Thoughts for May 2016

______

back      Index      next

______

  1.  "Educate men without religion and you make them but clever devils." ~ Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington (1769-1852)

"All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called "guessing what was at the other side of the hill"." ~ Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), conversation with John Crocker (4 Sep 1852)

"In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)

"Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth." ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), 'The Phenomenon of Man' (1955)

"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 (1900-1978), 'The God That Failed' (1950)

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind." ~ Joseph Heller (1923-1999), 'Catch 22' (1961)


  2.  "The laws ought to be so framed as to secure the safety of every citizen as much as possible. ... Political liberty does not consist in the notion that a man may do whatever he pleases; liberty is the right to do whatsoever the laws allow.... The equality of the citizens consists in that they should all be subject to the same laws." ~ Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796), 'Proposals for a New Law Code' (1768)

"Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow." ~ Elias Boudinot (1740-1821)

"The great lesson for democracies to learn is for the majority to give to the minority a full, free opportunity to present their side of the case, and then for the minority, having failed to win a majority to their views, gracefully to submit and to recognize the action as that of the entire organization, and cheerfully to assist in carrying it out, until they can secure its repeal." ~ Henry Martyn Robert (1837-1923), 'Parliamentary Law'

"Realists are, as a rule, only men in the rut of routine who are incapable of transcending a narrow circle of antiquated notions." ~ Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)

"Dream and deed are not as different as many think. All the deeds of men are dreams at first, and become dreams in the end." ~ Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)

"Trained and inspired leadership is needed in the troubled world of today. We live in uncertainty and fear. The times call for thinking and straight thinking — one of the goals of true education. Unfortunately, the world so clamors for action that men and women devote little time to thinking. Many believe in second-hand thinking. They find it easier to ascertain and adopt the thoughts of others than to think for themselves." ~ James F. Byrnes (1879-1972)

"There is no better exercise for your heart than reaching down and helping to lift someone up." ~ Bernard Meltzer (1916-1998)


  3.  "There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt." ~ Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)

"The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." ~ Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), 'The Prince' (1513)

"In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check." ~ Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), 'Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius' (1531 (posthumous))

"If your faith is opposed to experience, to human learning and investigation, it is not worth the breath used in giving it expression." ~ E. W. Howe (1853-1937)

"America is a great country. It has many shortcomings, many social inequalities, and it’s tragic that the problem of the blacks wasn’t solved fifty or even a hundred years ago, but it’s still a great country, a country full of opportunities, of freedom! Does it seem nothing to you to be able to say what you like, even against the government, the Establishment?" ~ Golda Meir (1898-1978), Interview with Oriana Fallaci, Ms. magazine (April 1973)

"Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop the plane, you can’t stop the storm, you can’t stop time. So one might as well accept it calmly, wisely." ~ Golda Meir (1898-1978)


  4.  "If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both." ~ Horace Mann (1796-1859)

"Forts, arsenals, garrisons, armies, navies, are means of security and defence, which were invented in half-civilized times and in feudal or despotic countries; but schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications, and if they are dismantled and dilapidated, ignorance and vice will pour in their legions through every breach." ~ Horace Mann (1796-1859), The Common School Journal, Vol. III, No. 17 (1 Sep 1841)

"A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering cold iron." ~ Horace Mann (1796-1859)

"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 (1902-2002)

"Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity." ~ W. Clement Stone (1902-2002)

"A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible "lifestyles" turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind." ~ George Will (b. 1941)

"We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge." ~ George Will (b. 1941)


  5.  "God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners." ~ Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke." ~ Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), 'Either/Or: A Fragment of Life' (1843)

"Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice flowers on the window panes, which vanish with the warmth." ~ Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), journal entry (1836)

"A man's character is most evident by how he treats those who are not in a position either to retaliate or reciprocate." ~ Paul Eldridge (1888-1982), 'Lanterns in the Night' (1948)

"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 (1890-1957)

"Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries." ~ Christopher Morley (1890-1957), 'The Haunted Bookshop' (1919)

"Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have." ~ Louis E. Boone (1941-2005)


  6.  "Every people should be the originators of their own destiny, the projectors of their own schemes, and creators of the events that lead to their destiny - the consummation of their own desires." ~ Martin Delany (1812-1885)

"The library, I believe, is the last of our public institutions to which you can go without credentials. You don't even need the sticker on your windshield that you need to get into the public beach. All you need is the willingness to read." ~ Harry Golden (1902-1981)

"Reading is a joy, but not an unalloyed joy. Books do not make life easier or more simple, but harder and more interesting. Reading is a partnership. Like any partnership, you get as much out of it as you put into it. Some partnerships are profitable, some just dead horses." ~ Harry Golden (1902-1981), 'So What Else is New?' (1964)

"If civilization ever achieves a higher standard of what constitutes normality, it will have been the neurotic who led the way." ~ Nancy Hale (1908-1988), 'Heaven and Hardpan Farm' (1957)

"To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can have." ~ Theodore H. White (1915-1986)

"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in. And how many want out." ~ Tony Blair (b. 1953)

"This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and we, the democracies of this world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world." ~ Tony Blair (11 Sep 2001)


  7.  "Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities." ~ David Hume (1711-1776)

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." ~ David Hume (1711-1776)

"The mind can only create errors. Truths are not created, they exist; one can only see them, disentangle them, discover them, and expose them." ~ Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

"Misery is almost always the result of thinking." ~ Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

"Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them." ~ Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

"This incessant creation of restrictive laws and regulations, surrounding the pettiest actions of existence with the most complicated formalities, inevitably has for its result the confining within narrower and narrower limits of the sphere in which the citizen may move freely. Victims of the delusion that equality and liberty are the better assured by the multiplication of laws, nations daily consent to put up with trammels increasingly burdensome. They do not accept this legislation with impunity. Accustomed to put up with every yoke, they soon end by desiring servitude, and lose all spontaneousness and energy. They are then no more than vain shadows, passive, unresisting and powerless automata." ~ Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), 'The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind' (1895)

"One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it." ~ Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), 'Opinions And Beliefs' (1911)

"God is the Old Repair Man,
When we are junk in Nature's storehouse he takes us apart.
What is good he lays aside; he might use it some day.
What has decayed he buries in six feet of sod to nurture the weeds.
Those we leave behind moisten the sod with their tears;
But their eyes are blind as to where he has placed the good."
~ Fenton Johnson (1888-1958), 'The Old Repair Man' (1949)


  8.  "Anger may repast with thee for an hour, but not repose for a night; the continuance of anger is hatred, the continuance of hatred turns malice." ~ Francis Quarles (1592-1644)

"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom." ~ Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), 'The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire' (1776)

"A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity." ~ Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), 'The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire' (1776)

"Being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break." ~ Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)

"No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected." ~ Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), Speech to a joint session of the US Congress (12 March 1947), outlining what became known as The Truman Doctrine.

"America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." ~ Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979), 'A Plea For Intolerance' (1931)

"Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility." ~ Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979), 'Those Mysterious Priests' (1974)


  9.  "The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." ~ J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), 'The Little Minister' (1891)

"A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting." ~ J. M. Barrie (1860-1937), 'To the Five — A Dedication' in 'Peter Pan' (1902)

"I always have to dream up there against the stars. If I don't dream I will make it, I won't even get close." ~ Henry J. Kaiser (1882-1967)

"I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am." ~ Henry J. Kaiser (1882-1967)

"Our firmest convictions are apt to be the most suspect, they mark our limitations and our bounds. Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries." ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)

"We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it." ~ Gregory Bateson (1904-1980)

"Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money." ~ Gregory Bateson (1904-1980)


10.  "Everywhere the strong have made the laws and oppressed the weak; and, if they have sometimes consulted the interests of society, they have always forgotten those of humanity." ~ Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne (1727-1781)

"Morality in the general is well enough known by men, but the particular refinements of virtue are unknown by most persons; thus the majority of parents, without knowing it and without intending it, give very bad examples to their children." ~ Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne (1727-1781)

"Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong." ~ James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838-1922)

"Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo." ~ Karl Barth (1886-1968)

"The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine. The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men." ~ Karl Barth (1886-1968)

"Reason sees the small and the larger but not the large. It sees the preliminary, but not the final, the derived but not the original, the complex but not the simple. It sees what is human but not what is divine. We shall hardly be taught this fact by men." ~ Karl Barth (1886-1968)

"Basic writing ability is not enough. A would-be novelist must also observe what I call the five 'Ds': D for desire — the desire to want to write that novel more than anything else; D for drive — the drive to get started; D for determination — the will to continue whatever the stumbling blocks and difficulties encountered on the way; D for discipline — the discipline to write every day, whatever your mood; D for dedication to the project until the very last page is finished. Finally, there is a sixth D — to avoid! This is for distractions — perhaps the most important D of all, the enemy of all writers, whether would-be or proven." ~ Barbara Taylor Bradford (b. 1933)


11.  "If the golden gate of preferment is not usually opened to men of real merit, persons of no worth have entered it in a most extraordinary manner." ~ Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848)

"Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force." ~ Irving Berlin (1888-1989)

"There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost." ~ Martha Graham (1894-1991)

"The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant." ~ Salvador Dali (1904-1989)

"It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn't get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man." ~ Richard Feynman (1918-1988)

"No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race." ~ Richard Feynman (1918-1988)


12.  "Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that." ~ Jean Babtiste Henri Lacordaire (1802-1861)

"Real excellence and humility are consequently not incompatible one with the other; on the contrary, they are twin sisters." ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire (1802-1861), 'Lacordaire's Letters to Young Men' (1865)

"You must live with people to know their problems, and live with God in order to solve them." ~ P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921)

"Our personal faults are much too small to scan; this makes it easier to criticize the faults of others which seem double size." ~ Otto Frank (1889-1980)

"If you have a great ambition, take as big a step as possible in the direction of fulfilling it. The step may only be a tiny one, but trust that it may be the largest one possible for now." ~ Mildred McAfee (1900-1994)

"It is in our nature to travel into our past, hoping thereby to illuminate the darkness that bedevils the present." ~ Farley Mowat (1921-2014)

"But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow." ~ George Carlin (1937-2008)

"Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life." ~ Michael Ignatieff, 'True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada' (2009)


13.  "In a free country there is much clamor with little suffering; in a despotic state there is little complaint, but much grievance." ~ Lazare Carnot (1753-1823)

"One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully." ~ Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900)

"The child destined to be a writer is vulnerable to every wind that blows. Now warm, now chill, next joyous, then despairing, the essence of his nature is to escape the atmosphere about him, no matter how stable, even loving. No ties, no binding chains, save those he forges for himself." ~ Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989),'The Loving Spirit' (1931)

"The silence that I had always taken for sympathy and regret was a silence born of shame and embarrassment. It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth." ~ Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989), 'Rebecca' (1938)

"We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost." ~ Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989), 'Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer' (1977)

"The country of the aged is a land few people think very hard and seriously about before the time of life when they sense that they're arriving there. Somehow, throughout much of life, being old seems to be something that happens to other people." ~ Maggie Scarf (b. 1932), 'Unfinished Business: Pressure Points in the Lives of Women' (1980)

"Many years ago, but not so long ago, there were those who said, 'Well, you have three strikes against you: You're Black, you're blind and you're poor.' But God said to me, 'I will make you rich in the spirit of inspiration, to inspire others as well as create music to encourage the world to a place of oneness and hope and positivity.' I believed Him and not them." ~ Stevie Wonder (b. 1950), Accepting honorary Doctor of Music degree at University of Alabama at Birmingham (1996)


14.  "There is no greater fool than he who thinks himself wise; no one wiser than he who suspects he is a fool." ~ Margaret of Valois (1553-1615)

"We are always more disposed to laugh at nonsense than at genuine wit; because the nonsense is more agreeable to us, being more conformable to our own natures: fools love folly, and wise men wisdom." ~ Margaret of Valois (1553-1615)

"Hypocrites are wicked: they hide their defects with so much care, that their hearts are poisoned by them." ~ Margaret of Valois (1553-1615)

"All the duties of religion are eminently solemn and venerable in the eyes of children. But none will so strongly prove the sincerity of the parent; none so powerfully awaken the reverence of the child; none so happily recommend the instruction he receives, as family devotions, particularly those in which petitions for the children occupy a distinguished place." ~ Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)

"Education ought everywhere to be religious education. Parents are bound to employ no instructors who will instruct their children religiously. To commit children to the care of irreligious persons is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves." ~ Timothy Dwight (1752-1817)

"A magazine editor recently asked me to sit down on my 40th birthday and write an article on the most important things I had learned in my first 40 years. I told him that the chief thing I had learned was that the copybook maxims are true, but that too many people forget this once they go out into the heat and hustle and bustle of the battle of life and only realize their truth once one foot is beginning to slip into the grave. The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure." ~ B.C. Forbes (1880-1954)

"A nation's economic salvation does not lie in the amount of money its rich inhabitants can squander recklessly. A nation's economic salvation lies in the amount of money its inhabitants can save and invest after providing themselves with all the necessaries and all the reasonable comforts of life." ~ B.C. Forbes (1880-1954)


15.  "Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set in extremes." ~ Klemens von Metternich (1772-1859)

"If we walk far enough, we shall sometime come to someplace." ~ L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), Dorothy in 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' (1900)

"A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it." ~ L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), Introduction to 'The Lost Princess of Oz' (1917)

"As the years pass, and we look back on something which, at the time, seemed unbelievably discouraging and unfair, we come to realize that, after all, God was at all times on our side. The eventual outcome was, we discover, by far the best solution for us, and what we thought should have been to our best advantage, would in reality have been quite detrimental." ~ L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), Letter to his eldest son (1918)

"The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own — even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being." ~ Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), 'Ship of Fools' (1962)

"The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927 — there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused." ~ Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), 'The Never-Ending Wrong' (1977)

"If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle wiht the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expected or hoped to see than on what was really there." ~ Madeleine Albright (b. 1937)


16.  "I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue." ~ William H. Seward (1801-1872), Speech in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, NY (25 Oct 1858)

"As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity." ~ William H. Seward (1801-1872), Speech in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, NY (25 Oct 1858)

"I would say that the study of history is that which gives man the greatest optimism, for if man were not destined by his Maker to go on until the Kingdom of Heaven is attained, man would have been extinguished long ago by reason of all man's mistakes and frailties." ~ Douglas Southall Freeman (1886-1953)

"Tom Paine was a great American visionary. His book, Common Sense, sold a couple of hundred thousand copies in a population of four or five million. That means it was a best seller for years. People were thoughtful then. Hope is one thing. But you need to have hope with thought." ~ Studs Terkel (1912-2008)

"I call myself a radical conservative. What's that? Well, let's analyze it. Go to the dictionary. Radical: One who gets to the roots of things. And I'm a conservative because I want to conserve the green of the grass, the potability of drinking water, the first amendment of the Constitution and whatever sanity we have left." ~ Studs Terkel (1912-2008)

"We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be." ~ Studs Terkel (1912-2008)

"Perhaps the most devastating and damaging thing that can happen to someone is to fail to fulfill his potential. A kind of gnawing emptiness, longing, frustration, and displaced anger overwhelms people when this occurs. Whether the anger is turned inward on the self, or outward towards others, dreadful destruction results." ~ Edward T. Hall (1914-2009)


17.  "Through the centuries, men of law have been persistently concerned with the resolution of disputes in ways that enable society to achieve its goals with a minimum of force and maximum of reason." ~ Archibald Cox (1912-2004)

"I confess that I cannot understand how we can plot, lie, cheat and commit murder abroad and remain humane, honorable, trustworthy and trusted at home." ~ Archibald Cox (1912-2004)

"A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist." ~ Stewart Alsop (1914-1974), 'Stay of Execution' (1973)

"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do.... The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws." ~ Alan Kay (b. 1940), meeting at PARC (1971)

"Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower." ~ Alan Kay (b. 1940)

"I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself." ~ Peter Hoeg (b. 1957)

"Allowances can always be made for your friends to disagree with you. Disagreement, vehement disagreement, is healthy. Debate is impossible without it. Evil does not question itself. Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken." ~ Craig Ferguson (b. 1962), 'Between the Bridge and the River' (2006)


18.  "When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back." ~ Omar Khayyam (1048-1131)

"Diversity of worship has divided the human race into seventy-two nations. From among all their dogmas, I have selected one, Divine Love." ~ Omar Khayyam (1048-1131)

"Fort Jessup, La., June 30, 1845. Orders came last evening by express from Washington City directing General [Zachary] Taylor to move without any delay to some point on the coast near the Sabine or elsewhere, and as soon as he shall hear of the acceptance by the Texas convention of the annexation resolutions of our Congress he is immediately to proceed with his whole command to the extreme western border of Texas and take up a position on the banks of or near the Rio Grande, and he is to expel any armed force of Mexicans who may cross that river. [William W. S.] Bliss read the orders to me last evening hastily at tattoo. I have scarcely slept a wink, thinking of the needful preparations. I am now noting [writing] at reveille by candlelight and waiting the signal for muster.... Violence leads to violence, and if this movement of ours does not lead to others and bloodshed, I am much mistaken...." ~ Ethan Allen Hitchcock (1798-1870), diary entry

"29th Aug. Received last evening... a letter from Captain Casey and a map of Texas from the Quarter-master-General's office, the latter being the one prepared by Lieutenant Emory; but it has added to it a distinct boundary mark to the Rio Grande. Our people ought to be damned for their impudent arrogance and domineering presumption! It is enough to make atheists of us all to see such wickedness in the world, whether punished or unpunished...." ~ Ethan Allen Hitchcock (1798-1870), diary entry

"A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase." ~ Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life." ~ Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"It is the height of absurdity to sow little but weeds in the first half of one's lifetime and expect to harvest a valuable crop in the second half." ~ Percy Johnston (1930-1993)


19.  "All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny." ~ Anna Brownell Jameson (1794-1860)

"If my heart can become pure and simple like that of a child, I think there probably can be no greater happiness than this." ~ Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945)

"The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything, or nothing." ~ Nancy Astor (1879-1964)

"Remember that the storm is a good opportunity for the pine and the cypress to show their strength and their stability." ~ Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)

"A visitor from Mars could easily pick out civilized nations. They have the best implements of war." ~ Herbert V. Prochnow (1897-1998)

"Religion can no more be equated with what goes on in churches than education can be reduced to what happens in schools or health care restricted to what doctors do to patients in clinics. The vast majority of healing and learning goes on among parents and children and families and friends, far from the portals of any school or hospital. The same is true for religion. It is going on around us all the time. Religion is larger and more pervasive than churches." ~ Harvey Cox (b. 1929)

"A myth is a fixed way of looking at the world which cannot be destroyed because, looked at through the myth, all evidence supports the myth." ~ Edward de Bono (b. 1933)


20.  "Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think." ~ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"To think that because those who wield power in society wield in the end that of government, therefore it is of no use to attempt to influence the constitution of the government by acting on opinion, is to forget that opinion is itself one of the greatest active social forces. One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests." ~ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse." ~ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"The very corner-stone of an education intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth: and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead, even though it should conduct the pupil to opinions diametrically opposite to those of his teachers." ~ John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies." ~ Moshe Dayan (1915-1981)

"We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying.... It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness." ~ Moshe Dayan (1915-1981)


21.  "I shall let the little I have learnt go forth into the day in order that someone better than I may guess the truth, and in his work may prove and rebuke my error. At this I shall rejoice that I was yet a cause whereby such truth has come to light." ~ Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)

"Help us to recognize your voice, help us not to be allured by the madness of the world, so that we may never fall away from you, O Lord Jesus Christ." ~ Albrecht Durer (1471-1528)

"Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples." ~ Alexander Pope (1688-1744), 'Thoughts on Various Subjects' (1727)

'He who tells a lie, is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one." ~ Alexander Pope (1688-1744), 'Thoughts on Various Subjects' (1727)

"It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out." ~ Alexander Pope (1688-1744), 'Thoughts on Various Subjects' (1727)

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday." ~ Alexander Pope (1688-1744), 'Thoughts on Various Subjects' (1727)

"I believe in the power of great art to transcend geographical boundaries, political differences and even the restrictions of time." ~ Armand Hammer (1898-1990)


22.  "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), 'The Sign of Four' (1890)

"The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time." ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), "Stark Munro Letters", 'The Idler' magazine (1895)

"The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished." ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), 'The Boer War' (1902)

"The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded." ~ Vance Packard (1914-1996), 'The People Shapers' (1977)

"Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention. The seagull may intend to fly away, may decide to do so, may talk with the other seagulls about how wonderful it is to fly, but until the seagull flaps his wings and takes to the air, he is still on the dock." ~ Andy Andrews (b. 1959), 'The Noticer' (2009)

"Your time on this earth is a gift to be used wisely. Don't squander your words or your thoughts. Consider that even the simplest actions you take for your lives matter beyond measure, and they matter forever." ~ Andy Andrews (b. 1959), 'The Noticer' (2009)

"When faced with a decision, many people say they are waiting for God. But I understand, in most cases, God is waiting for me." ~ Andy Andrews (b. 1959)


23.  "We doubt not the destiny of our country [America] — that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points." ~ Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

"Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all." ~ Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)

"It seems clear that the Allies are outclassed on mechanical equipment, and it is foolish to talk about modernizing their Armies in times like these, they ought to have thought of that five years ago. There is no excuse for them not thinking of that except for the unintelligent, in fact, stupid, narrow-minded and selfish leadership which the democracies of the world are cursed with… But when some other system develops stronger leadership, works hard and long, and intelligently and aggressively - which are good traits - and, superimposed upon that, develops the instinct of a racketeer, there is nothing for the democracies to do but fold up. And that is about what it looks as if they are going to do." ~ Alfred P. Sloan (1875-1960) (June 1940)

"Some have an idea that the reason we in this country discard things so readily is because we have so much. The facts are exactly opposite — the reason we have so much is simply because we discard things so readily. We replace the old in return for something that will serve us better." ~ Alfred P. Sloan (1875-1960)

"Does that make sense to you? Letting the bad guys know that we can eavesdrop on them, they don't know that? I think one of the revealing facts about the NSA [wiretapping] case, if you take the government on the face value, is the extent to which they are underestimating the enemy, which is not a good thing if you want to defeat the enemy." ~ Dana Priest (b. 1957), Interview with 'Frontline', (April 2006)

"Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." ~ Mitch Albom (b. 1958), character Ruby in 'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' (2003)


24.  "What it is our duty to do we must do because it is right, not because any one can demand it of us." ~ William Whewell (1794-1866)

"Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth." ~ William Whewell (1794-1866), 'Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England', Lecture 7 (1852)

"It is the refutation alike of communism and socialism that they thwart the instinct of expansion; that they substitute for individual energy the energy of the government; that they substitute for human personality the blind, mechanical power of the State. The one system, as the other, marks the end of individualism. The one system, as the other, would make each man the image of his neighbor. The one system, as the other, would hold back the progressive, and, by uniformity of reward, gain uniformity of type. I can look forward to no blissful prospect for a race of men that, under the dominion of the State, at the cost of all freedom of action, at the cost, indeed, of their own true selves, shall enjoy, if one will, a fair abundance of the material blessings of life. … Into that prison of socialism, with broken enterprise and broken energy, as serfs under the mastery of the State, while human personality is preferred to unreasoning mechanism, mankind must hesitate to step." ~ Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870-1938) Commencement address at Columbia College (1889)

"God is not a cosmic bell-boy for whom we can press a button to get things done." ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), 'As I See Religion' (1932)

"No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. One of the widest gaps in human experience is the gap between what we say we want to be and our willingness to discipline ourselves to get there." ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), 'Living Under Tension' (1941)

"He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles." ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)


25.  "The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself." ~ Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Innocent amusements are such as excite moderately, and such as produce a cheerful frame of mind, not boisterous mirth; such as refresh, instead of exhausting, the system; such as recur frequently, rather than continue long; such as send us back to our daily duties invigorated in body and spirit; such as we can partake of in the presence and society of respectable friends; such as consist with and are favorable to a grateful piety; such as are chastened by self-respect, and are accompanied with the consciousness that life has a higher end than to be amused." ~ William Henry Channing (1810-1884)

"When people are decent, things work out for everybody. That has been my theory all through life. If you’re making money, let the other fellow make it too. If somebody’s getting hurt, it’s bad, but if you can work a thing out so that everybody profits that’s the ideal business." ~ Bennett Cerf (1898-1971)

"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 (1917-2015)

"The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet." ~ Theodore Hesburgh (1917-2015)

26.  "History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been." ~ Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896)

"Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead; therein lies the whole art of pleasing. Everybody knows it, and everyone forgets it." ~ Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896)

"We must always look to the future. Tomorrow - the time that gives a man just one more chance - is one of the many things that I feel are wonderful in life. So's a good horse under you. Or the only campfire for miles around. Or a quiet night and a nice soft hunk of ground to sleep on. A mother meeting her first-born. The sound of a kid calling you dad for the first time. There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday." ~ John Wayne (1907-1979)

"Richard Nixon and I have had a long acquaintance. I respected him as a goodly man - winning or losing - over the years, and I think he should be standing in the crowning glory today for his accomplishments. Instead, they've chosen to blame him for the gradual growth of hypocrisy and individual ambition that have made our political system distasteful to the public." ~ John Wayne (1907-1979) (Dec 1973)

"Language is a window through which we look at the world. A growing number of people have begun to wonder if our window on reality has a glass that distorts our view. If language reflects culture and in turn influences culture, could it be that the window through which we see life is marked by cracks, smudges, blind spot, and filters?" ~ Richard Lederer (b. 1938), 'The Miracle of Language' (1991)

"I don't believe anyone of us has a monopoly on wisdom and ideas — we all have ideas and a vision of how things can be better." ~ Jeremy Corbyn (b. 1949), speech to British Labour Party Convention (29 Sep 2015)


27.  "A life in which conduct does not fairly well accord with principles is a silly life; and that conduct can only be made to accord with principles by means of daily examination, reflection, and resolution." ~ Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)

"Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labour is immense." ~ Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), 'How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day' (1910)

"When we long for a life without difficulties, remind us that diamonds are made under pressure and oaks grow strong in contrary winds." ~ Peter Marshall (1902-1949)

"May we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please but as the opportunity to do what is right." ~ Peter Marshall (1902-1949)

"Most of us know perfectly well what we ought to do; our trouble is that we don't want to do it." ~ Peter Marshall (1902-1949)

"A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood." ~ Rachel Carson (1907-1964), 'The Sense of Wonder' (1965)

"It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life - the sick, the needy and the handicapped." ~ Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978)

"Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper." ~ Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978)


28.  "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), speech in the House of Commons (18 Nov 1783)

"The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest." ~ Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

"The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world." ~ Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), 'Methods of Study in Natural History' (1863)

"The facts will eventually test all our theories, and they form, after all, the only impartial jury to which we can appeal." ~ Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), 'Geological Sketches' (1870)

"In the 14th Century an anonymous English mystic wrote a book called 'The Cloud of Unknowing', the main theme of which is that God cannot be apprehended by man's intellect and that only love can pierce the 'cloud of unknowing' which lies between Him and us. I feel that in my own life anything I have done of possible worth has happened in spite of my gross, worldly self. I have been no more than the vessel used to convey ideas above my intellectual capacities." ~ Patrick White (1912-1990)

"If you want to change the world, then be your own focus for a celebration of life. Really, fundamentally, at the very core of your being, be thankful you are alive, that you've got this opportunity, with these molecules, at this moment. Be thankful! Be a celebrant! Be thankful that you are alive and then look around to see who else is at the party!" ~ Patch Adams (b. 1945)

"We need each other, deeper than anyone ever dares to admit even to themselves. I think it is a genetic imperative that we huddle together and hold on to each other. There is no question in my mind that there is nothing else in life, really, than friendship." ~ Patch Adams (b. 1945)


29.  "Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation - the last arguments to which kings resort." ~ Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

"You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government." ~ Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

"Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." ~ G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." ~ G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"The riddle of life is simply this. For some mad reason in this mad world of ours, the things which men differ about most are exactly the things about which they must be got to agree. Men can agree on the fact that the earth goes round the sun. But then it does not matter a dump whether the earth goes around the sun or the Pleiades. But men cannot agree about morals: sex, property, individual rights, fixity and contracts, patriotism, suicide, public habits of health – these are exactly the things that men tend to fight about. And these are exactly the things that must be settled somehow on strict principles." ~ G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgment.... Sainthood is acceptable only in saints." ~ Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912-1981), 'Night and Silence, Who Is Here?' (1963)

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." ~ John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)


30.  "I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop and grow.... I mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of our material, intellectual and moral being — they do not limit us but are the real and immediate conditions of our freedom." ~ Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)

"The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every military State must of necessity become a conquering, invasive State; to survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet. Therefore the modern State must strive to be a huge and powerful State: this is the indispensable precondition for its survival." ~ Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), 'Statism and Anarchy' (1873)

"Wherever our sails have quivered, wherever our keels have ploughed,
We have carried the Flag of Freedom, unfurled it from mast and shroud.
It hath weathered the storm of battle, it guardeth the paths of peace,
And will watch over Right both day and night, till the day and the night shall cease;
And, while there's a chain to shatter, and, while there's a wrong to right,
Its watchword shall be God's gift to man,
``Through Liberty, on to Light!'' "
 ~ Alfred Austin (1835-1913)

"You've got to be taught to hate. You've got to be taught from the time you're six or seven or eight. It's put in your mind. It's handed down, almost like a heirloom, among Christians. They didn't know why they hated us." ~ Harry Bernstein (1910-2011)

"We're not very different from one another, not different at all in fact. We're all just people with the same needs, the same desires, the same feelings. It's a lie about us being different. It's something they cooked up so we'd be fighting one another instead of them, the ones who keep us down and make their fortunes off our labor, the same ones who send us off to war when they get to fighting among themselves over the spoils." ~ Harry Bernstein (1910-2011), 'The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers' (2007)

31.  "After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains." ~ Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

"There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves - and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance." ~ Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

"Joy increases as you give it, and diminishes as you try to keep it for yourself. In giving you will accumulate a deposit of joy greater than you ever believed possible." ~ Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)

"To say the right thing at the right time, keep still most of the time." ~ John W. Roper (1898-1963)

"All human thought proceeds through words, so if words are askew, thought cannot proceed aright." ~ Huston Smith (b. 1919)

"Death is the fairest thing in the world. No one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone — the kind, the cruel, the sinners. Aside from that, there's no fairness on earth." ~ Svetlana Alexievich (b. 1948), 'Voices From Chernobyl' (2006)

"By tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing. Thus people who don't know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll." ~ Lynne Truss (b. 1955), 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero-Toleration Approach to Punctuation' (2003)