You Can't Imagine

Generally speaking, I think it's a good idea to spend time in places you can't imagine yourself spending time in. At one time or another, for really no good reason, I have gone into soup kitchens, Baptist churches, porn shops, mortuaries, bingo parlors, Turkish baths. You learn things--typically that you don't know beans about the people there and that most of your assumptions were simplistic, naive, or just plain wrong.

--Mary Roach

Distracting

Death looming around every corner is a distraction from living.

--Eric Francis

Stable to Unstable

Over periods of prolonged prosperity, the economy transits from financial relations that make for a stable system to financial relations that make for an unstable system.

--Hyman Minsky

The Itch To Destroy

Evil is not so much the work of a few degenerate people or groups of people as it is the result of the indifference and negligence of the many. With spiritual arrogance goes the itch to destroy.

--William Sloane Coffin

Expectations

You must remember, once more, that expectations are the blocks with which you build your reality. There are no exceptions to this rule.

--Seth

No Evil

There is no such thing as evil. There is excess, there is the malignant warping of inner truth and original nature; but there is no evil. To call a thing or a person evil is to give it a power that it does not, and never will have.

--Brian Donohue

Rest In Peace

When one god dwells in all living beings, then why do you hate others? Why do you frown at others? Why do you become indignant towards others? Why do you use harsh words? Why do you try to rule and domineer over others? Why do you exploit folly? Is this not sheer ignorance? Get wisdom and rest in peace.

--Sivananda

Long Live

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.

--Robinson Jeffers

Ice Cream

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.

--Thornton Wilder

Success

A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day.

--Andre Maurois

No Number

No number is significant in itself; its only significance is in relation to other numbers.

--Zell Kravinsky

Accept No...

An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted.

--Robert A. Heinlein

Bad Economics

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.

--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Theory

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

--William James

Classy

I like the word "indolence." It makes my laziness seem classy.

--Bern Williams

Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones are hard on bones
Aimed with angry art,
Words can sting like anything
But silence breaks the heart.

--Phyllis McGinley

Manner of Traveling

Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

--Margaret B. Runbeck

Unfit

A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

--The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

It Is Their Right, Their Duty

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

--The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

Incompatible

Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.

--James E. Starrs