No Man...

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

--John Donne

Never Fail

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

--Corinthians 13:1-8 (King James Version)

It Breaks Regularly

If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders.

--Andrew Harvey

Surprise Quiz

It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?

--Richard Bach

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily...

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

--Douglas Adams

It's Not Illegal

When the President does it, that means it's not illegal.

--Richard M. Nixon

It Does...

Eppur, si muove.
(And yet, it does move.)

--Galileo Galilei

Reasonable & Just

At the time of Galileo the Church remained much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself. The process against Galileo was reasonable and just.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (March 15, 1990)

The Point Is...

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

--Galileo Galilei

Distrust Wit

The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

--Edward Abbey

Our Sin

If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

--Charles Darwin

Truth

More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realizing that you have done so.

--Harold Pinter

The Box

It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.

--Malcolm Gladwell

Pick His Pocket

The average American has a long history of being reflexively xenophobic, so getting him worked up about enemies from abroad, especially dark-skinned ones, has always been an especially effective way of distracting him while you pick his pocket.

--Jane Smiley

A Few Good Men

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

--George Washington

Don't Know

The only thing new is the history you don't know.

--Harry S. Truman

The Soul

The soul, equal and eternal, emanates from bodies of different shapes and colors. Whoever foments and spreads antagonism and hate between the races, sins against humanity.

--Jose Marti

I Wish

I wish things were like when Ronald Reagan was still president.

--Saddam Hussein, 2005

Perspective

For me, to make someone suffer penalties because of their sexual orientation is on the same level as making people be penalized for their gender, or race.

--Desmond Tutu

Our Contest...Continues

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.

--Samuel Adams

Doesn't Care

Money doesn't care who owns it, and it doesn't have ears to hear appeals to mere patriotism.

--Jane Smiley

Same Folks?

I always thought it was suspicious that the Pilgrims who shared turkey and maize with the Indians looked and dressed the same as the Puritans who later drowned hapless girls, accusing them of being witches.

--George Kalbouss

These Rascals

But what talk we of these traitorly rascals, whose miseries are to be smiled at, their offences being so capital?

--William Shakespeare (The Winter's Tale)

Sense(s)

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

--William James

We Were Young

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

--A. E. Housman

No Words

Mystery cannot be put into words.

--Joseph Cornell

Experience Is All

The seven-year anniversary quote:

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

--Fred Brook

Called Cynicism

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

--George Bernard Shaw

Predictions

If you predict doom and gloom, and you're wrong, you get blamed both for being wrong and for being a spoilsport. If you predict wonderful things, and you're wrong, you're given credit for being an optimist.

--Atrios

Two Remembering

The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.

--Jessamyn West

The Brave

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

--Mahatma Gandhi

Counting On You?

You know what they call a candidate who's counting on a lot of new voters? A loser.

--James Carville

Belly Laugh

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

--Robert A. Heinlein

State Demands

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

--Albert Einstein

Less

If we want to be at peace, we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less.

--Wendell Berry

Wonderful Fact

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

--Charles Dickens

Ineptitude

And if something comes along that is truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.

--Lawrence Wilkerson (former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, October 2005)

Hold Fast

Never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius.

--Comte de Buffon

Real Illusions

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

--Alan W. Watts

Over & Speedy

Just remember, when you're over the hill, you pick up speed.

--Charles M. Schultz

The Key Word

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

--Ray Bradbury

The Future

The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.

--John Schaar

Sleepwalkers

We are sleepwalking into desperate circumstances largely determined by our addiction to oil, our supply of which mostly comes from distant lands full of people who hate us.

--James Howard Kunstler

Tricky

Sincerity is a tricky quality to put over in these snarky times.

--Ken Tucker

Popular Fellow

Even Warren Harding was popular when he died.

--Anne Lamott

High and Low

The mind of man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his thoughts, doth never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes of high and low.

--Jonathan Swift

Disaster

The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.

--Retired Lt. General William Odom (October 2005; former head of the National Security Agency during the Reagan Adminstration)

The Difference

Unhappiness is best described as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

--Edward de Bono

Be Careful

Be careful how you interpret the world: it is like that.

--Erich Heller

What News Is

News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.

--Bill Moyers

Willing to Endure

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

--William James

Avoiding It

The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change--and we all instinctively avoid it.

--E.B. White

Love, Trust, Harm

Love all, trust few, do harm to none.

--William Shakespeare

Alternate Universe

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

--Al Gore (October 5, 2005)

Entitlement

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Heart & Mind

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.

--Jacques Barzun

State of Shock

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

--James Baldwin

Fundamental to Liberty

A woman's right to choose gets to the very heart of what it means to be an autonomous, free human being. Control of one's own body is fundamental to individual liberty.

--Digby

Appearance of Devotion

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.

--Aristotle

Worship Pain

It is rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy. The worship of pain has far more dominated the world.

--Oscar Wilde

Giant Nation's Vainglory

If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.

--Reinhold Niebuhr (1952)

A Cable Weaved

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

--Horace Mann

Look!

Solomon said, "The thing that has been is the thing that shall be; and the thing that is done is that which shall be done: There is nothing new under the sun." Or, to put it a slightly different way, a man walked into the house with a handful of dog waste and said, "Look what I almost stepped in."

--Garrison Keillor

Can't Have Both

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can't have both.

--Louis Brandeis

Importance of Community

We have become so focused on the individual that we have forgotten the importance of community for the future of our country.

--Yonce Shelton

Unrewarding Environments

Americans are suffering so much from being in unrewarding environments that it has made us very cynical. I think that American suburbia has become a powerful generator of anxiety and depression. If we happen to let it go, we won't miss it that much.

--James Howard Kunstler

Loss of Values

There is the decay of the centers and the despoiling of the suburbs. There is not enough housing for our people or transportation for our traffic. Open land is vanishing and old landmarks are violated. Worst of all, expansion is eroding the precious and time-honored values of community with neighbors and communion with nature. The loss of these values breeds loneliness and boredom and indifference.

--Lyndon B. Johnson

Science, Devout

Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.

--William James

Things Fall Apart

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

--William Butler Yeats (The Second Coming)

Faith Not Rational

Faith is by definition not rational--that is, it is belief in the absence of verification.

--Timothy Shortell

The True Strangeness

Science offers the boldest metaphysics of our age. It is a thoroughly human construct, driven by the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, the world will somehow come clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the universe.

--Edward O. Wilson

Prime Object

The responsibility of ministers for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence.

--Winston Churchill

Isn't Science

I would almost contend that if something fits in with common sense it almost certainly isn't science.

--Lewis Wolpert

Universal Betterment

Once you stop believing in universal betterment, you stop investing in social defenses, like health care, or flood control. You build your shining condo on the hill, put a fence round it, and cancel the local bus service so the poor can't get at you. What was the final answer to the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama? Cancel the busses!

--Alexander Cockburn

Not the Same Idiot

Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today. So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot.

--Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish

Determining Life

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

--William James

Changes Ahead

It is extremely hard even for a very smart person immersed in the daily realities of his busy life to imagine, let alone anticipate, the changes in the societal structure that are lying ahead.

--Dmitry Podborits

Good People Sleep

Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

--George Orwell

Factitious Antagonism

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious--fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance.

--T. H. Huxley

Game of Chess

War is not possible unless the rich and powerful feel free to demand the lives of the common people be sacrificed with the same ease you lose a pawn in a game of chess.

--Amanda Marcotte

A Thing of Beauty

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness

--John Keats

Wonderful Idea

Christianity is a wonderful idea. I wish someone would try it.

--Mahatma Gandhi

A-Causal

If you think of the creator in human terms, which is the human imagination, then you're in trouble. But in quantum physics, they refer to this field of infinite possibilities as a-causal, which means without cause, non-local, beyond space-time, infinitely correlated inter-relatedness, and when you start to understand that the very fundamental levels of nature are a-causal, they are beyond time, they're without--they transcend time, then you can have a different idea of the creator.

--Deepak Chopra

His Reputation

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.

--Jules Renard

Not Waste My Days

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

--Jack London

Mercantile vs. Feudal

An open, mercantile society is a society run on the bargain of future prospects: in exchange for your subservient labor, we will provide hope. A feudal society is, simply, a society run on the bargain of fear: in exchange for your labor and subservience, we will provide security.

--Adam Gopnik

Straight Line

You should be suspicious when you see a straight line on a map.

--Peter Barber

Real Priorities

The federal budget is more than mere numbers, it is an accounting of our country's priorities.

--Gil Kerlikowske, Seattle Chief of Police

Not Worth Caring

We're afflicted by so many places that are simply not worth caring about anymore. This is having a tremendous effect on us. It's corroding our spirits.

--James Howard Kunstler

Art vs. Science

Art is I; science is we.

--Claude Bernard

Wrong Question

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

--Thomas Pynchon

Empathy

There comes a tipping point where people began to empathize with the helpless, side with the ordinary, and quit idolizing the overly entitled. It has to be a small child that points out the emperor has no clothes. And it has to be the Trojan women who lament the destruction of war.

--Amanda Marcotte

Want Fruit?

We live in a world that wants the fruits of scientific labor, but refuses the mental discipline of scientific rationality.

--Timothy Shortell

Scrutinize Theories

Every scientific theory is constantly under scrutiny and has unknowns at its edges. Singling out evolution makes it appear that evolution is suspect, which it isn't.

--Lawrence Krauss, physicist at Case Western Reserve University

Brain Joy

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

--Carl Sagan

Particular Hearts [Away Quote]

Love allows us to walk in the sweet music of our particular heart.

--Jack Gilbert

Prevent Misery

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

--Eleanor Roosevelt

Humanity, Advanced ?

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

--Tom Robbins

What Difference Does It Make

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

--Mahatma Gandhi

The Bridge Is Love

We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

--Thornton Wilder

Agrees With Reason

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

--Gautama Buddha

A Birthday

i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday...

--e. e. cummings

Coming to the End

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.

--Jack Gilbert

The Race

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

--H. G. Wells

Things Have Feelings

Ascribing feelings to things is a way of protecting your own right to have feelings.

--Adam Gopnick

Pure in Heart

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

--Iris Murdoch

One Look at History

History is a slaughterhouse.

--Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Life and Death

The Lord gives everything and charges by taking it back.

--Jack Gilbert

Life Is Totally...

I'm a peasant. At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.

--Mike Tyson

The Time...Now

My creed is that: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.

--Robert G. Ingersoll

Somewhere, Something

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

--Carl Sagan

Over and Over (Redux)

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.

--George W. Bush (May 24, 2005)

Over and Over

But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.

--Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf)

Promiscuous

The disgusting is marvelously promiscuous and ubiquitous.

--William Ian Miller

Different Hopes

It seemed desperately important to seek out societies that held out different kinds of hopes, that weren't beholden to technology, yet also weren't rebelling against it.

--Lucette Lagnado

Ooops...Wrong!

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

--Groucho Marx

Actions Speak

Action is character.

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

World of Speech

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

--George Eliot

You Are Responsible

To be moral requires that one accept full responsibility for oneself.

--Timothy Shortell

The Situation

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

--Jean Rostand

The Liverpudlian Bike Boy

As a kid I had a dream--I wanted to own my own bicycle. When I got the bike, I must have been the happiest boy in Liverpool, maybe in the world. I lived for that bike. Most kids left their bikes in the back yard at night. Not me. I insisted on taking mine indoors and the first night kept it by my bed.

--John Lennon

Silence...Better?

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

--Thomas Carlyle

It Continues

All the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful.

--Elizabeth Bishop

Deep Within

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some other external form.

--Eckhart Tolle

The Daily Bearings

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable.

--John Updike

So Much

I'd never had so much pleasure being with another human being. I wanted him to enjoy me too. It was that simple.

--Anne Bancroft

Remember

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

--Elie Wiesel

Impertinent Authorities

Governors and Presidents should not issue religious proclamations. They should not call upon the people to thank god. It is no part of their official duty. It is outside and beyond the horizon of their authority. There is nothing in the Constitution to justify this religious impertinence.

--Robert G. Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)

Unsound Schemes

My earlier views at the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.

--Abraham Lincoln (1862)

Prop Up Beliefs

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?

--Carl Sagan

Humans? Nuts!

I've seen a look in dogs' eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.

--John Steinbeck

Dread

What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.

--John Howe

Hidden Answers

If we wish to understand the nature of reality, we have an inner hidden advantage: we are ourselves a little portion of the universe and so carry the answer within us.

--Jacques Boivin

More Galaxies Than People

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
--Carl Sagan

Anxious Laughter

A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.

--Dave Barry

State of the Earth

Your Planet's Immune System Is Trying to Get Rid of You

--Kurt Vonnegut (an idea for a bumper sticker)

Shrub's Papa

I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

--George Herbert Walker Bush

Shared Happiness

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

--Gautama Buddha

Where Are We Going?

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

--Martin Buber

Rule of Life

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight--always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?

--J. M. Barrie

Beyond Good and Evil

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Divine Things More Beautiful

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first;
Be not discouraged--keep on--there are divine things, well envelop'd;
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

--Walt Whitman

Try to Feel Lucky

Try to have a good day today, wherever you are, whatever you do, whoever is near, if no one is near. Try to be happy, because you may not see tomorrow. There is someone this morning, who didn't wake up, who will never see this day. Try to feel lucky that this is not you.

--Margaret Cho

Faith vs. Doctrine

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

--Tony Benn

Transmute It

So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.

--Bertrand Russell

It's Science, Stupid

There's nothing liberal about global warming, it's science. There seems to be some element of childish spite in the refusal to recognize it--"Boy, we can drive the liberals crazy by pretending it's not happening, ha, ha, ha."

--Molly Ivins

Pure Acts

The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than the procreation of children.

--Thornton Wilder

Skewed Perspective

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

--Douglas Adams

Democracy Not Safe

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.

--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

More Moral Values

I'm bound to a Bible where there are 3,000 verses on the poor, which means fighting poverty is a moral-values issue.

--Jim Wallis

The Universe Goes On Without Us

But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born--a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes on.

--Thomas Paine