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What are the wisest ideas that you've read or imagined lately? What are your thoughts on literature, entertainment, science, exploration, and fantasy? What are the most pithy words of wisdom you've heard?

This painting by Susan Seddon Boulet is "When Grandfather Speaks with Eagles":
Grandfather

Here is a brief list of various texts and images i've been viewing lately:

for fun:
"The Onion"; Kurt Vonnegut: "Timequake", 1997 ; David Sedaris: "Barrel Fever", 1994; Neal Stephenson: "Diamond Age", 1995; Robert A. Heinlein: "I Will Fear No Evil", 1970, "The Number of the Beast", 1980; Ambrose Bierce: "The Devil's Dictionary", 1911; Jon Stewart, et al: "America: The Book", 2004; Frank Herbert: "Dune", 1965.

for reference and educational purposes:
Jamie Oliver: "Happy Days with the Naked Chef", 2002; Random House Webster's "Unabridged Dictionary (Second Edition)", 1998; Dict.org; Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA): "Astronomy Picture of the Day".

for news and commentary:
Bush Watch: "bushwatch.net"; "Conspiracy Digest", real news that connects the dots; "Yahoo! News" [at first glance, Yahoo provides mostly propaganda from the usual sources, but there are many links to foreign news and propaganda, as well as some alternative viewpoints]; Columnist/Cartoonist Ted Rall.

for philosophy and insight:
My favorite philosopher, Celia Green: "aphorisms", and "The Human Evasion"; Kurt Vonnegut: "Fates Worse Than Death", 1991; Eric Ganther: "The Cosmic Tribe Tarot", 1998, with cards illustrated by Stevee Postman; John Gardner: "Grendel", 1971.


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This collection of quotations and quips is organized alphabetically by author. Aphorisms from unknown sources are listed at the end.


Learn as much by writing as by reading.
- Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Acton

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes is his duty, against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.
- Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Acton

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.
- Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Acton

We cannot waste time. We can only waste ourselves.
- George Matthew Adams

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religions in it.
- John Adams

Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same.
- Scott Adams

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.
- Catherine Aird

Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle of liberty is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.
- Dante Alighieri

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
- Isaac Asimov

Political history is far too criminal a subject to be a fit thing to teach children.
- W. H. [Wystan Hugh] Auden

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.
- Lauren Bacall

Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.
- Lucille Ball

"It is sad to grow old, but nice to ripen..."
- Brigette Bardot

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
- Ethel Barrymore

"The most important political step that any gay man or lesbian can take is to come out of the closet. It's been proven that it is easier to hate us and to fear us if you can't see us." -- Amanda Bearse

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
- Arthur Christopher Benson

How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.
- Edward F. Benson

Democracy is not the same thing as justice or human rights or fairness or equal treatment or compassion or anything like that. It doesn't imply them or presuppose them or (necessarily) bring them about. The majority is not always or automatically right, and it's certainly not always fair or merciful or scrupulous. Sometimes laws are better than the popular will - that's one reason laws exist.
-- Ophelia Benson in butterfliesandwheels.com

Some people need to fill their lives with explanations, and they don't care if they are true or not - religions, being the MAJOR example!
- Pontus Berg

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. You can never know what is enough, unless you know what is more than enough."
- William Blake

"It is a known fact that, done properly, housework kills."
- Erma Bombeck

Throw off your worries when you throw off your clothes.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
- William H. Borah

A man gradually identifies himself with the form of his fate; a man is, in the long run, his own circumstances.
- Jorge Luis Borges

The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
- Max Born

It is some compensation for great evils that they enforce great lessons.
- John Christian Bovee

Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
- Dick Brandon

Politicians are swine. You cannot reason with swine. You must hit them on the nose with a stick.
- Bertolt Brecht

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
--Bertolt Brecht

The finest kind of friendship is between people who expect a great deal of each other but never ask it.
- Sylvia Bremer

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
- Ashleigh Brilliant

"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility."
- J.Bronowski, 'The Ascent of Man'

Always tell the truth, not only because it is the decent thing to do, but because it gives you such an advantage over the man who is trying to remember his lies!
- Sam Brookes

"Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive."
-William F. Buckley, Jr.

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
- Carl W. Buechner

There is never a better measure of what a person is than what he does when he's absolutely free to choose.
- William M. Bulger

Try and live your life the way you wish other people would live theirs.
- Raymond Burr

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.
- William Burroughs

What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.
- Ellen Burstyn

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws.
- Sir Richard Francis Burton

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
- James Branch Cabell

That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!
- Calvin

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.
- Truman Capote

In time of war the first casualty is truth.
- Boake Carter

Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.
- Cherie Carter-Scott

For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity.
- Joyce Cary

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
- Dick Cavett

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.
- Julius Caesar

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.
- Coco Chanel

Man is what he believes.
- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Life itself is the proper binge.
- Julia Child

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.
- Chinese Proverb

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
- Agatha Christie

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses.
- Arthur C. Clarke

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."
-Arthur C. Clarke

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
- Georges Clemenceau

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Evils in the journey of life are like the hills which alarm travelers on their road. - Both appear great at a distance, but when we approach them we find they are far less insurmountable than we had conceived.
- Charles Caleb Colton

"It has been calculated that Humanity is eighteen days of age, basing this on the assumption that human beings have existed for one million years, and the earth may be habitable two billion more. An infant that is eighteen days old will cry when it is hungry or in pain, and is able to follow a bright light with its eyes."
-Evan S. Connell

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary, men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
- Joseph Conrad

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.
- James Fenimore Cooper

It is rewarding to find someone you like,
but it is essential to like yourself.
It is quickening to recognize that someone is a good and decent human being,
but it is indispensable to view yourself as acceptable.
It is a delight to discover people who are worthy of respect and admiration and love,
but it is vital to believe yourself deserving of these things.
For you cannot live in someone else. You cannot find yourself in someone else.
You cannot be given a life by someone else.
Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never leave or lose.
To the question of your life, you are the only answer.
To the problems of your life, you are the only solution.
- Jo Coudert

Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.
- Cree Indian Prophecy

"Acceptance is just beyond the capacity of the majority. What we are hoping for is boredom."
- Quentin Crisp

Your own words are the bricks and mortar of the dreams you want to realize. Your words are the greatest power you have. The words you choose and the use establish the life you experience.
- Sonia Croquette

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
- E. E. Cummings

To be nobody but yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
- E. E. Cummings

Social justice is a semantic fraud from the same stable as People's Democracy.
- C. Curran

The only difference between me and a Madman is that I am not mad.
- Salvador Dali

If life doesn't offer a game worth playing, then invent a new one.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo

There is no such thing as justice - in or out of court.
- Clarence Darrow

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
- Clarence Darrow

The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
- Charles Darwin

Without speculation there is no good and original observation.
- Charles Darwin

"Know what you believe and why you believe it, for if you do not, you may rest assured that some belief-- and probably not a very credible one-- will claim you."
--Robertson Davies

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
- Leonardo Da Vinci

There goes the famous good time that was had by all.
- Bette Davis

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
- Bette Davis

With one wish we wake the will within wisdom
With one will we wish the wisdom within waking
Woken, wishing, willing
--The Dead Can Dance: "Song of Sophia"

People are always talking about tradition, but they forget we have a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and stupidity, that there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence and crudity.
- Hugo Demartini

Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.
- W.Edwards Deming

My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.
- Democritus

"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power."
- Rene Descartes

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- René Descartes

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
- Charles Dickens

The whole difference between construction and creation is this; that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.
- Charles Dickens

To a young heart, everything is fun.
- Charles Dickens

I scarcely know where to begin, but love is always a safe place.
- Emily Dickinson

Who are a free people? Not those over whom government is reasonably exercised, but those who live under a government so constitutionally checked and controlled that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised.
- John Dickinson

I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out.
- Denis Diderot

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.
- Denis Diderot

There is only one step from fanaticism to barbarism.
- Denis Diderot

Only passions, great passions can elevate the soul to great things.
- Denis Diderot

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
- Denis Diderot

People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things... Character --- the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life --- is the source from which self-respect springs.
- Joan Didion

The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better.
- Edgar W. Dijkstra

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
- Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

The act of contemplation creates the thing contemplated.
- Isaac D'Israeli

Sir, more than kisses, letters mingle souls. For, thus friends absent speak.
- John Donne

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.
- Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter F. Drucker

He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
- William Drummond

There are only two roads, victory for the working class, freedom, or victory for the fascists which means tyranny. Both combatants know what's in store for the loser. We are ready to end fascism once and for all, even in spite of the Republican government.
- Buenaventura Durruti

No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.
- Buenaventura Durruti

It is we the workers who built these palaces and cities here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones! We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.
- Buenaventura Durruti

The Only Church That Illuminates Is A Burning Church.
- Buenaventura Durruti

One is born into a herd of buffaloes and must be glad if one is not trampled under foot before one's time.
- Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
- Albert Einstein

To my mind, to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
- Albert Einstein

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
- Albert Einstein

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
- Albert Einstein

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
- Albert Einstein

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
- Epicurus

I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.
- Epicurus

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
- M. C. Escher

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
- Bergen Evans

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.
- Douglas Everett

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.
- William Feather

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
- Charles Fisher

"A child of my own! Oh, no, no, no! Let my flesh perish with me, and let me not transmit to anyone the boredom and ignominiousness of life."
- Gustav Flaubert

"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois."
- Gustave Flaubert

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid."
- Benjamin Franklin

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
- Benjamin Franklin

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
- Sigmund Freud

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
- David Friedman

Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Either man is obsolete or war is.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Don't fight forces; use them.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

A problem adequately stated is a problem well on it's way to being solved.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

"Craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked."
- Thomas Fuller

Just as there must be balance in what a community produces, so there must also be balance in what the community consumes.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

Integrity is what we do, what we say, and what we say we do.
- Don Galer

When I despair...I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it ... always.
- Mahatma Gandhi

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
- Gandhi

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
- Mohandas Ghandi

With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but with tyrants, I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
- William Lloyd Garrison

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
- Theodor Seuss Geisel

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
- Theodor Seuss Geisel

Mankind continues to become gradually less cruel because a few people in every generation keep saying, "This isn't right. It hurts me to see it."
- Joan Gilbert

There is nothing to be learned from history anymore. We're in science fiction now.
- Allen Ginsberg

"I like Homosexuality where the lovers are friends all their lives, and there are many lovers and many friends."
- Allen Ginsberg

We look forward to the time when the power of love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessing of peace.
- William Ewart Gladstone

Why of course the people don't want war... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the 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. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
- Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II

I wish they would only take me as I am.
- Vincent Van Gogh

The most violent element in society is ignorance.
- Emma Goldman

Humor is a universal language.
- Joel Goodman

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
- Goya

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
- Antonio Gramsci

Celia Green - philosopher, psychologist and physicist:
Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.
- Graham Greene

The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
- Alfred Whitney Griswold

The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
- Erwin N. Griswold

When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
- Matt Groening

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
- J. B. S. Haldane

Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
- William Hazlitt

I am free when I am within myself.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
- Robert A. Heinlein

If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
- Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
- Lillian Hellman

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
- Ernest Hemingway

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
- Jimi Hendrix

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase...the human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
- Frank Herbert

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
- Frank Herbert

It is by will alone that I set my mind in motion.
- Mentat Prayer (Frank Herbert)

My basic principle is that you don't make decisions because they are easy; you don't make them because they are cheap; you don't make them because they're popular; you make them because they're right.
- Theodore Hesburgh

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
- Adolph Hitler

An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation... [...] We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland.
- Adoph Hitler, writing about creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany

"Pure sensations can never be in contradiction to nature."
- Joseph Hoffman

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We are in danger of developing a cult of the Common Man, which means a cult of mediocrity.
- Herbert Clark Hoover

Rule your mind or it will rule you.
- Horace

We don't need to increase our goods nearly as much as scaling down our wants. Not wanting some thing is as good as possessing it.
- Donald Horban

I think I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
- Edgar Watson Howe

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.
- Fred Hoyle

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough for some people.
- F.M. Hubbard

It is seldom that any liberty is lost all at once.
- David Hume

Irony might be the only universal constant.
- Kevin Hutchins

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
- Robert Maynard Hutchins

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
- Aldous Huxley

In times of great stress or adversity, it's always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
- Lee Iacocca

The minority is always right.
- Henrik Ibsen

The strongest man upon Earth is he who stands most alone.
- Henrik Ibsen

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
- Henrik Ibsen

All limits are self imposed.
- Icarus

The longest journey we ever make is to our inner world.
- Icelander proverb

At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
- Eric Idle

With love and patience, nothing is impossible.
- Daisaku Ikeda

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.
- Robert G. Ingersoll

"Well, you know what? I'm a polyamorous practitioner of a plethora of debaucheries with polysyllabic Latin names, virtually all of which are considered perversions by 'mainstream' culture. I'm a pervert. You know what else? I think it's cool." -- E. Israel

Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves.
- Italian Proverb

After the game the king and the pawn go in the same box.
- Italian Proverb

Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.
- Harriet Ann Jacobs

The difficulty about all this dying is that you can't tell a fellow anything about it, so where does the fun come in?
- Alice James

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
- Clive James

The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves.
- Dresden James

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." --William James

In that the wisdom of the few becomes available to the many, there is progress in human affairs; without it, the static routine of tradition continues.
- Jospeh Jastrow

Truth is the safest lie.
- Jewish Proverb

Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigourously, more vigourously, and more severely, than by one.
- Andrew Johnson

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

The classroom - not the trench - is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

Kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
- Joseph Joubert

The rational individualist is not the enemy of benevolence or civility, but their truest exemplar.
- David Kelley

The happiness of society is the end of government.
- Walt Kelly

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
- Rudyard Kipling

Even a cursory glance at history should convince one that individual crimes committed for selfish motives play a quite insignificant part in the human tragedy, compared to the numbers massacred in unselfish loyalty to one's tribe, nation, dynasty, church, or political ideology, ad majorem gloriam dei. The emphasis is on unselfish. Excepting a small minority of mercenary or sadistic disposition, wars are not fought for personal gain, but out of loyalty and devotion to king, country or cause. Homicide committed for personal reasons is a statistical rarity in all cultures, including our own. Homicide for unselfish reasons, at the risk of one's own life, is the dominant phenomenon of history.
- Arthur Koestler

The finite is nothing compared to the infinite, but infinite compared to nothing.
- Joshua Krueger

It's not peace I want, not mere contentment. It's boundless joy and ecstasy for me.
- Kugell

Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
- Steve Landesberg

An optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds. A pessimist fears the same may be true.
- Doug Larson

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
- Doug Larson

The pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy.
- D. H. Laurence

I hold that the parentheses are by far the most important parts of a non-business letter.
- D. H. Lawrence

Humility is no substitute for a good personality.
- Fran Lebowitz

If you're going to America, bring your own food.
- Fran Lebowitz

"...if you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would be pretty much left with 'Let's Make A Deal'."
- Fran Lebowitz

Children ask better questions than do adults. "May I have a cookie?" "Why is the sky blue?" "What does a cow say?" are far more likely to elicit a cheerful response than "Where's your manuscript?" "Why haven't you called?" and "Who's your lawyer?""
- Fran Lebowitz

Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money.
- Leon Lederman

A man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
- Ursula K. LeGuin

Love does not just sit there, like a stone; it had to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
- Ursula K. LeGuin

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
- Ursula K. LeGuin

Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not.
- Ursula K. LeGuin

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.
- Ursula K. LeGuin

I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
- Carol Leifer

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.
- John Lennon

When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves.
- Eda LeShan

What you said hurt me very much. I cried all the way to the bank.
- Liberace

It is characteristic of all movements and crusades that the psychopathic element rises to the top.
- Robert Lindner

Moral education, as I understand it, is not about inculcating obedience to law or cultivating self-virtue, it is rather about finding within us an ever-increasing sense of the worth of creation. It is about how we can develop and deepen our intuitive sense of beauty and creativity.
- Andrew Linzey

The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
- Walter Lippmann

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
- Walter Lippmann

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
- Walter Lippmann

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
- John Locke

If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"I've said before: everyone has a right to an informed opinion. During moments of stress, I often take it as my personal duty to retract the foreskin of misconception and apply the wire brush of enlightenment."
- Paul Lord

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
- Sir John Lubbock

There are two words for everything.
- E.V. Lucas

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.
- Martin Luther

The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it. If you can't top it, laugh at it. If you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.
- John Russell Lynes, Jr.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
- Thomas Macaulay

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.
- Charles Mackay

Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Government the real power lies in the majority of the community...
- James Madison

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.
- Maurice Maeterlinck

I will smile at friend and foe alike and make every effort to find, in him or her, a quality to praise, now that I realize the deepest yearning of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
- Og Mandino

My days of whining and complaining about others have come to an end. Nothing is easier than fault finding. All it will do is discolor my personality so that none will want to associate with me. That was my old life. No more.
- Og Mandino

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.
- Orison Sweet Marden

He drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win!
We drew a circle that took him in.
- Edwin Markham

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
- Karl Marx

The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
- Karl Marx

When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.
- George Mason

Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.
- Rollo May

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
- Charlie McCarthy

People don't seem to realize that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune.
- William McFee

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
- George McGovern

The three enemies of the people are monogamy, monotony, and hegemony!
- Terrence McKenna

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.
- Marshall McLuhan

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
- Margaret Mead

The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods.
- Margaret Mead

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does."
- Margaret Mead

Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm.
- Donella Meadows

That is the whole trouble with being a heretic. One usually must think out everything for oneself.
- Aubrey Menan

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy!
- H.L. Mencken

If all mankind were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, then he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
- John Stuart Mill

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
- John Stuart Mill

Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day.
- Arthur Miller

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.
- Henry Miller

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
-- A. A. Milne

There is no truth sure enough to justify persecution.
- John Milton

"...every ethic, no matter how strict an opponent of eudaemonism it may at first appear to be, must somehow clandestinely smuggle the idea of happiness into its system."
- Ludwig von Mises

We should...be able to see that our interest would be best served not by asking the state to promulgate our values but by forbidding the state to promulgate any values at all. If the state can espouse some value that we love, it can, with equal justice, espouse others we do not love.
- Richard Mitchell

When we find ourselves wondering about the meaning of conditions and events, it's always useful to ask, who profits?
- Richard Mitchell

If you cannot be the master of your language, you must be its slave. If you cannot examine your thoughts, you have no choice but to think them, however silly they may be.
- Richard Mitchell

There is no other way to judge the work of a mind except through its words.
- Richard Mitchell

"It's time to lie down and be counted!"
- Mixmaster Morris

"Each time a gay person finds the closet morally acceptable for himself or others, he degrades himself as gay and sinks to the level of abjection dictated for gays by the dominant culture. No gay person with sufficient self-respect and dignity can be required to view himself or other gays in this way."
- Syndicated gay-press columnist and University of Illinois philosophy professor Richard Mohr.

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
- Angela Monet

The most vigilant self-criticism of course is necessary, but the time comes when the artist must tell himself he is good or he will go under.
- Gerald Moor

Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?
- George Moore

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.
- J.Pierpoint Morgan

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.
- Christopher Morley

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
- Christopher Morley

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 be always part of unanimity.
- Christopher Morley

A right without an attendant responsibility is as unreal as a sheet of paper which has only one side.
- Felix Morley

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far less competition.
- Dwight Morrow

Something which we think is impossible now will not be impossible in another decade.
- Constance Baker Motley

"Every great change must expect opposition because it shakes the very foundation of privilege."
- Lucretia Mott

We need a moral philosophy in which the concept of love, so rarely mentioned now by philosophers, can once again be made central.
- Iris Murdoch

The average beast of prey is a decent creature who merely kills for the sake of food or in a fight against an enemy. It is only man who calls killing "sport" and kills for the pleasure of killing; not for food, not for self-defense, but just to satisfy some primitive instinct, once necessary and now perverted.
- Gilbert Murray

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do ... begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"
- W. H. Murray

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
- Edward R. Murrow

I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and mature than most of the broadcast industry's planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence.
- Edward R. Murrow

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow

We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom--what's left of it--but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
- Edward R. Murrow

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. This is no time . . . to keep silent.
- Edward R. Murrow

To some extent, conformity is insanity.
- John Nash

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.
- George Jean Nathan

The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard.
- Gaylord Nelson

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.
- Lord Nelson

"By morality, the individual is taught to become a function of the herd, and ascribe to himself value only as a function.... Morality is the herd instinct in the individual."
- Nietzsche

Every individual is representative of the whole and should be intimately understood, and this would give a far greater understanding of mass movements and sociology.
- Anais Nin

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
- Anais Nin

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
- Anais Nin

The mentality of an army on the march is merely so much delayed adolescence; it remains persistently, incorrigibly and notoriously infantile.
- Albert Jay Nock

The State always moves slowly and grudgingly towards any purpose that accrues to society's advantage, but moves rapidly and with alacrity towards one that accrues to its own advantage; nor does it ever move towards social purposes on its own initiative, but only under heavy pressure, while its motion towards anti-social purposes is self-sprung.
- Albert Jay Nock

It can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime.
- Albert Jay Nock

Art is the difference between seeing and identifying.
- Jean Mary Norman

In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary.
- Kathleen Norris

Violence is unnecessary and costly. Peace is the only way.
- Julius Kambarge Nyerere

The belief that words have a meaning of their own account is a relic of primitive word magic, and it is still a part of the air we breathe in nearly every discussion.
- Charles K. Ogden

Exclusiveness is a characteristic of recent riches, high society, and the skunk.
- O'Malley

There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.
- Robert Oppenheimer

There's only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
- P.J. O'Rourke

There are a thousand forms of evil; there will be a thousand remedies.
- Ovid

My advice is to look out for engineers. They begin with sewing machines and end up with nuclear bombs.
- Marcel Pagnol

Though it be disfigured by many defects, to whom is his own body not dear?
- Panchatantra

All miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.
- Blaise Pascal

Happy is he who bears a god within.
- Louis Pasteur

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
- General George S. Patton, Jr.

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
- Linus Pauling

Science is the search for truth. It is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, not the effort by each nation to get the better of other nations, to do harm to them when it is possible.
- Linus Pauling

He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.
- Charles Peguy

The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas. In times of crises these men need the guidance of some kind of theory; but, being unfamiliar with the field of ideas, they do not know that alternatives to the popular theories are possible. They know only what they have always been taught.
- Leonard Peikoff

Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
- William Penn

Force may make hypocrites but it can never make converts.
- William Penn

I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
- Frederick E. Perl

If you attempt intimacy with another person before you have done the hard work of becoming whole yourself, all relationships become an attempt to complete yourself.
- Leslie Perrot

I love to go down to the schoolyard and watch all the little children jump up and down and run around yelling and screaming... They don't know I'm only using blanks.
- Emo Phillips

"When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather... not kicking and screaming, like his passengers."
- Emo Phillips

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
- Eden Phillpotts

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
- Pablo Picasso

"In any natural history of the human species, language would stand out as the preeminent trait."
- Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die out, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
- Max Planck

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.
- Plato

"You can learn more about a man in an hour of play than a year of conversation."
- Plato, from The Dialogs

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
- Edgar Allan Poe

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
- Edgar Allan Poe

Science is facts. Just as houses are made of stones, so science is made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
- Henri Poincare

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.
- Enrique Jardiel Poncela

One murder makes a villain, millions a hero.
- Beilby Portus

"It was an old, old house, full of cupboards and passages. Some of the walls were four feet thick, and there used to be queer noises inside them, as if there might be a little secret staircase. Certainly there were odd little jagged doorways in the wainscot, and things disappeared at night-- especially cheese, bacon and cooking fat."
- Beatrix Potter

If you would like to live in a community in which you may have pride, then dedicate yourself in a spirit of humility and your responsibilities in that community.
- Herbert Victor Prochnow

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.
- Marcel Proust

All the world is queer save me and thee; and sometimes I think thee a little queer.
- Quaker aphorism

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."
- Vice President Dan Quayle

Take the clouds from your eyes and see me as I really am.
- Don Quixote

I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
- Gilda Radner

There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers.
- Ayn Rand

You can no more win a war that you can win an earthquake.
- Jeanette Rankin

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon

We vote too much. We deliberate too little. We have brought within the scope of the federal jurisdiction a vast number of subjects that do not belong here, but are nevertheless here. What we need to do is to stop passing laws. We have enough laws now to govern the world for the next ten thousand years.
- James Alexander Reed

Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.
- Theodor Reik

Whoever claims that economic competition represents 'survival of the fittest' in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics.
- George Reisman

No matter what a man's past may have been, his future is spotless.
- John R. Rice

If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.
- Cardinal Richelieu

Morality is the weakness of the mind.
- Arthur Rimbaud

From my experience, forgiving is the only way to survive.
- Molly Ringwald

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.
- Tom Robbins

True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.
- Tom Robbins

Trivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on.
- J.M. Roberts

If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.
- Andy Rooney

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"No one can make you feel inferior without your permission"
- Eleanor Roosevelt

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character!
- Theodore Roosevelt

Miscellaneous is always the largest category.
- Joel Rosenberg

Brevity is the soul of etc.
- "Diablo the Satanic Chicken", a.k.a. Jonathan Rosenberg

Apparently, whimsy can be found in the same aisle as paper products. Who knew?
- "Fish", a.k.a. Jonathan Rosenberg

Not knowing any centaurs myself, I can only guess, but I would suspect that they do it one at a time, and at great risk.
- "Toothgnip the Goat", a.k.a. Jonathan Rosenberg

I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.
- Roberto Rossellini

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau

Take the course opposite to custom and you will almost always do well.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau

Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth.
- Rudolph Rummel

Nobody can be trusted with unlimited power. The more power a regime has, the more likely people will be killed. This is a major reason for promoting freedom.
- Rudolph Rummel

Our knowledge and our ability to handle our problems progress through the open conflict of ideas, through the tests of phenomenological adequacy, inner consistency, and practical-moral consequences. Reason may err, but it can be moral. If we must err, let it be on the side of our creativity, our freedom, our betterment.
- Rudolph Rummel

Power kills, absolute power kills absolutely.
- Rudolph Rummel

We have a solution for war. It is to expand the sphere of liberty.
- Rudolph Rummel

How to defeat terrorism?
Don't be terrorized.
Don't let fear rule your life.
Even if you are scared.
- Salman Rushdie

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for example.
- John Ruskin

The main thing needed to make the world happy is intelligence. And this, after all, is an optimistic conclusion, because intelligence is a thing that can be fostered by known methods of education.
- Bertrand Russell

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
- Bertrand Russell

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
- Bertrand Russell

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
- Bertrand Russell

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
- Bertrand Russell

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
- Bertrand Russell

The only posible conclusion the social sciences can draw is: some do, some don't.
- Ernest Rutherford

Never assume the obvious is true.
- William Safire

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
- Carl Sagan

History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power have destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again.
- Carl Sagan

When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.
- Carl Sagan

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
- Carl Sagan

Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I'm an idealist: I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
- Carl Sandburg

It is the business of little minds to shrink.
- Carl Sandburg

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you wake in the morning.
- Carl Sandburg

I glory in this world of men and women, torn with troubles, yet living on to love and laugh through it all.
- Carl Sandburg

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
- Carl Sandburg

Nothing happens unless first a dream.
- Carl Sandburg

When the rich make war it's the poor that die.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

The two worst things we teach our children is that a knowledge of science is nice, but not necessary, and that a knowledge of sex is necessary, but not nice.
- Marilyn vos Savant

Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.
- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

The price for independence is often isolation and solitude.
- Steve Schmidt

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
- Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few stones upon it.
- Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Integrity is not a 90 percent thing, not a 95 percent thing; either you have it or you don't.
- Peter Scotese

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
- John R. Searle

Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.
- David Searls

When you know who you are; when your mission is clear and you burn with the inner fire of unbreakable will; no cold can touch your heart; no deluge can dampen your purpose. You know that you are alive.
- Chief Seattle

There must be more to life than having everything.
- Maurice Sendak

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.
- Seneca

"But release me from my bands/ With the help of your good hands."
- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"

The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it.
- George Bernard Shaw

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

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
- George Bernard Shaw

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.
- Henry Wheeler Shaw

The trouble with me is, I belong to a vanishing race. I'm one of the intellectuals.
- Robert E. Sherwood

If you hear a wise sentence or an apt phrase, commit it to your memory.
- Sir Henry Sidney

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social, and even political.
- Ignazio Silone

Destiny is an invention of the cowardly and the resigned.
- Ignazio Silone

"People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs."
- Y. Silverman

The educated person is someone who knows how to find out what he doesn't know.
- Georg Simmel

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
- B.F. Skinner

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate their subject matters.
- B.F. Skinner

...this is precisely the purpose of censorship- not only to block unwanted views, but to keep people who are unhappy from knowing how many millions of others share their unhappiness; to keep the dormant opposition from awakening to its own developing strength.
- Hedrick Smith

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
- Logan Pearsall Smith

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
- Red Smith

If one reserves the right to find the truth for oneself, one must logically accord the same right to others and also respect them if they arrive at different conclusions.
- John Snelling

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.
- Socrates

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.
- Stephen Spender

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.
- Baruch Spinoza

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
- Gertrude Stein

"Remarks are not literature."
- Gertrude Stein

This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
- John Steinbeck

I find it valid to understand man as an animal before I am prepared to know him as a man.
- John Steinbeck

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
- James Stephens

Politeness is the art of choosing among one's real thoughts.
- Abel Stevens

It's a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
- Simeon Strunsky

When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place, in the right way. But usually, without being aware of it, we try to change something other than ourselves, we try to order things outside us. But it is impossible to organize things if you yourself are not in order. When you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything else will be organized.
- Shunryu Suzuki

Everything is perfect, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
- Shunryu Suzuki

"Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up!"
-- Lily Tomlin

"I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else."
-- Lily Tomlin

Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.
--Arnold Toynbee

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.
--Arnold Toynbee

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.
--Arnold Toynbee

We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.
--Arnold Toynbee
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
--Arnold Toynbee

"It is the mind that makes the body."
--Sojourner Truth

"Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat."
-- Mark Twain

"Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand."
--Mark Twain

"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity."
--Bill Vaughan

"Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."
--Voltaire

"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it."
-- Jane Wagner

"It's better to be looked over than overlooked."
--Mae West

"Some people bring happiness wherever they go. Others, whenever they go."
--Oscar Wilde

"When we think we are experimenting on others, we are really experimenting on ourselves."
--Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
--Oscar Wilde

"We cannot know moderation without having tried both extremes."
--Oscar Wilde

"Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness."
--Oscar Wilde

"Being natural is simply a pose."
--Oscar Wilde

"I kissed each one of them in every part of their bodies, they were all dirty and appealed to me just for that reason."
--Oscar Wilde

"Nothing human disgusts me, unless it is violent or unkind."
-- Tennesee Williams

"Smoking cures weight problems... eventually."
-- Steven Wright

If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing.
- Zimbabwean Proverb

Tact is the great ability to see other people as they think you see them.
- Carl Zuckmayer

aphorisms from anonymous or unknown authors:

... Auntie Em, HATE you, HATE Kansas, taking the dog. Dorothy.

Choice is the engine of our evolution.

"Free your mind and your ass will follow".

"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."

"I love it when morons try to empower themselves by acting even dumber on purpose."

Subvert the Dominant Paradigm

The only people to get even with are those that have helped you.


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Aquarius.