Quote Collection

"Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained." John Stuart Mill

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." Dom Helder Camara

"Knows but doesn't know he knows... asleep, wake him up.
Knows he doesn't know... teach him, good man.
Doesn't know he doesn't know... a fool, avoid him.
Knows he knows... wise, follow him... " Anon

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming." Wernher von Braun

"I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's." Mark Twain

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Benjamin Disraeli, cited by Mark Twain

"Don't ever argue with an idiot ...They'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." Anon

"Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are." Chinese Proverb

"To Speak or NOT to Speak
If it is not truthful and not helpful don't say it
If it is Truthful and not helpful don't say it.
If it is Not truthful and helpful don't say it
If it is both Truthful and Helpful ...Wait for the right time" Buddhist Quote

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." Mark Twain

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain

"The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states." Mahatma Gandhi

"Press On! Nothing can take the place of perseverance.
Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistance and determination alone are omnipotent.
This slogan "Press On" has solved, always will solve, the problems of the human race." Calvin Coolidge, 30th U.S. President

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." W. B. Yeats

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." Alvin Toffler

"Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

"I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either." Jack Benny

"Let the beauty we love be what we do." Rumi

"The past is fascinating but it's where to learn from, the future is where we want to live." Unknown to me

"Unfortunately we tend to use History the same way a drunkard uses a light pole . . . More for support than for illumination." Unknown to me

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." Albert Einstein

"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway." Mother Theresa

"Many things in life will catch your eye but few will catch your heart... Pursue those" Anon

"A mind that has been stretched will never return to its original dimension." Albert Einstein

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." Aesop

"I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud" Jung

"Do or do not there is no try." Yoda, Star Wars

"The best things in life are not things." Unknown

"If you cannot be kind, at least have the decency to be vague." Unknown

"Stand facing the sun and the shadows fall behind you." from a school blackboard in Whitby

"Accept me as I am, so that I may learn what I become." Anonymous

"It's OK to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation." Helen Keller

"Be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others; even the dull and ignorant. They, too, have their story." Author unknown - dated 1692.

"The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we appear to be." Socrates

"The only true failure in life is to stop trying." Unknown

"The possibility that we may fail in the struggle should not deter us from supporting a cause we believe to be just." Abraham Lincoln

"The man who moved a mountain is the one who started taking away the small stones." Old Chinese Proverb

"Mistrust all in whom the desire to punish is imperative." Goethe

"If you can't be a good example, you'll have to be a terrible warning." Catherine Aird

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it. This you have the power to revoke." Marcus Aurelius

"We are each of us responsible for the evil we may have prevented." James Martineau

"The caterpillar does not understand the butterfly." Unknown

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Leo Tolstoy

"Experience is the toughest teacher because she gives the test first, and then the lesson." Unknown

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I never take counsel of my fears." General George Patton

"I always knew that one day I would take this road but yesterday I did not know today would be the day." Nagarjuna

"I am still learning." Michelangelo

"An extraordinary person is just an ordinary person doing the right thing." Claud Moutray (Rebecca's Father)

"To be young, really young, takes a very long time." Pablo Picasso

"Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you." Frank Tyger

"The longest day you'll ever have is only 24 hours long." Author unknown

"Ignorance pardons nothing, but explains much." Author unknown

A very practical statement from a committed civil rights activist. When asked if he wasn't discouraged after thirty years of activism to make social change and nothing had yet changed he answered: "What else should I have been doing, playing golf? Social activism is a way of life, not a project." Ralph Kricker

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Theodore Roosevelt

"When prosperity comes, do not use all of it." Confucius (551-479 BC)

"Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem: Dulce est desipere in loco." Horace; 56-8 BC Which translates as: Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: it's good to be silly at the right moment.

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

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." Mark Twain

"Careful. We don't want to learn from this." Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes)

"You either kiss the future or the past goodbye." Ringo Starr

"That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time." John Stuart Mill

"We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot

"Be kind to your friends, without them you'd be a stranger." Al Shock

"If you want to make God laugh tell him your plans." Folk Proverb

"The reward of patience is patience." St. Augustine

"When you run out of red, use blue!" Pablo Picasso on flexibility and imagination

"If there is anything we wish to change in a child, we should first see if it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves." Carl Jung

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Martin Luther King

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." Mahatma Gandhi

"Truth never damages a cause that is just." Mahatma Gandhi

"A 'NO' uttered from the deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'YES' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble." Mahatma Gandhi

"Times will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain, therefore, awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters." Plato

"The only evil is that which lurks within our own hearts. This is where all of our battles should be fought." Mahatma Gandhi

"Janis Joplin may have had a lot of problems, but being heard wasn't one of them." Unknown

"A man may perform astonishing feats and comprehend a vast amount of knowledge, and yet have no understanding of himself. But suffering directs a man to look within. If it succeeds, then there, within him, is the beginning of his learning." Soren Kierkegaard

"A successful person is one who can build a solid foundation out of the bricks life throws at them." Anon

"Be sure your feet are planted in the right place before you decide to stand firm." Anon

"The road to success is full of parking places." Anon

"These times, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"As long as man has even the slightest wish that anything might be this way or that, the pure light of truth cannot enlighten him. For example, for a man who, in his own review of himself, has even the most secret wish that his good qualities might prevail, this wish becomes an illusion and will not allow him true self-knowledge." Rudolf Steiner

"I place myself steadfast into existence, I walk with certainty along life's path. Love I nurture throughout my whole living being. Hope I place in everything I do, And confidence into my thinking. These five will give me life. These five will lead me to my goal." Rudolf Steiner

"Enlightenment is your ego's biggest disappointment." Yoginanda

"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." Soren Kierkegaard

"Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are." Soren Kierkegaard

"I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both." Soren Kierkegaard

"To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him." Soren Kierkegaard

"The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins." Soren Kierkegaard

"Job endured everything — until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient." Soren Kierkegaard

"The truth is always in the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because as a rule the minority is made up of those who actually have an opinion, while the strength of the majority is illusory, formed of that crowd which has no opinion — and which therefore the next moment (when it becomes clear that the minority is the stronger) adopts the latter's opinion, which now is in the majority, i. e. becomes rubbish by having the whole retinue and numerousness on its side, while the truth is again in a new minority." Soren Kierkegaard

"The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you." Soren Kierkegaard

"Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception." Soren Kierkegaard

"Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?" Soren Kierkegaard

"This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith." (pp. 114 - 115) Soren Kierkegaard

People think the world needs a republic, and they think it needs a new social order, and a new religion, but it never occurs to anyone that what the world really needs, confused as it is by much learning, is a new Socrates. (p. 124) Soren Kierkegaard

"When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence." Patton, Remark to his nephew about his copious profanity.

"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." Patton

"May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I sure as hell won't." Patton

"The more I see of Arabs the less I think of them. By having studied them a good deal I have found out the trouble. They are the mixture of all the bad races on earth, and they get worse from west to east, because the eastern ones have had more crosses." Patton From his personal diary

"One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet when well oiled." --Anon

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry." Ernest Hemingway Excerpt from A Farewell to Arms.

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies -- all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes." Aldous Huxley Excerpt from The Doors of Perception.

"Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself." Patton

"The good society is one in which virtue pays." Abraham Maslow

"What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave?" Abraham Maslow

"Laugh at what you hold sacred, and still hold it sacred." Abraham Maslow

"Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it." Gandhi

"Speak only if it improves upon the silence." Gandhi

"If one is able to stop smoking, he may continue, if he is unable to quit, then he must!" Gandhi

"It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another." Gandhi

"In a man to man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine." Erwin Rommel

"Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them. The dumb and lazy ones I give mundane duties. The smart ambitious ones I put on my staff. The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." Erwin Rommel

"Be an example to your men in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don't in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered, and teach your subordinates to be the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide." Erwin Rommel

"Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning." Erwin Rommel

"Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas." Erwin Rommel

"Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, and brains save both." Erwin Rommel

"The hour has come; kill the Hun." Winston Churchill How Churchill said he would end his speech if Germany invaded Britain (John Colville's diary entry for 1941-01-25)

"You might however consider whether you should not unfold as a background the great privilege of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the Executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist." Winston Churchill In a telegram by Churchill from Cairo, Egypt to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison (1943-11-21)

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Winston Churchill Speech in the House of Commons (1947-11-11)

"I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial." Winston Churchill On his appointment as Prime Minister in May of 1940; The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948)

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." Winston Churchill On Sir Stafford Cripps

"I am prepared to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." Winston Churchill On the eve of his 75th birthday.

"Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me— and continues to teach me— strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace." Wernher von Braun.

"For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all." Wernher von Braun. From a letter to the California State board of Education (14 September 1972)

"Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise." Wernher von Braun.

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." Wernher von Braun.

"I always shoot for the sky, but sometimes I hit London." Wernher von Braun. Probably said by Mort Sahl

"The best computer is a man, and it's the only one that can be mass-produced by unskilled labor." Wernher von Braun.

"It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket." Wernher von Braun.

"Man? A self balancing 28-jointed adapter-base biped; an electrochemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries; millions of warning signals, railroad and conveyor systems; crushers and cranes . . . " Buckminster Fuller. (description of man from chapter, The Phantom Captain, Nine Chains to the Moon)

"Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things." Thomas Merton

"Compassion is the ultimate and most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. It is through compassion that a person achieves the highest peak and deepest reach in his or her search for self-fulfillment." Arthur Jersild

"Compassion is not sentiment but is making justice and doing works of mercy. Compassion is not a moral commandment but a flow and overflow of the fullest human and divine energies." Matthew Fox

"The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion, patience, tolerance, humility, forgiveness." Dalai Lama

"When I hear of Schrödinger's cat, I reach for my gun." Stephen Hawking (paraphrasing German playwright and Nazi "Poet Laureate" Hanns Johst's famous phrase "Wenn ich 'Kultur' höre, entsichere ich meinen Browning!" or "When I hear the word 'culture', I release the safety on my Browning," often paraphrased as something like, "When I hear the word 'culture,' I reach for my gun.")

"In fifty words: Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain." T.E. Lawrence

"Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex." T.E. Lawrence

"The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander…" T.E. Lawrence

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster." T.E. Lawrence "Report on Mesopotamia" The Sunday Times (22 August 1920)

"All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!" T.E. Lawrence Letter to Bruce Rogers (20 August 1931)

"To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one's tail." T.E. Lawrence (Letter 1 April 1935)

"An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one, and Salammbo is the classical text-book instance." T.E. Lawrence

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did." T.E. Lawrence

"Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is." T.E. Lawrence

"There could be no honor in sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat." T.E. Lawrence

"I'm re-reading it with a slow deliberate carelessness." T.E. Lawrence

"With two thousand years of examples behind us, we have no excuses when fighting for not fighting well." T.E. Lawrence

"Somehow I can't believe there are any heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C's. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy and the greatest of these is Confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably." Walt Disney

"When we consider a project, we really study it--not just the surface idea, but everything about it. And when we go into that new project, we believe in it all the way. We have confidence in our ability to do it right. And we work hard to do the best possible job." Walt Disney

"The further backward you look, the further forward you can see." Winston Churchill

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Walt Disney

"If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize." Richard Feynman

"On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics." Richard Feynman Statement after an introduction mentioning that he played bongo drums; Messenger Lectures at Cornell University (1964-5).

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." Richard Feynman Rogers' Commission Report into the Challenger Crash Appendix F - Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle (June 1986) Full Report

"I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics." Richard Feynman

"What I cannot create, I do not understand." Richard Feynman On his blackboard at time of death in 1988;

"The first ... has to do with whether a man knows what he is talking about, whether what he says has some basis or not. And my trick that I use is very easy. If you ask him intelligent questions — then he quickly gets stuck. It is like a child asking naive questions. If you ask naive but relevant questions, then almost immediately the person doesn't know the answer, if he is an honest man. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me." Richard Feynman

"Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. Those of us who are not so tall have to choose!" Richard Feynman

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry." Richard Feynman

"What does it mean, to understand? ... I don't know." Richard Feynman

"If that's the world's smartest man, God help us." His mother, Lucille Feynman, after Omni magazine named him the world's smartest man

The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm:
(1) write down the problem;
(2) think very hard;
(3) write down the answer.
Attributed to Murray Gell-Mann

"Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must -- namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival." Noam Chomsky Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992

"If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, "You're an asshole," which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, "That's idiotic," when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job." Noam Chomsky

"If Hitler had been a crook... We're very fortunate in the United States, we've never had a charismatic leader who weren't a gangster. Every one of them was a thug, or a robber, or something. Which is fine, then they don't cause a lot of trouble. If you get one who's honest, like Hitler, then you're in trouble - they just want power." Noam Chomsky

"If you had asked my grandmother whether she is oppressed, she probably wouldn't have understood what you are talking about; that's life. If you'd asked my mother, you'd have found that she resented it, but accepted it, as life. If you'd ask my daughters, they'd tell you to get lost. That reflects hard-won victories for freedom." Noam Chomsky

You're trained to be obedient; you don't have an interesting job; there's no work around for you that's creative; in the cultural environment you're a passive observer of usually pretty tawdry stuff; political and social life are out of your range, they're in the hands of the rich folks. So what's left? Well, one thing that's left is sports -- so you put a lot of the intelligence and the thought and the self-confidence into that. And I suppose that's also one of the basic functions it serves in the society in general: it occupies the population, and keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter." Noam Chomsky

"It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state. Those who choose to disregard this responsibility can justly be accused of complicity in war crimes, which is itself designated as ‘a crime under international law' in the principles of the Charter of Nuremberg." Noam Chomsky Preface to Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on Vietnam, 1971

"If you're not scared or angry at the thought of a human brain being controlled remotely, then it could be this prototype of mine is finally starting to work." - John Alejandro King

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, 'If you were my husband I'd give you poison,' and he said, 'If you were my wife, I'd drink it.'

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.' 'That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.'

"He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

"'A modest little person, with much to be modest about." - Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." Clarence Darrow

"'He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." Abraham Lincoln

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."- Mark Twain

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." - Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend.... if you have one." - George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one." - Winston Churchill, in response.

"I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here." -Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." - John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." - Jack E. Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." - Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." - Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening but this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." George Washington

"The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution." John Adams

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive." Thomas Jefferson

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." James Madison

"National honor is the national property of the highest value." James Monroe

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." John Quincy Adams

"Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error" Andrew Jackson

"It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't." Martin Van Buren

"There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power." William Henry Harrison

"Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette—the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace." John Tyler

"Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the hopes and happiness of the whole human family. " James K Polk

"I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me." Zachary Taylor

"It is not strange … to mistake change for progress." Millard Fillmore

"Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion." Franklin Pierce

"The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there" James Buchanan

"Things may come to those who wait…but only the things left by those who hustle." Abraham Lincoln

"If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrats at the other, all would be well with the country." Andrew Johnson

"There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword." Ulysses S Grant

"Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win." Rutherford B Hayes

"If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it." James Garfield

"Men may die, but the fabric of our free institutions remains unshaken." Chester A Arthur

"A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves." Grover Cleveland

"I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process." Benjamin Harrison

"That's all a man can hope for during his lifetime - to set an example - and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history." William McKinley

"The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything." Theodore Roosevelt

"The world is not going to be saved by legislation." William Howard Taft

"We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this." Woodrow Wilson

"Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little." Warren G Harding

"We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once." Calvin Coolidge

"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die." Herbert Hoover

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today." Franklin D Roosevelt

"I learned that a great leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do and like it" Harry S Truman

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Dwight D Eisenhower

"One person can make a difference and every person should try." John F Kennedy

"Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right." Lyndon B Johnson

"A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits." Richard Nixon

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have." Gerald Ford

"Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease" Jimmy Carter

"There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect." Ronald Reagan

"From now on, any definition of a successful life must include serving others." George Bush

"Sometimes when people are under stress, they hate to think, and it's the time when they most need to think." Bill Clinton

"You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone." George W Bush

"The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety." HL Mencken

ALINSKY's RULES FOR RADICALS
"Personalize it"
Saul Alinsky's rules of power tactics, excerpted from his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals"
1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. Whenever possible go outside the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

"Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
* I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
* I shall fear only God.
* I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
* I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
* I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Robert J. Oppenhiemer quoting Hindu scripture

"Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." - Wu Li

"When de Haviland [sic] perished here the other day it seemed clear to me that he must have reached the speed at which the air resistance balanced the engine power and brought him to a standstill. Then he accelerated, and found out what happens when an irresistible force encounters an immovable obstacle." George Bernard Shaw.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." Samuel Adams

"He was as great as a man can be without morality." Alexis de Tocqueville

"In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships." Alexis de Tocqueville

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

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." - Cicero

"The essence of civilization consists not in the multiplication of wants but in their deliberate and voluntary renunciation" - Gandhi

"Honest men fear neither the light nor the dark." -Thomas Fuller

"We don't need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it." - Donald Horban

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!" Kurt Vonnegut - Mother Night, 1961

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." Kurt Vonnegut - Player Piano, 1952

"How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive." Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969

"The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative." Charles Bukowski - Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews & Encounters 1963-1993, 2003

"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die." Charles Bukowski -The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, 1998

"The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go." Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye, 1982

Kurt Vonnegut created some of the most outrageously memorable novels of our time, such as Cat's Cradle, Breakfast With Champions, and Slaughterhouse Five. His work is a mesh of contradictions: both science fiction and literary, dark and funny, classic and counter-culture, warm-blooded and very cool. And it's all completely unique.
With his customary wisdom and wit, Vonnegut put forth 8 basics of what he calls Creative Writing 101:
Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.
* From the preface to Vonnegut's short story collection Bagombo Snuff Box

"If the future of all human civilization depended on me . . . what would I do? How would I be" Buckminster Fuller.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates

"To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi)." Or, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" - Bishop George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)

"One cannot step twice in the same river." - Heraclitus (ca. 540 - ca. 480 BCE)

"I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned." -Edna St. Vincent Millay

Go Forward With Courage
"When you are in doubt, be still, and wait;
when doubt no longer exists for you, then go forward with courage.
So long as mists envelop you, be still;
be still until the sunlight pours through and dispels the mists
-- as it surely will.
Then act with courage."
Ponca Chief White Eagle (1800's to 1914)

"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain

"The truth shall set you free - but first it'll piss you off." Gloria Steinem

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Ancora Imparo." ("I am still learning.") - Michelangelo, Age 87

"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." Thomas Paine

"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong." Frederick Douglas

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you have to focus on" - GW Bush

"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows. Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." Mark Twain,

"What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof." Christopher Hitchens

"If you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox." Christopher Hitchens On Jerry Falwell

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Delos B. McKown

Zen story on enlightenment:
"One afternoon a student said "Roshi, I don't really understand what's going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I've been doing this for two years now, and the koans don't make any sense, and I don't feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what's going on?"
"Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."
And the student was enlightened.

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to the one who is striking at the root." Thoreau