Neither Are You

Do not be daunted
by the enormity
of the world's grief.
Do justly, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated to complete the work,
but neither are you free
to abandon it.
--Pirke Avot 2:21 (Mishnah; the first text of the Jewish oral law)

Legs

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
--Frederick Douglass

Concept

I'm a very hardline, angry atheist. Yet I am fascinated by the concept of devotion.
--Joss Whedon

Share

Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned--I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.
--Frank Zappa

Modesty

I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with "you" in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.
--Christopher Hitchens

Tiny Piece

We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.
--Alan Lightman

Ambiguity

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.
--Pema Chödrön

Ceases

The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for religion.
--Justice Robert Jackson

Community

At its best, the primary achievement and consoling power of religion stems from community--a group of people bound by some commonality or another. We don't need religion--we need each other.
--Tundra New England

Decency

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.
--Christopher Hitchens

Throw Out

The history and purpose of science has been to supplant itself, throw out old paradigms as they reach a crisis and are supplanted by new ones. This never happens in theology.
--Kayle Clark

Exhale

We don't die inhaling, we exhale, we leave it all behind.
--Sam Jaeger

Fix

It's very hard to see us fixing the climate until we fix our democracy.
--Dr. James E. Hansen

Test

The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.
--Robert M. Pirsig

Opinions

It's tempting to believe that computers will be neutral and objective, but algorithms are nothing more than opinions embedded in mathematics.
--Cathy O'Neil

Be

Be obscure clearly.
--E.B. White

Stay

I realized that you're in people's lives for a reason. They want you there. It's important to stay.
--V.

Hardest

It isn't easy, it doesn't count if it's easy, it's the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet.
--Tony Kushner

Grind

Though the mills of God grind slowly.
Yet they grind exceeding small.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Leave

no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what
i've become.
--Warsan Shire

Children

So many children. You don't walk hundreds of miles with babies unless where you are headed is safer than where you are fleeing.
--Leah McElrath

Thanks

Thanks

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--W. S. Merwin

Reach

Cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.
--Maria Popova

Rule of Law

Often I fear it will all come to this, that the rule of law and the rights of men will be destroyed by sectarian mischief and nationalistic recklessness.
--Roger Ebert

Never

Thought I saw an eagle,
But it might have been a vulture.
I never could decide.
--Leonard Cohen

Kindness

If most everything is purely capitalist, a society cannot really invest in gentleness and kindness. The only lesson that people will really learn is that their neighbors and peers, young and old, are commodities.
--Umair Haque

Virtue

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
--Plato

Words

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
--Winston Churchill

Eternity

Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is the dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out.
--Joseph Campbell

Today

Let's lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.
--Stan Lee (1968)

Profound

Religion is a phase a species goes through when it evolves enough intelligence to ask profound questions, but not enough to answer them.
--Bill Flavel

Finding

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is "finding his place in it," while really it is finding its place in him.
--C.S. Lewis

Lurks

In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade.
--Ronald Syme (The Roman Revolution; 1939)

Depend

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.
--Ernest Hemingway

Drop

No drop of water believes that it is to blame for the flood.
--Jan Kriegel

Voters

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt

Repeat

Very often, when leaders repeat things over and over, they are preparing you for when that meme actually emerges in reality.
--Timothy D. Snyder

Reveal

They let themselves weep, for unlike those who think tears indicate weakness they know that they reveal humanity.
--Eliot A. Cohen

Excuse

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Clouds

Carbon dioxide clouds the mind: it directly degrades our ability to think clearly, and we are walling it into our places of education and pumping it into the atmosphere. The crisis of global warming is a crisis of the mind, a crisis of thought, a crisis in our ability to think another way to be. Soon, we shall not be able to think at all.
--James Bridle

Jews

Anti-Semitism is the rumour about the Jews.
--Theodor Adorno

Just Connect

It's not merely that libraries connect us to books. It's that they connect us to one another.
--Chris Bohjalian

Carbon Footprint

The Internet, the primary vector of information about climate change, is increasingly a vector of the problem itself. The world's data centers already have roughly the same carbon footprint as the global aviation industry, even as people continue to speak of "the cloud" as though it were a barely corporeal entity.
--Mark O'Connell

Understand

To understand fascism, you need to understand patriarchy.
--Jason Stanley

Invented

It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his rights.
--Thomas Paine

Enemy

I would suggest that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not.
--Senator Barry Goldwater (1962)

Without

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
--John Adams

Meditation

Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.
--Kurt Vonnegut

Gives

Sometimes life gives by taking away.
--Carrie Fisher

Always

Race is like weather--we only talk about it when it's extreme but it's always there.
--Touré

Fixed Star

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.
--Justice Robert Jackson (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943)

Science

The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
--William Hazlitt (1829)

Worst

The worse thing to happen to God was religion, and the worse thing to happen to religion was man.
--Morgan James Talley

Wisdom

Today's conventional wisdom on conventional wisdom is that conventional wisdom can no longer be trusted.
--Ben Terris

Shortcut

Gratitude is a shortcut to happiness.
--Roko Belic

Paradox

Each of us must learn to live with paradox, or we cannot live peacefully or happily even a single day of our lives. In fact, we must even learn to love paradox, or we will never be wise, forgiving, or possess the patience of good relationships.
--Richard Rohr

Empathy

Hey, trolls that keep asking me why I don't care about legal citizens as much as I do "illegals"--fuck off. My caring knows no bounds. You are literally talking about obligatory lines in the sand that separate us. We are all humans. Stop trying to gerrymander my empathy.
--Alyssa Milano

Attention

Lying is not hard. All it requires is the nerve to say things that aren't true, while remembering that even the people who know us best are rarely paying attention.
--Sarah Miller

Holy

Some people like nothing better than to do a mean thing for a holy reason.
--Robertson Davies

Moral Law

If an individual takes a lenient view of the moral law, he may well have a high opinion of himself and be conceited, because he judges himself by a false standard.
--Immanuel Kant

The Artist

Humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice--all the odious qualities--which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride and envy and greed. And in doing so he enriches the world more than the generous and good, though he may lose his own soul in the process. This is the paradox of artistic achievement.
--Evelyn Waugh

None

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
--William Shakespeare

Forces

There are certain forces within our own national community, composed of men who call themselves American but who would destroy America. They are the forces of dictatorship in our land.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 2, 1940)

I Am

I am a cage, in search of a bird.
--Franz Kafka

Mediocre

There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?
--Senator Roman Hruska (1970, R-Nebraska)

Crushed

The price that we pay
When evil walks the planet
And love is crushed like clay
The master races, the chosen people
The burning temple, the weeping cathedrals
--Paul Simon

Perversion

Trump is a horrible person. Sessions is a horrible person. But, Sessions stands between Trump and Mueller. So, in this opera of demons, Sessions is the one you root for. It's all perversion. Welcome to 2018.
--Charles M. Blow

Hopeful

To be hopeful means to be uncertain about the future, to be tender toward possibilities, to be dedicated to change all the way down to the bottom of your heart.
--Rebecca Solnit

Cannot Accept

If the human race as a whole is to survive, the world must find the way by which men and nations can live together in peace. We cannot accept the doctrine that war must be forever a part of man's destiny.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 2, 1940)

Cure

The cure for loneliness is solitude.
--Marianne Moore

Imagining

There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live.
--Aleksandar Hemon

Indifferent

Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols--it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
--William Hazlitt (1823)

The Stories

The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.
--Rebecca Solnit

Politics

Working with demagogues and autocrats is like working with cancer. You fight it. You cut it out. These aren't political differences, it's deciding if we're going to have politics at all.
--Garry Kasparov

Souls

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
--Thomas Paine (1776)

Audited

Unfortunately, when I haven't seen friends in a while they want to "catch up." "Catching up" is a lot like being audited, as it forces you to account for all the time since you last caught up. Over dinner, friends say things like, "How are you?" The short answer is "Fine." It's short because it ends conversation. Then you have to think of something else to say. The long answer is "Miserable." It's long because they'll want to know why, and then you have to tell them. The medium answer is, "Fine, and you?"
--Iris Smyles

Liberty

The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
--William Hazlitt

Catalyst

Listen: Love won't always be reciprocated. Its goal is not reciprocity, but elevation. Personal and atmospheric elevation. It's the decision to not allow darkness internally and to perpetuate light both internally and externally. Love is a catalyst.
--Bernice King

Lost America

In prison, I fell in love with my country. I had loved her before then, but like most young people, my affection was little more than a simple appreciation for the comforts and privileges most Americans enjoyed and took for granted. It wasn't until I had lost America for a time that I realized how much I loved her.
--John McCain

Forward

If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (November 4, 1938)

Patriotism

What greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?
--Barack Obama

Temporary

We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell.
--Olivia Laing

Obsessive

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
--Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism; 2004)

Meaning

This world is infinitely layered and mysterious. Every day of our lives, we see far more than we can comprehend, and because the failure to comprehend disquiets us, we lie to ourselves about what we see. We want a simple world, but we live in one that is magnificently complex. Rather than acknowledge the exquisite roundness of creation, we take it in thin slices, and we view each slice through tinted, distorting lenses that further diminish its beauty and obscure truths that await recognition. Complexity implies meaning, and we are afraid of meaning.
--Dean Koontz

Betray

For not only do we reveal ourselves with our words, we also betray ourselves.
--Pascal Mercier

Humanity

Imagining the humanity of people other than myself is my responsibility. And yet the root cause of so much grief is our failure to do just that.
--Jennifer Finney Boylan

Crime

Organized religion was the world's first organized crime syndicate. Other benefits besides money and power were keeping women as slaves and breeders; controlling the masses of society with fear and lies; and creating the ultimate boys club.
--JoAnn Black

Experiment

Of all scientific experiments, the experiment of inhabiting consciousness--that is, a singular consciousness--must be the most extraordinary. Yet we take it for granted, we simply drift with "consciousness" as if it were a river with no banks, bed, source, or destination.
--Joyce Carol Oates

Fuck

If you take away the right to say fuck, you take away the right to say fuck the government.
--Lenny Bruce

Good-Faith

The important distinction is not between theists and naturalists; it's between people who care enough about the universe to make a good-faith effort to understand it, and those who fit it into a predetermined box or simply take it for granted.
--Sean Carroll

Wallet

How far down the current presidential line of succession would you have to go before you found someone who'd return your wallet with the cash still inside?
--Jason Roeder

Noted

People overestimate the extent to which their actions and appearance are noted by others.
--Thomas D. Gilovich

Sane

The kind of madness I had was different. It was quiet, and very, very dangerous. It was a madness designed to keep me sane.
--Helen Macdonald

August 6

Here's a basic question we as a species should pose to the 21st century every August 6 (the anniversary of Hiroshima) through 9 (Nagasaki): What if fewer children were killed?
--Sarah Vowell

Obsessive

Fascism is a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
--Robert O. Paxton (2004)

The Press

The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent ANY part of the government from deceiving the people.
--Justice Hugo L. Black

Bible

It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
--Mark Twain

Feature

This whole decoupling of words from truth is set forth as a feature, not a bug.
--Dahlia Lithwick

Literature

Was it only a dream that Literature was once dangerous, that it had the power to awaken and change us?
--Joy Williams

A.I.

That we assume if artificial intelligence gets too smart it will destroy humanity says a lot more about humans than it does machines.
--Corey Mohler

Dumps

Facebook is the equivalent of a massively profitable factory that just dumps all of its waste into the river and never has to pay for the cost to clean it up.
--Chris Hayes

Humanity

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.
--Herman Melville

Fear

Systematic fear is the condition that makes freedom impossible, and it is aroused by the expectation of institutionalized cruelty as by nothing else.
--Judith Shklar

Vast

The universe is vast, humans are tiny, confused, and terrified, and anything that gets you through your day is fine by me.
--David Roberts

Abandoned

For those who have abandoned hope, we'll restore hope and we'll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again!
--Ronald Reagan (nomination acceptance speech, July 17 1980)

His Dog

A man's soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog.
--Charles Doran

More

History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as more tragedy.
--Paul Krugman

No Wavering

I want to move with some intensity, even if slowly, but no wavering or hesitation, toward things that matter to me.
--Grant Petersen

Even I

I was hopeful that I wouldn't see the worst of my fears come true. But it has been worse. I have to tell you, even I did not believe this would happen.
--Hillary Rodham Clinton (June 2018)

Counts

You always think you have more time. Love is the only thing that counts.
--Chris Behner

Mental

Mental illness, whether depression or psychosis, just disinhibits men. They follow patterns that are built into the culture.
--Rebecca Solnit

Free Pass

Religion always gets a free pass. No other superstition gets the kind of exceptions made for it that religion does. Wrap up any nutty belief in religious garb, and suddenly even those who don't believe in it are supposed to "respect" it.
--Daniel Thompson

No Cure

If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure.
--Anton Chekhov

Command

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
--George Orwell (1984)

I Am

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
--Langston Hughes (1938)

Blowing

America! For the love of God, you are blowing the biggest lead human civilization has granted a people in history.
--Sean Astin

Health

If we can accept that our physical health can be shaped by society--by secondhand smoke or a bad diet--then we must accept that our mental health can be too.
--Matt Haig

Refuse

Refuse to be an accomplice. Don't lie--don't keep your eyes shut.
--Simone Weil

Agenda

The crisis is not one of democracy, it is far deeper than that. There are few conservatives any more. A conservative opposes change--any change--as likely to make things worse. "MAGA" is not a conservative rallying cry. It is the slogan of reactionaries--who, as history has shown, can be very dangerous folks when they are not opposed and very dangerous to oppose.

When the reactionary agenda cannot be achieved democratically, the reactionaries don't give up the agenda, they give up democracy. We've seen that already with the gerrymandering in place.

When the reactionary agenda cannot be achieved legally, the reactionaries don't give up the agenda, they subvert the law and the legal system. We've seen that through the attacks on law enforcement, the DOJ, and the attempts both to stack the courts and to pardon those (Arpaio) who ignore them and are convicted of criminal contempt.

When reactionaries cannot achieve their agenda constitutionally, they don't give up the agenda, they give up the constitution. We've seen just about every amendment except the Second being attacked. The latest is the Fourth.

When reactionaries can't achieve their agenda humanely, they don't give up the agenda, they surrender their humanity. That's played out on the border.

What remains is what happens when they can't achieve the agenda peacefully--it is then that they give up on peace. We aren't there. Yet. But do you really think there are any limits they won't go to in pursuit of MAGA?
--Nick Grande Prairie

Nice

Nice people made the best Nazis. Or so I have been told. My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on "politics," instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.
--Naomi Shulman

Woe

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed.
--The Bible, Isaiah 10:1-3

Monster

When faced with human monsters, we want to believe that they think like we do. We tell ourselves: "Surely they wouldn't...surely they won't..."

But they would. And they will.

What defines a "monster"? The absence of the capacity for empathy.
--Leah McElrath

Believe

If you believe in God, how can you believe in religion?
--Claudia Cohl

Moral

Hitting kids as a disciplinary tool probably seems normal to most Americans. It's part of American culture. But lots of forms of violence and discrimination have been part of our culture. Familiarity is not a moral argument.
--David Roberts

Exploit

Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen....By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.
--Lynn White Jr. (historian, Science magazine; 1967)

Truth

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.
--Flannery O'Connor

Don't Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that's often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)
--Mary Oliver

Imitation

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.
--Eric Hoffer

Demand

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
--Frederick Douglass

Kill Him

Master Lincoln, he's a great man, and I am a poor negro; but the negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money and the young men. He can do it by setting the negro free. Suppose that was an awful big snake down there, on the floor. He bite you. Folks all scared, because you die. You send for a doctor to cut the bite; but the snake, he rolled up there, and while the doctor doing it, he bite you again. The doctor dug out that bite; but while the doctor doing it, the snake, he spring up and bite you again; so he keep doing it, till you kill him. That's what master Lincoln ought to know.
--Harriet Tubman (1862)

Quest

You should always be willing to join with those who say they are on a quest for the truth. And you should always run from those who claim to have found it.
--Vaclav Havel

True

For years, the far Christian Right has been warning us about Godless hordes coming to destroy America and it turns out this was true--it's just that the words were autobiographical.
--John Pavlovitz

Progress

For the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths.
--E. O. Wilson

Wouldn't Want

Doesn't it strike you as mildly ironic that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?
--George Carlin

Mundane

Happiness is every mundane task completed--leaves raked, a report completed at work, the dishwasher loaded, a phone call or email from a child or a friend. Happiness is all around, I do not need to seek it. I just have to open my heart and mind to it.
--Jana New York

Triage

In this new era of triage, as democratic institutions and social safety nets are increasingly considered dispensable luxuries, the task of governance will be to lower the political and economic expectations of the masses without inciting full-fledged revolt.
--Ando Arick (March 2010)

Bring

The world is just the world, unfolding according to the patterns of nature, free of any judgmental attributes. The world exists; beauty and goodness are things that we bring to it.
--Sean Carroll

Our Leader

You think it doesn't matter who our leader is?
--Oleg Burov character (December 1987, in TV show "The Americans")

Ironic

What's wrong with our country right now: people in high places are trying to divide us, divide loyalties, make this about the flag as if the flag is something other than what it really is--which is a representation of what we're about, which is diversity, peaceful protests, right to free speech. It's ironic actually.
--Steve Kerr

Discuss

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Human Problem

There is always a video of people doing evil. You can find Christians doing evil, Muslims doing evil, atheists doing evil. Evil is a human problem. To think it is the problem of only one group is another human problem.
--Matt Haig

Patriotism

To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.
--Justice Robert Jackson

Start

Stop learning.
Start knowing.
The rose opens 
and opens.
And when it falls, 
falls outward.
--Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Not Entirely

Perhaps the only consolation for life's inevitable losses is the rediscovery of camaraderie, with its reminder that, even at our most desolate, we are not entirely alone.
--Brandon French

Tension

Time is nothing other than tension, and I would be very surprised if it is not tension of consciousness itself.
--St. Augustine (Confessions)

Killers

Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian--not to acquire his religion, but his guns.
--Mark Twain

Real

Financial meltdown leads to a social meltdown, which leads to a political meltdown. That's the real fear.
--Kenneth Rogoff

Twice

When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens.
--Amos Tversky

Evidence

We have to be willing to accept uncertainty and incomplete knowledge, and always be ready to update our beliefs as new evidence comes in.
--Sean Carroll

An Axe

Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency....To hope is to give yourself to the future--and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.
--Rebecca Solnit

An Idea

Religion is an idea about how the world works--and it's just as valid to criticize it in public forums as it is to criticize any other idea.
--Greta Christina

Egalitarian

An honest man is not "feminist," he is egalitarian. He quietly supports the legal rights and equality of all people, and doesn't put on a pretense of "feminism."
--Jose Puentes

Patience

Have patience! In time, even grass becomes milk.
--Charan Singh

Trust

You wouldn't want to live in a world where you couldn't be conned. Because it would mean you're living in a world where you never trusted anyone or anything. The element of the con is trust. That's what you provide. To live without it is to be suspicious of every single thing that goes on.
--Ricky Jay

Cycles

How solemn and huge and deeply pathetic our life does loom in its once-and doneness, how inexorably linear, even though our rotating, revolving planet offers us the cycles of the day and of the year to suggest that existence is intrinsically cyclical, a playful spin, and that there will always be, tomorrow morning or the next, another chance.
--John Updike

What tools...

We might ask ourselves, what tools do we have? What can we count on? You can count on yourself. Believe me, your self is your best ally. You know who you are, even when sometimes it becomes a little blurry and you make mistakes or seem to be veering off, just go deeper. You know who you are. You know the right thing to do. And when you make a mistake, it's alright--just as the song goes, pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and start all over again.
--Patti Smith (commencement speech Pratt Institute May 2010)

Control

You are the only one who is responsible for your own state of consciousness. Therefore, right now, you can take charge of moving your consciousness in a new direction...but "responsibility" and "control" are two different things!
--Greg Barrette

Government

The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion--it is an evil government.
--Eric Hoffer

Culture

The Dutch and the Danish are said to be among the happiest people on earth, which I can't help but imagine must have something to do with their bike culture.
--Michael Kimmelman

Motion

I hope I never get tired of how it feels to just be in motion, on a bike.
--Mike Ferrentino

Mourn

After a death we mourn not only the deceased but also the version of ourselves we got to be with that person.
--Meghan O'Rourke

Sanity

Developing an adequate response to rejection, neither defensive nor sentimental, lies at the heart of any serious attempt at sanity.
--Alain de Botton

Refinement

I have focused on several qualities in need of refinement in my soul: patience, tenderness, and warmth.
--Curiouser California

Moving

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Everything Except

Obey your head. Obey your heart. Obey your gut. In fact, obey everything except commands.
--Matt Haig

The Soul

The Soul selects her own Society--
Then--shuts the Door--
--Emily Dickinson

You think...?

A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? It's like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a rifle pendant.
--Bill Hicks

Spanking as a means of discipline is premised on the idea that violence can communicate or "teach lessons." That is a fairy tale we tell ourselves to justify our baser instincts. It's false in parenting, in adult relationships, in geopolitics, everywhere.
--David Roberts

Funny

You cannot be memorably funny without at some point raising topics which the rich, the powerful and the complacent would prefer to see left alone.
--George Orwell

Republic

When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.
--Thomas Jefferson

Kill

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?
--Harold Pinter

Knowledge

The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is: All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.
--Frank Zappa

Action

Prayer is meaningless if not married to moral action.
--Danielle Berrin

I See

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
--James Baldwin

Compounding

Confidence is a compounding commodity. It builds on itself.
--Charles M. Blow

Fail

Words fail us like the fabrications they are.
--Diane Ackerman

Concealed

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
--Patrick Henry

Enough

Agnostics are often assumed to be wishy-washy--that they dither and um when asked about greater things. But actually, agnostics have a firm belief: they do not have enough information to conclusively be either a believer or an unbeliever.
--Gautam Raja

This ass

There are many pretty and winning things about the human race. It is perhaps the poorest of all the inventions of all the gods, but it has never suspected it once. There is nothing prettier than its naïve and complacent appreciation of itself. It comes out frankly and proclaims, without bashfulness, or any sign of a blush, that it is the noblest work of God. It has had a billion opportunities to know better, but all signs fail with this ass. I could say harsh things about it, but I cannot bring myself to do it--it is like hitting a child.
--Mark Twain

Dictatorships

People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt

All the time

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

Tenderness

One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us.
--Dean Koontz

Becoming

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semihuman. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.
--Edward Hoagland

Peace

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring -- it was peace.
--Milan Kundera

Run To Greet

I heard somebody define heaven once as a place where, when you get there, all the dogs you ever loved run to greet you.
--Robert B. Parker

Common

In the end, our dogs' greatest gift to us is the saddest: they sprint ahead, pointing the way to our common fate.
--Richard Gilbert

Loss

Love and loss are inextricably entwined because we are mortal and can know love only under the condition that what we love will inevitably be lost.
--Dean Koontz

Zen

I remember throwing this toy down the stairs. I kept throwing it and throwing it, and there was as much joy on the part of the dog the last time he returned it as there had been the first time. There would have been more joy eternally. It struck me that there's something Zen about that--doing something that might seem menial, but if you have joy in it you are happy. This is a kind of wisdom that dogs have.
--Spencer Beglarian

Whole

Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
--Roger Caras

Always and always and always

When the Man waked up he said, "What is Wild Dog doing here?" And the Woman said, "His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always. Take him with you when you go hunting."
--Rudyard Kipling (Just So Stories)

Seek

Dogs seek our giving hands in the same way that flowers seek the sun.
--Dana Jennings

Fate

To love is to give hostages to fate.
--Jo Coudert

JOY !!!

Most of us will never be able to live with as much joy as a dog brings to every moment of his day.
--Dean Koontz (A Big Little Life)

Want

People may or may not say what they mean...but they always say something designed to get what they want.
--David Mamet

Greed

Just why, exactly, do some people hold government in contempt? Is it perhaps because government is for all the people--E pluribus unum? Is it because the government cannot be like a private club, where only the select are included? My mind works simplistically. And so I am inclined to think dislike of government boils down to greed. More for me; less for them.
--Margaux Balfour (November 2012)

tRump

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
--Aristotle

Harm

Too many people here are willing to deliberately harm the country for partisan gain. That is borderline treason.
--Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN; September 2011)

Necessary

Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.
--Galway Kinnell

Threat

This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.
--Teddy Roosevelt (October 1905)

Fun

Growing older is not fun only if you're holding on to the way you used to be.
--Rick Brown

Push

Go ahead, push your luck, find out how much love the world can hold.
--Dar Williams

Explore

We explore because we are human, and we want to know.
--Stephen Hawking

Democracy

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
--Reinhold Niebuhr

Lucid

My biggest regret in life is that I'm neither unhappy enough to be a poet nor indifferent enough to be a philosopher but lucid enough to be a condemned man.
--David Johansen

Your Soul

What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it?
--Garry Wills

Grease Fire

It's like something this Buddhist monk told me once. He said the truth is like a grease fire and we are like dogs. We can't have it, because it's burning. We can't abandon it, because it's delicious.
--Sarah Deming

Sweet Burden

Why is love rich beyond all other possible human experiences and a sweet burden to those seized in its grasp? Because we become what we love and yet remain ourselves.
--Martin Heidegger

AR-15

The pro AR-15 argument comes down to "preventing state tyranny." In other words, "I need an AR-15 because one day I might have to mow down a bunch of U.S. soldiers. Don't get me wrong, I support the troops. I just want to be ready to murder as many as possible if necessary."
--Dana Gould

Profound

Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. It's when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen.
--Clay Shirky

Mind

The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.
--Charles Darwin

The Future

Anyone who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror.
--Albert Einstein (1939)

Expose

If an evil genius had created the climate crisis, he could not have designed it better to expose the weaknesses of the human intellect. The cost/benefit relationship discourages a sustained campaign to correct the problem, while the negative character of success also weakens the resolve needed to achieve our goals.
--James Lee

Foster

Agony and ecstasy seems to foster addiction; all things in moderation does not.
--David C. Hester

Quiet

I wanted to be quiet in a nonquiet situation.
--John Cage

Revolution

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
--Henry Ford

More Than

Is it possible that we love our guns more than our children?
--Louis James Iocca (January 2011)

Touch

We have to touch people.
--Dr. Jacob Bronowski

Fear

Fundamentalism is the product of fear, not hatred. It is the ugly creed of those who feel sidelined by the brave new world of postmodernity.
--Terry Eagleton

Moral

Wealth is no proof of moral character; nor poverty of the want of it. On the contrary, wealth is often the presumptive evidence of dishonesty; and poverty the negative evidence of innocence.
--Thomas Paine (Dissertation on the First Principles of Government; 1795)

Truth

When it comes to distorting the truth in the Internet age, the flood is more effective than the dam.
--Garry Kasparov

Capitalist

The first sentence in text books about a capitalist economy should read: Stock prices fall when workers wages rise. And the second: The rest of this book attempts to convince you this is the best economic system possible.
--Arthur T. Himmelman

Criminal

They now seem more like a criminal organization, an auxiliary of the Russian mafia, than a political party.
--Chris Swoyer

Stupidity

Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces.
--Sidney Hook

Listening

More and more I've come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another.
--Mr. (Fred) Rogers

Promise

Where there is an unknowable there is a promise.
--Thornton Wilder

Absolute

It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.
--Joseph Goebbels

Plus

Fascism is capitalism plus murder.
--Upton Sinclair

The End

Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.
--Fredric Jameson

Practice

You can either practice being right or practice being kind.
--Anne Lamott

Unbuild

Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

Strange

How strange when an illusion dies, it's as though you've lost a child.
--Judy Garland

Measure

Every photograph is a measure of time. Each can be considered a metaphysical time-stamp of sorts.
--Richard Misrach

Purchase

It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.
--David Foster Wallace

Genuine

When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Discover

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Audacity

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cynical

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Daybreak

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

WRONG

No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.
--Elie Wiesel

Truth

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
--Winston Churchill

Equals

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.
--Pema Chödrön

Antithetical

It is time for the Statue of Liberty to return to France. She has been here for well over 100 years, and an investigation into her status clearly will show she has no work visa, so she is clearly antithetical to everything the United States now stands for.
--Mala Clemys

Unless

No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.
--Edward R. Murrow

Travesty

And yet these people continue to either prop up or defend this sick travesty of a presidency.
--Michelle Goldberg

Future

The future is not a blank page; and neither is it an open book.
--Lewis Mumford

2018

If this were a trilogy, 2016 would be the explosively dramatic establishment of conflict. 2017 would be the lowest point, when all seems lost. And 2018 would be the redemption, the triumph snatched from defeat at the last moment, the victory over darkness. Here's to 2018.
--Catherynne Valente