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