Tolerant

Don't be so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.
--Basil Baker

Sharing

Life is all about sharing moments with those you love. That sharing can involve being in the moment together. But quite often, it's about recounting it after the fact.
--Ryan McGee

Government

To say government must be small is nonsense. Government must be the size necessary to make a society and economy work, and that is not fixed--nor could it possibly have been known by farmers in the late 1700s.
--Jeff Madrick

Is

Love is or it ain't.
--Toni Morrison

Employees

Happy employees make good products.
--Chris King

Tenderness

You have a different kind of tenderness for everybody you know.
--Allan Gurganus

Free

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.
--Thomas Merton

Change

Governments care only as much as their citizens force them to care. Nothing changes unless we change.
--George Monbiot

Lukewarm

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Beginning

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.
--Charles Darwin

Second Amendment

There are three honest interpretations of the Second Amendment, which makes no mention of guns or self-defense:
1. Private citizens can own the types of arms known to the writers of the Constitution in 1790, mostly slow-to-load muskets.
2. Private citizens can own any type of arm, including nuclear arms.
3. Government can make reasonable restrictions on what arms private citizens can own.
--RD

Civilized

I am civilized. My feelings are not.
--Jeanette Winterson

Chance

Perhaps chance is just another way to try to convince ourselves that we are valuable.
--Colum McCann

Once Were

What is it, he wonders,
that we had then and don't have now,
that we once were and are no longer.
--Jack Gilbert

Knowledge, Wisdom

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not using it in a fruit salad.
--Brian O'Driscoll

Prestige

Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.
--Paul Graham

Guilty

Our leaders now treat climate change as a guilty secret.
--George Monbiot

Work, Play

Most people have the ridiculous notion that anything they do which produces an income is work--and that anything they do outside "working" hours is play. There is no logic to that.
--William J. Reilly

Specific Person

Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self's own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.
--Jonathan Franzen

A Part

I am a part of all that I have met.
--Alfred Lord Tennyson

Everything Changes

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.
--Shunryu Suzuki

New Year

It's a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world. So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave--let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we're faking them.
--Neil Gaiman