.
Hold the course.....
Consider this....
The great minds throughout the centuries have pondered the same questions as you and I. Often, I have found the clearest thoughts not in the lengthy volumes of admittedly great works by the likes of Plato, Descartes, Neitzsche, or I Ching, but rather in their succinct quotations. I view quotations as the condensation of wisdom. They have played an important role in my personal philosophies and I am sharing some of my favorites here. Most mirror the views that I now hold as true. Many have become 'foundation stone' guiding personal principles for me to follow, such as Burke's 'good men over evil'. There are also some here that just gave me pause to think about the world a little differently......
GENERAL WISDOMS
"The capacity to learn is a gift;
The ability to learn is a skill;
The WILLINGNESS to learn is a choice." -Unknown
"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke
"The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it." -John Ruskin 1819-1900
"As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's llife will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad." -Henry David Thoreau
"How like philosophers! Preening themselves for teaching black-and-white thinkers to see shades of gray and forgetting all about the reds and greens and blues and yellows and " -Susan Sparks
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." -George Orwell ...on the importance of police
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger" -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"History is written by the victors." -Machiavelli
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Life of Reason, "Reason in Common Sense," ch. 12 (1905-6)
"The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history." -Hegel (1770-1831)
"A thought which is not independent is a thought only half understood." -Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
"We have to live today by what truth we can get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood." -William James
"We are always the same age inside." -Gertrude Stein
"Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt - particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms." -Will Durant
"Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I exist!) -Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
"I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority." -Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
"I have had my solutions for a long time, but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them." -Karl Friedrich Gauss
"The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do." -Benjamin Disraeli
"Knowledge is power." -Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
"When all else fails, follow the directions." -American Proverb
"To myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself and now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." -Sir Isaac Newton
"Common sense is not so common." -Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life." -Unknown
"What is the first business of one who studies... To part with self conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows." -Epictetus (55-135) Greek Philosopher
"A philosophy is the expression of a man's inner character." -William James
"The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool." -Confucius
"I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
"For me as emperor, my city and fatherland is Rome; but as a man, I belong to the world." -Marcus Aurelius (180 A.D.) Emperor of Rome
"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one.... cities will never have rest from their evils-no, nor the human race." -Plato
"For man, the unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates
"Know thyself." -Socrates
"One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing." -Socrates
"Keep me from the wisdom that does not weep, and the philosophy that does not laugh." -Kahlil Gibran
"The idea that so much suffering can be in vain is intolerable to me, it kept me awake all night: I'm awake now." -Andre Gide
"Philosophy subverts man's satisfaction with himself, exposes custom as a questionable dream, and offers not so much solutions as a different life." -Walter Kaufmann
"If I told you, you would not know; you simply would have been told. Study it thoroughly and I will ask you. You will answer and then you will know." -"Dr. Hartley Baldwin" in Robert Heinlein's novel 'Friday'
"Those who teach, learn." -ASLET motto
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail." -Abraham Maslow
"Philosophy is man's quest for the unity of knowledge: it consists in a perpetual struggle to create the concepts in which the universe can be conceived as a universe and not a multiverse . This attempt stands without rival as the most audacious enterprise in which the mind of man has ever engaged: Here is man, surrounded by the vastness of a universe in which he is only a tiny and perhaps insignificant part - and he wants to understand it" -William Halverson
"One can tell for oneself whether the water is warm or cold." - I Ching
"It's not the bullet that's got my name on it that concerns me; it's all them other ones flyin' around marked 'To Whom It May Concern.'" -Unknown
"He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Nietzche
"It's easy to curb the freedoms of others when you see no immediate impact on your own." -Malcolm Forbes
"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious Things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them." -Mark Twain (1835-1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 20, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)
"The graveyards are full of irreplaceable people." - Unknown
"If space is, it will be in something; for everything that is is in something; and to be in something is to be in space, and so on (ad infinitum). Therefore space does not exist." -Zeno of Elea
"Life is not a problem, so why are you asking for a solution?" -Unkown
"A hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts 'Native' before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance." --Theodore Roosevelt, October 12, 1915
"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus."
False in one, false in all. -Unknown
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Old Indian Saying
HUMOR
"Dulce est desipere in loco. Woe to philosophers who cannot laugh away their wrinkles. I look upon solemnity as a disease." -Voltaire
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -Rich Cook
"Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...." -Carl Zwanzig
"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." -Douglas Adams
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -Albert Einstein
"Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things." -Unknown
"My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed." -Christopher Morley
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to
contact us." -(Calvin and Hobbes) Bill Watterson
ON ARMS AND FREEDOM
"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." -Thomas Jefferson
"It is better to have a government in fear of its people than to have a people in fear of their government." -Unknown
"What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Thomas Jefferson 1787 President of the United States and drafter of the US Constitution
" A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For...no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death" -Thomas Hobbes, 17th Century English Political Philosopher
"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which... historically has proved to be always possible." -Hubert Humphrey, United States Senator
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed." -Noah Webster, Author, An American Dictionary of the English Language
"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -Cesare Beccaria, 18th Century Italian Criminologist
"Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years." -Niccolo Machiavelli, 16th Century Italian Political Theorist
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." -Mahatman Ghandi, Indian Political Leader
"To disarm the people [is] the best and most efficient way to enslave them." -George Mason, American Statesman and Author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
"If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and method of protecting ourselves is morally right." -Cicero, Roman Orator, 1st Century B.C.
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms..." Adolph Hitler, German Dictator
"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." -Adolf Hitler, German Dictator 1935
"Better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned." Increase Mather in a widely cirulated sermon in 1692 that lead to the end of the Salem Witch Trials
"To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic." --Ted Nugent, Rock Star
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is two wolves attempting to have a sheep for dinner and finding a well-informed, well-armed sheep." -Unknown
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." -Plato
ON RELIGION
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." -Bertrand Russell
"Here we are in this wholly fantastic Universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this security is illusory. But I do not like the situation any better than they do. The difference is that I cannot see how the smallest advantage is to be gained from deceiving myself." -Fred Hoyle
"As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it." -Will Durant
"What is the ultimate truth about ourselves? Various answers suggest themselves. We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery - puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pull the strings beneath. But here is one elementary inescapable answer. We are that which asks the question. Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility towards truth is one of its attributes." -Sir Arthur Eddington
"The Academy, founded by Plato in 388 BC was the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. It endured for more than 900 years, until in the year 529 AD, when it was closed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian because, in his eyes, it was a stronghold of paganism." -James Christian, 1986:48
"Most of man's religions and many of his philosophies have concluded that, in the final analysis, life-in-this-world is not worth living. At best it's but a time of troubles to be endured until we can reach something better. Today, that's a conclusion we find difficult to live with." -James Christian
ZORBA: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die, tell me?
SCHOLAR: I don't know.
ZORBA: What's the use of all your damn books? If they don't tell you that, what the hell do they tell you?
SCHOLAR: They tell me about the agony of men who can't answer questions like yours.
-Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." -Voltaire (1694-1778)
"If there were not a Devil, we would have to invent him." -Oscar Wilde
"One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason-but one cannot have both." -"Dr. Hartley Baldwin" in Robert Heinlein's Friday
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing. -William Shakespeare in his play: Macbeth
"I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galielo
"The insight that we have a wider duty toward human beings has never attained the dominance to which it is entitled. Down to our own times it has been undermined by differences of race, religion, and nationality. Man belongs to man." -Albert Schweitzer
"Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime." -Aristotle
"Man is the only creature that spends its entire life trying to become what it already is." -Anonymous
"Personal belief is often a poor substitute for the truth." -Unknown
"Religion is fundamentally a set of ceremonial actions, assembling the group, heightening its emotions, and focusing its members on symbols of their common belongingness." -Emile Durkheim (1895)
"The definition of religion is: the shelter from fear. It is a shelter built upon a foundation of wards and text against the fears of the unknown, of death or ceasing to exist, and of perceived hopelessness. Its roof is the very antitheses of the acquisition of knowledge or the limited scientific truths that would rain in. Its walls have been, and remain, a prison of cruelty, injustice, death and suffering to the entire human race." -Mitch Snider
LEADERSHIP
King Henry V, just before the Battle of Agincourt, speaking to his badly outnumbered assembeled host:
"If we are mark'd to die, we are enow.
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
-Shakespeare's Henry V 1599 (and so then followed that day some 6,000 English defeated 30,000 French, loosing only 300 men and killing 8,000)
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
...keep the blue side up....
|
|
|
|
