicide…should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try.
-Richard Bach
  • As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming, instead of being. Beyond time we’re all one.
-Richard Bach
  • Character comes from following our highest sense of right, from trusting ideals without being sure they’ll work.
-Richard Bach
  • Don’t be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is before you can meet again, and meeting again after a moment or lifetime is certain for those who are friends.
-Richard Bach
  • Every angry person is a frightened one, dreading some loss.
-Richard Bach
  • If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel.
-Richard Bach
  • Intuition whispers true
    We’re not dust, we’re magic!
-Richard Bach
  • I’ve got the answers you need, but there’s not a prayer you’ll listen before you get yourself flattened by the Great Steamroller of Experience.
-Richard Bach
  • Look in a mirror and one thing’s sure; what we see is not who we are.
-Richard Bach
  • Real lovestories never have endings.
-Richard Bach
  • The only life worth living is the magical one.
-Richard Bach
  • The only thing that lasts, is love!
-Richard Bach
  • The only thing that matters, at the end of a stay on earth, is how well did we love, what was the quality of our love?
-Richard Bach
  • The sum of one and one, if they’re the right ones, can be infinity!
-Richard Bach
  • The truth waits for anyone who wishes to find it.
-Richard Bach
  • There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go.
-Richard Bach
  • …this world is not remotely what it seems…whatever we hold in our thought comes true in our lives…miracles aren’t miraculous.
-Richard Bach
  • To bring anything into your life, imagine that it’s already there.
-Richard Bach
  • …we shall forever return to the arms of those we love, whether our parting be overnight or over-death.
-Richard Bach
  • …what you love will find a way to sweep you up from the earth, high into its joyful scary answers for every question you can ask.
-Richard Bach
  • Whatever enchants, also guides and protects. Passionately obsessed by anything we love…an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead, levels rules, reasons, dissents, bears us with it over chasms, fears, doubts.
-Richard Bach
  • You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.
-Richard Bach
  • Memory, prophecy and fantasy–the past, the future and the dreaming moment between–are all in one country, living one immortal day. To know that is Wisdom. To use it is the Art.
-Clive Barker
  • What a wonderful day we’ve had. You have learned something and I have learned something. Too bad we didn’t learn it sooner. We could have gone to the movies instead.
-Balki Bartokomous
  • I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through not dying.
-Woody Allen
  • Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
-John Barrymore
  • Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people; the [party] organization embraces within its scope only those who do not threaten on psychological grounds to become a brake on the further dissemination of ideas.
-Adolf Hitler
  • Only the continuous and steady application of the methods for suppressing a doctrine, etc., makes it possible for a plan to succeed.
-Adolf Hitler
  • Only in the struggle between two philosophies can the weapon of brutal force, persistently and ruthlessly applied, lead to a decision for the side it supports.
-Adolf Hitler
  • Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.
-Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
  • The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.
-Albert Einstein, My First Impression of the U.S.A., 1921
  • Every man cannot have his way in all things. If his opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at other times. Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
-Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801
  • Injustice was as common as streetcars. When men walked into their jobs, they left their dignity, their citizenship and their humanity outside. They were required to report for duty whether there was work or not. While they waited on the convenience of supervisors and foremen they were unpaid. They could be fired without a pretext. The were subjected to arbitrary, senseless rules… Men were tortured by regulations that made difficult even going to the toilet. Despite grandiloquent statements from the presidents of huge corporations that their door was open to any worker with a complaint, there was no one and no agency to which a worker could appeal if he were wronged. The very idea that a worker could be wronged seemed absurd to the employer.
-Walter Reuther (on working life in America before the Wagner act)
  • In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
-Albert Camus
  • How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
-George Washington Carver
  • An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
-Winston Churchill
  • Never turn your back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
-Winston Churchill
  • Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
-Winston Churchill
  • The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
-Winston Churchill
  • Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
-Winston Churchill
  • The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
-Winston Churchill
  • When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
-Paulo Coelho
  • Learn to recognize omens, and follow them.
-Paulo Coelho
  • We have to take advantage when luck is on our side, and do as much to help it as it’s doing to help us.
-Paulo Coelho
  • Not everyone can see his dreams come true in the same way.
-Paulo Coelho
  • You must always know what it is that you want.
-Paulo Coelho
  • Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
-Paulo Coelho
  • Sometimes there’s just no way to hold back the river.
-Paulo Coelho
  • If I could, I’d write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence. It’s with those words that the universal language is written.
-Paulo Coelho
  • …intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life…
-Paulo Coelho
  • …people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.
-Paulo Coelho
  • Everyone has his or her own way of learning things…
-Paulo Coelho
  • God revealed his secrets easily to all his creatures.
-Paulo Coelho
  • The dunes are changed by the wind but the desert never changes.
-Paulo Coelho
  • When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.
-Paulo Coelho
  • The eyes show the strength of your soul.
-Paulo Coelho
  • Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
-Confucius
  • He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.
-Confucius
  • One joy dispels a hundred cares.
-Confucius
  • Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
-Confucius
  • When we see men of a contrary character we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
-Confucius
  • Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
-Norman Cousins
  • A little nonsense now & then is cherished by the wisest men.
-Roald Dahl
  • Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
-Dandemis
  • Absense is to love what wind is to fire, it extinguishes the small, in enkindles the great.
-Comte de Bussy-Rabutin
  • …there’s a world beyond what we can see and touch, and that world lives by its own laws. What may be impossible in this very ordinary world is very possible there, and sometimes the boundaries between the two worlds disappear, and then who can say what is possible and impossible?
-David Eddings
  • Greed is bad, but fear is worse, and the world is dangerous enough without cluttering it with imaginary hobgoblins.
-David Eddings
  • “Hardly ever” has an uncomfortable ring of frequency to it.
-David Eddings
  • The land, indifferent to human boundaries, flowed on unchanged.
-David Eddings
  • I’m pleased to have met you–though I still don’t believe in you…
-David Eddings
  • The shapes we assume begin to dominate our thinking after a while.
-David Eddings
  • The universe has been waiting for you for more millions of years than you could even imagine. You’ve been hurtling toward this event since before the beginning of time. It’s yours alone. You’re the only one who can do what needs to be done, and it’s the most important thing that will ever happen–not just in this world but in all the worlds in all the universe.
-David Eddings
  • Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
-Albert Einstein
  • Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-Albert Einstein
  • The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-Albert Einstein
  • Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.
-Henry Ford
  • How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
-Anne Frank
  • You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
-Galileo
  • There is no god higher than truth.
-M.K. Ghandi
  • Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back– Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
-Goethe
  • To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.
-Manly P. Hall
  • A benevolent act is like a locust; it sleeps until it is called.
-Mark Helprin
  • A dream is not a tool for this world, but a gateway to the next.
-Mark Helprin
  • All great discoveries are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvellous accidents.
-Mark Helprin
  • …all secrets worth knowing come clear in good time.
-Mark Helprin
  • I have been to another world, and come back. Listen to me.
-Mark Helprin
  • I’m just like you…I come from another age.
-Mark Helprin
  • …into a soul grown so deep it must soon leave life.
-Mark Helprin
  • …she remembered what her father had said about those who bide too much of their time and keep too much council. He had told her, “God is not fooled by silence.” He had told her always to have courage, and sometimes to step into the breach.
-Mark Helprin
  • The beauty of truth is that it need not be proclaimed or believed. It skips from soul to soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen it, and someday you will, too.
-Mark Helprin
  • …they shuddered the way one does when one discovers or reconfirms higher and purposeful forces brazenly and unconvincingly masquerading as coincidence.
-Mark Helprin
  • …those whom one has loved do not simply disappear forever.
-Mark Helprin
  • With all that I’ve seen…I’ve seen nothing.
-Mark Helprin
  • I have to let go of the need to know so much. What we can know is so small–the holiness around is so large. Now I trust in simplicity, simplicity and love.
-Anonymous Hindu Sage
  • One man with courage makes a majority.
-Andrew Jackson
  • To teach is to learn twice.
-Joseph Joubert
  • I am only one; still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
-Helen Keller
  • No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
-Helen Keller
  • Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
-Robert F. Kennedy
  • Peace, if possible, but truth at any rate.
-Martin Luther
  • Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance, and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • The time is always right to do what is right.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms.
-Lao Tzu
  • To lead the people, walk behind them.
-Lao Tzu
  • Prohibition goes beyond reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite through legislation. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles this country was founded upon.
-Abraham Lincoln
  • I care not for a man’s religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it.
-Abraham Lincoln
  • In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
-Vince Lombardi
  • Inches make champions.
-Vince Lombardi
  • Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!
-Theodore Roosevelt
  • Knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
-Isaac Asimov
  • When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-Samuel Clemens
  • It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant examples.
-Charles Dickens
  • If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.
-Frank Herbert
  • The resistance to a new idea is proportional to the square of its importance.
-Bertrand Russell
  • Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-Samuel Clemens
  • If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.
-Stephen King
  • Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
-George Bernard Shaw
  • Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
-Vincent Van Gogh
  • You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something,build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
-Buckminster Fuller
  • Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but s ecrecy… censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
-Robert A. Heinlein
  • Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
  • Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You didn’t place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.
-Jamie Raskin, testifying 1 March 2006 before the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee’s hearing on a gay marriage amendment
  • We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
-Edward R. Murrow
  • If you’re not the hero in your novel, you need to do some heavy editing.
-Terrence McKenna
  • A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
-Robert A. Heinlein
  • The only way to explore the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
-Clarke’s Second Law
  • Only in a police state is the job of a policeman easy.
-Orson Welles
  • There comes a time when silence is betrayal.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
-William Blake
  • I don’t mind being called an escapist on a planet that more and more resembles a maximum security prison. The only sane choice is to plan a jailbreak.
-Robert A. Wilson
  • If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you. But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
-Don Marquis
  • Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper.
-Robert Frost
  • Once at war, to reason is treason.
-James Hilton
  • It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
-Voltaire
  • Ones and zeroes are a number system just like the [base] ten system that we’re all brought up with because we’ve got ten fingers. A computer only has one finger, and that finger is up or not.
-Todd Rundgren, on how he taught himself programming
  • I am a citizen of somewhere else.
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • Just because something’s fast doesn’t mean that it can compete with the human mind.
-Steve Wozniak
  • If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
-Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
  • The moment you see something wrong and don’t say anything, is the moment you start to die.
-Dr. Jocelyn Elders
  • Do you know the main differences between a schizophrenic and a mystic? Control and discernment. Always check your sources.
-Rialian
  • Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
-Christopher Morley
  • A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
-Stanislaw Lem
  • There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
-Raoul Duke, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
  • Don’t patch code, rewrite it.
-Brian Kernighan and P.J. Plauger, _The Elements of Programming Style_
  • Whenever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
-Heinrich Heine
  • My own rule is that no weird story can truly produce terror unless it is devised with all the care and verisimilitude of an actual hoax. The author must forget all about ‘short story technique’, and build up a stark, simple account, full of homely corroborative details, just as if he were actually trying to ‘put across’ a deception in real life — a deception clever enough to make adults believe it. My own attitude in writing is always that of the hoax-weaver. One part of my mind tries to concoct something realistic and coherent enough to fool the rest of my mind & make me swallow the marvel as the late Camille Flammarion used to swallow the ghost & revenant yarns unloaded on him by fakers and neurotics. For the time being I try to forget formal literature, and simply devise a lie as carefully as a crooked witness prepares a line of testimony with cross-examining lawyers in his mind.
-Howard Philips Lovecraft
  • Hacking: The clever circumvention of imposed limits, whether imposed by your government, your own skills, or the laws of physics. Hacking doesn’t stop with computers. Every revolutionist is a hacker, hacking the social system. The nerd-heroic Wright brothers hacked bicycles before they started hacking airplanes (because bikes were cutting-edge tech: elegant cheap mobility.) Ms. Manners, a feminist hero, hacks social interactions. The hacker approach works for everything in life. At least, it will make you more likely to analyze the elements of your life. At best it will make you want to transform those elements like an alchemist.
-St. Jude (RIP)
  • Nobody is a nobody. Everyone has something to offer.
-Buckaroo Banzai
  • If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
-Albert Einstein
  • A man will say anything when he’s wearing a mask.
-Oscar Wilde
  • Cultures with the fewest objects live in the Dreamtime.
-Terrence McKenna
  • Goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
-Robert A. Heinlein, _Stranger in a Strange Land_
  • ..on the essential and central core of faith, science will of necessity be silent. But its silence will be the silence of humility, not the silence of disdain. A belief may be larger than a fact. A faith that is overdefined is the very faith most likely to prove inadequate to the great moments of life.
-Vannevar Bush
  • Let then know exactly what you’re going to do, and then hope that they overreact.
-Mohandas Ghandi
  • “I am anti-life, the beast of judgement. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, of gods, of worlds…everything. And what will you be then, dreamlord?”
    “I am hope.”
-Choronzon and Morpheus, Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes
  • The lunatic asylums are full of people who went seeking the extraordinary before they had any real competence at handling the ordinary.
-Aliester Crowley
  • To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
-Sir Isaac Newton
  • Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
-George S. Patton
  • Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances may be, whatever misfortune you may have suffered, the music of your life has not gone. It’s inside you–if you listen to it, you can play it.
-Nido Qubein
  • What if you could be anything or anybody, you chose to be? Think about it. What would you choose to be?
-Nido Qubein
  • Achieving your vision doesn’t mean you’ve reached the end of the line. It simply means that you’ve come to a new starting place.
-Nido Qubein
  • For many people, change is more threatening than challenging. They see it as the destroyer of what is familiar and comfortable rather than the creator of what is new and exciting.
-Nido Qubein
  • We need a variety of input and influence and voices. You cannot get all the answers to life and business from one person or from one source.
-Jim Rohn
  • The real problem is usually two or three questions deep. If you want to go after someone’s problem, be aware that most people aren’t going to reveal what the real problem is after the first question.
-Jim Rohn
  • The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them.
-Jim Rohn
  • Every life form seems to strive to its maximum except human beings. How tall will a tree grow? Answer…as tall as it possibly can. Human beings, on the other hand, have been given the dignity of choice. You can choose to be all or you can choose to be less. Why not stretch up to the full measure of the challenge and see what all you can do?
-Jim Rohn
  • Don’t let the learning from your own experiences take too long. If you have been doing it wrong for the last ten years, I would suggest that’s long enough!
-Jim Rohn
  • Become an expert at the rules. Then break them with creativity and style.
-Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, til it seems as though you could not hold on a moment longer, never give up then–for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
-Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • If you have built castles in the air your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
-Henry David Thoreau
  • A guru is like a fire. If you get too close you get burned; if you stay too far away, you don’t get enough heat.
-Tibetan Proverb
  • When angry, count to four, when very angry, swear.
-Mark Twain
  • You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-Mark Twain
  • Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
-Henry Van Dyke
  • Use the talents you posses, for the woods would be silent if no birds sang except the best.
-Henry Van Dyke
  • You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.
-Booker T. Washington
  • A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.
-Oscar Wilde
  • Physicists and Mystics have looked at the Universe and observed the same things, but the Mystics spoke in poetry, images and parable, and the Scientists spoke in numbers, equations and formulas.
-Abby Willowroot
  • When you come to the edge of all the light you know and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
-Barbara J. Winter
  • I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
  • It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little. Do what you can.
-Sydney Smith
  • Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • First you write down your goal; your second job is to break down your goal into a series of steps, beginning with steps which are absurdly easy.
-Fitzhugh Dodson
  • Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
-Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending A Staircase
  • If you’re going to have a complicated story you must work to a map; otherwise you’ll never make a map of it afterwards.
-J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
  • You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.
-George S. Patton
  • The capabilities of the human mind are enormous. There is usually no inherent reason you cannot accomplish whatever goal you set for yourself.
-Michael J. Mccarthy
  • You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures.
-Charles C. Noble
  • Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.
-J. C. Penney
  • The biggest things are often the easiest to do because there is so little competition.
-William Van Horne
  • It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
-Voltaire
  • Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
-George Washington
  • My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • You threaten your own freedoms by trying to hinder the harmless freedoms of others.
-Duane Alan Hahn
  • The question is not whether the system works, but whether we like the way it works. Just because something works doesn’t mean it is desirable. Concentration camps work, if your purpose is to enslave people. Stealing works, if all you care about is money. Lying works, if you don’t give a damn about your personal integrity. Literally anything, no matter how monstrously immoral will work, depending on your desires and how you define the term work.
-Sy Leon
  • As mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
-George Washington
  • A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
-Leonard Bernstein
  • He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
-Samuel Johnson
  • People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.
-Robert J. Ringer
  • Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
-Salvador Dali
  • Originality breeds imitation which breeds originality.
-Duane Alan Hahn
  • Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.
-Albert Schweitzer
  • There is no way to make people like change. You can only make them feel less threatened by it.
-Frederick Hayes
  • The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
-Henry Miller
  • The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw
  • It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.
-Tony Benn
  • I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life’s unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
-Vachel Lindsay
  • Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.
-Elbert Hubbard
  • Imagine what a harmonious world it could be if every single person, both young and old shared a little of what he is good at doing.
-Quincy Jones
  • Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’
– Kahlil Gibran
  • Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.
-Mahatma Gandhi
  • If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.
-Adolf Hitler
  • If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.
-Benjamin Franklin
  • Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.
-Benjamin Franklin
  • Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
-Albert Einstein
  • Action is the proper fruit of knowledge.
-Thomas Fuller
  • People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
-Andrew Carnegie
  • Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.
-Ludwig Van Beethoven
  • Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution.
-Raymond E. Feist
  • Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, “yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down. down. Amen!” If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it.
-Dan Barker
  • The best way to know God is to love many things.
-Vincent Van Gogh
  • Any being who requires your worship and obedience is not a God.
-Duane Alan Hahn
  • You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.
-James Allen
  • Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.
-W. Clement Stone
  • Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
-William Penn
  • It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
-Albert Einstein
  • To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it.
-Bunker Hunt
  • Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
-Theodore Roosevelt
  • Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.
-Samuel Johnson
  • If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.
-Margaret Fuller
  • Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty.
-Albert Einstein
  • A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.
-Henry Adams
  • I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
-Kahlil Gibran
  • People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
-Samuel Butler
  • Nothing is work unless you’d rather be doing something else.
-George Halas
  • The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
  • When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know it, to admit that you do not – this is true knowledge.
-Confucius
  • Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite actions.
-Woodrow Wilson
  • The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backwards as that any man who was born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases.
-Joseph (Hinmaton Yalatkit), Nez Perce chief
  • To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good… Ideology – that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
  • He who fights with monsters must take care that he does not become a monster.
-Nietzsche
  • Anyone can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not easy.
-Aristotle
  • The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. And when you’re inside, and look around, what do you see? Businessmen. Teachers. Lawyers. Carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But, until we do, these people are still a part of that system. And, that makes them our enemy. You have to understand
    Most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
-Morpheus, from the movie “The Matrix”
  • Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate systematical job of reducing us to slaves.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.
-Camus
  • The exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by effecting the destruction of a few millionaires but by removing the ignorance of the poor and teaching them to noncooperate with the exploiters.
-Mohandas K. Gandhi, Haryan, July 28, 1940
  • The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed.
-Thomas Jefferson, 1776
  • When in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.
-Emma Goldman
  • Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
-Frederick Douglass
  • A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
  • The time is always right to do what is right.
-Martin Luther King
  • The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
-Abraham Lincoln
  • One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
-Plato
  • The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.
-Japanese proverb
  • Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
-Frederick Douglass
  • If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
-Samuel Adams
  • In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
-Mark Twain
  • A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!
-Alexander Hamilton
  • There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
-Elie Wiesel
  • Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.
-Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1982
  • It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.
-U.S. Supreme Court in American Communications Association v. Douds
  • It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.
-Samuel Adams
  • The government is merely a servant — merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them…
-Mark Twain
  • Liberty is the sovereignty of the individual.
-Josiah Warren
  • Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.
-Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819
  • No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
-Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816
  • Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of power. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
-Daniel Webster, as quoted in Hearings on the confirmation of Abe Fortas to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court, p. 108
  • The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.
-Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.
  • If you don’t have the right to do something wrong [to yourself], you don’t have any rights at all.
-Gene Burns at Faneuil Hall, Boston, 9/29/1996
  • The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
-Thomas Jefferson to P. Dupont, 1816.
  • …There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. … Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.
-Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837
  • If once [the people] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
-Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787
  • The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.
-John Locke
  • Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free
-Ronald Reagan
  • The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
-Albert Einstein
  • I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by thegrace of God, I will do.
-Edward Everett Hale
  • If mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
  • It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, with a Syllabus, Washington, Apr. 21, 1803
  • He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-Thomas Paine
  • The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to always be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.
-Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826
  • The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
-Dante, The Inferno
  • Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box.
-Ambrose Bierce
  • If your most basic right is the right to life, then it seems obvious to me that you have the right to defend your life. Guns are, in this century, the most effective means of doing so – so effective that every genocide has only been carried out against victims who were disarmed by their governments.
-William G. Hartwell
  • Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.
-John Locke, 1690
  • A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-Edward Abbey
  • Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
-Frederic Bastiat, ca. 1837
  • You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, ‘The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.’
-Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964
  • The American government creates 50,000 new laws each year, and over 2 million new regulations. Then we are told by the courts that ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse!’
-Lorne Strider
  • Collective judgment of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free to back their own judgment despite collective disapproval.
-W.A. Lewis
  • No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms…
-Thomas Jefferson
  • Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
-Jefferson’s “Commonplace Book,” 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764
  • The right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
-Henry St. George Tucker, in Blackstone’s 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England.
  • This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or the revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
-Abraham Lincoln
  • Without free speech no search for truth is possible… no discovery of truth is useful…. Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.
-Charles Bradlaugh – (English reformer – 1890)
  • Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), from Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar(1894)
  • You must structure your world so that you are constantly reminded of who you are.
-Na’im Akbar
  • Viewed up close, nobody is normal.
-Caetano Veloso
  • That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.
-Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever
  • Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.
-George Washington
  • Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
-Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Inscription beneath his bust in the Hall of Fame.
  • That a man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
  • That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
-William J.H. Boetcker
  • To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-Teddy Roosevelt, 1918
  • It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin barefoot irreverence to their studies, they are not here to worship what is known but to question it.
-Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (1975)
  • Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but that it makes sense and is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out.
-Vaclav Havel
  • From caring comes courage.
-Lao Tse
  • Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.
-Robert Louis Stevenson
  • When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall – think of it, always.
-Mahatma Gandhi
  • True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Man does not always live up to Humanity, but comes closer by trying.
-David Welton
  • Don’t take the wrong side in an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.
-Baltasar Gracian
  • The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
-Robert Green Ingersoll
  • There are two ways of spreading the light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
-Edith Wharton
  • I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…building a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
-Robert F. Kennedy
  • Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Mead
  • When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-Edmund Burke
  • Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.”
-The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis
  • There are 10 types of people in the world, Those who understand binary, and those who dont.
-Author Unknown
  • Implicit in the term `national defense’ is the notion of defending those values and ideals which set this Nation apart. For almost two centuries, our country has taken singular pride in the democratic ideals enshrined in its Constitution, and the most cherished of those ideals have found expression in the First Amendment. It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties — the freedom of association — which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.
-Chief Justice Earl Warren, United States v. Robel (1967)
  • A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.
-Thomas Jefferson, from a letter of 1798, after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
  • I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
-Thomas Jefferson
  • You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. Yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.
-Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”
  • Go back to your bed, Jonathan Crane. Go to sleep. I have a castle to rebuild, a world to reclaim. But tonight, at least… Tonight humanity will sleep in peace.
-Morpheus, “The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes” by Neil Gaiman
  • Love of Truth is Infectious.
-Terence J. MacSwiney, Principles of Freedom
  • When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart. But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
-Khalil Gibran
  • From time to time we need, as it were, to be “rebound” by consorting with those who are good and strong; otherwise we shall lose a few pages.
-F.W. Nietzsche (1844-1900)
  • “As a breath on glass, –
    As witch-fires that burn,
    The gods and monsters pass,
    Are dust, and return.
    (“The Face of the Skies”)”
― George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror