Attention

The poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly attuned interpersonal attention in all directions.
--Daniel Goleman

News

If it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news--car crashes, domestic violence--that you should start worrying.
--Bruce Schneier

Complexity

The complexity of things--the things within things--just seems to be endless. I mean nothing is easy, nothing is simple.
--Alice Munro

Home

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.
--James Baldwin

Ghosts

It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside.
--James George Frazer

History

Don't study history to boost your self-esteem. Study history to lose your religion. Or maybe in the end, to gain it. I am not religious at all. But seeing the limits of all of us, you start to understand why people might appeal to some higher, more certain, more fierce, invention.
--Ta-Nehisi Coates

Cooperation

Cooperation played an immense role in our evolutionary past. That is the reason democracy has a future, while "free market" competition has been exposed as a serpent that eats its own tail.
--Erik Reece

Discover

He who understands everything about his subject cannot write it. I write as much to discover as to explain.
--Arthur Miller

Commitments

If there is a lesson baseball can offer us, it's one about our deepest commitments; that they're arbitrary, and contingent, but we're no less committed to them for that.
--Jordan Ellenberg

Moment

Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever.
--Alan Watts

Capitalism

Many believe that capitalism is synonymous with free enterprise and democracy. Capitalism is neither free enterprise nor democracy. After all, China is now a capitalist country. No one believes that China is a democratic country. This conflation has allowed all attempts to attenuate the deficiencies of capitalism to be construed as that grand evil, "socialism" or communism.
--Egberto Willies

Border

Every national border in Europe marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others.
--Robert Anton Wilson

The Soft Animal

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.
--Mary Oliver

Living Thing

Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.
--Woodrow Wilson

Told You

One of the lies people tell is, "I don't like to say I told you so." It is in fact one of the few pleasures that improve with age. I don't have to take a pill before, during or after I do it.
--Barney Frank

Hoax

One of the biggest hoaxes of American history is that the Civil War ended back in 1865. Unfortunately, it has not ended yet. What was achieved back then was an armistice.
--Stephan Richter

Wholeness

There is no clear distinction between mind and spirit; but there is a quality of mind that is more than thought and the process of thought: this quality involves feelings and the wholeness in which the life of man has its being.
--Howard Thurman

Really

Nothing changes really about love.
--Alice Munro

Moral

This country is moralistic, but not moral.
--Linda Ronstadt

Multiple Causes

Everything arises in dependence upon multiple causes and conditions; nothing exists as a singular, independent entity.
--Buddhist teaching of Pratītyasamutpāda

Mutters

A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"
--Abraham Lincoln (1860)

In This World

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
--Mary Oliver

Humanity

The political sphere is where you engage with your humanity. You have not merely a right, you have an obligation to participate, to make sure the people, as a whole, are able to make good decisions, and pass good laws and treat you as a human.
--Eric J. Miller

The People

Wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
--Thomas Jefferson

Concealed

Being in love is like discovering a concealed ballroom in a house you've long inhabited.
--Russell Brand

Soul

A soul that is not confused is not a soul.
--Saigyo

Stupid Kids

When a third of Republicans believe that "Some people are hiding the truth about the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in order to advance a political agenda," then it's time to treat them like the pariahs that they are. The inmates shouldn't run the asylum. The stupid kids shouldn't get to teach the rest of the school.
--Lee Papa

Stop

Remember, the Republicans aren't threatening economic calamity, because they want to rein in spending. They're threatening economic calamity, because they want to stop poor and sick Americans from getting health insurance.
--Matthew O'Brien

Inferiors

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
--Plato

Neutrality

I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
--Elie Weisel

What You Love

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.
--Robert Anton Wilson

Injuries

I just don't have the same energy to be as neurotic. You have to put triage on your injuries.
--Junot Díaz

Change

Temporary despair can be a useful response to life: To feel for a time that you are completely defeated and there is no hope can actually be a precursor to meaningful change.
--Cary Tennis

Conscience

The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.
--Pope Francis

Suspend

Having it all are moments in life when you suspend judgment. It's when I attain that elusive thing called peace of mind.
--Delia Ephron

Change

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
--Alan Watts

Bullshit

I think all of us are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit.
--Harry Crews

Love Something

It should be known that it is impossible for human nature not always to love something.
--Origen (3rd century theologian)

Phone

It makes me sad that there are moments in our lives where we're not present because we're looking at a phone.
--Charlene deGuzman

Racism

There's sort of a persistent misperception that talking about race is black folk's burden. Ultimately, only men can end sexism, and only white people can end racism.
--Benjamin Jealous

Suffering

The only thing worse than assuming you could get the better of suffering, I began to think (though I'm no Buddhist), is imagining you could do nothing in its wake.
--Pico Iyer

Ridiculous

The coming of the wireless era will make war impossible, because it will make war ridiculous.
--Guglielmo Marconi (1912)

National

Only with the struggle for national self-determination did it come to be believed that every human being had to belong to a group defined in opposition to others.
--John Gray

Eight

Whoever wrote the Ten Commandments (or "10 Judeo-Christian Moral Injunctions You Need in Your Life Right Now") was surely aware that it could just as well have been eight, or eleven, or seventy-seven commandments.
--Mark O'Connell

Dystopia

Whatever technological dystopia awaits us, it's at once hilarious and mortifying to think that the road there might be paved with asinine status updates, cat pictures and listicles.
--Willy Staley

History

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
--Seamus Heaney

Invaded

Man, I wish Bush was the president. He would have reacted right away. He may have invaded Cyprus or Jordan instead of Syria by mistake, but you know he would have done something at least.
--Abu Bassam (resident of Homs, Syria)

True

A thing is not necessarily true because someone dies for it.
--Oscar Wilde

Meaning

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
--Bill Watterson

Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?
--Langston Hughes

Position

When White House advisers formulate a position that they believe is correct but which manages to repel everyone, they say that they have "hit the sweet spot."
--David Remnick

Whole

I'd rather be whole than good.
--Carl Jung

Judgmental

You're judgmental, and I mean that in the best possible way. We're told it's good to make judgments about everything else: music, food, politics, clothing. Well, why the hell not judge people? People can be irrational and ignorant and irritating.
--Kim Brooks

Virtues

Adulation of our imaginary virtues, despite all the evidence to the contrary, continues to be one of the oddest things about this country.
--Charles Simic

Why

The day will finally arrive. It may come early in life or it may be the last day of your life, but sooner or later you will ask some very simple questions, to wit--What does my life mean? Why am I the way I am?
--Dr. Harvey "Gizmo" Rosenberg

Loving

Folks, I'm telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean--
so get yourself
a little loving
in between.
--Langston Hughes

Staging

Religion is close to theatre; much of its power comes from the effects of staging and framing.
--Teju Cole

Business

There is one and only one social responsibility of business--to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.
--Milton Friedman

Wrong

Big Data allows us to be wrong with infinite precision.
--Nicola Hughes

Knowing

I was doing, I believed, what we all want to do, which is find a way to capture things before they dissolve, to not lose our lives to the relentless pace that keeps us from knowing who we are and what we want.
--Michael Paterniti

Small Change

It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We, who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

Maturity

A man's maturity consists of regaining the seriousness one had when a child at play.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Suspicions

I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.
--Robert Anton Wilson

Entropy

No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.
--Philip K. Dick

History

The point of history is to learn from it, not to proceed as if we were still living in it.
--Jelani Cobb

Time and Memory

Back at the beginning, as I see now, my life was all time and almost no memory...And now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time.
--Wendell Berry

Failures

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded...sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
--George Saunders

Effrontery

As we read the newspapers, and we see the effrontery with which money and power carry their ends, and ride over honesty and good-meaning, morals and religion seem to become mere shrieking and impotence.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Too Young

But just before the end, even treason might be worth a try.
This country is too young to die.
--Phil Ochs

Amazing

Like most amazing things,
It's easy to miss and easy to mistake.
For when things are really great,
It just means everything's in its place.
--Aimee Mann

At Any Time

Anything can happen at any time. There is no sure thing. Everything you hold dear is at risk, everything is vulnerable. It can all slip through your fingers.
--Daniel Smith

Survive

You have to love the world to want to survive.
--Matt Zoller Seitz

Sloth

To my great regret, I no longer know how to be lazy, and summer is no fun without sloth.
--Charles Simic

Progress

Humanists like to think they have a rational view of the world; but their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world's religions.
--John Gray

Created

All religions and all churches are created by human beings. They're not that different from, say, the whole legal culture or the medical culture or the scientific culture.
--Joyce Carol Oates

Found

If you want to be found stand where the seeker seeks.
--Sidney Lanier

Uniquely

While Americans are just 5 percent of the world's population, we house almost 25 percent of the world's prisoners, making us No. 1 in something, anyway. Either we are a uniquely evil people...or we have some uniquely awful laws and social policies.
--Andrew O'Hehir

Click

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.
--Jeff Hammerbacher

Attentive

Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life.
--Jonathan Safran Foer

The Edge

It's not a competency if you don't know the edge of it.
--Charlie Munger

Drool

Day 19. I have successfully conditioned my master to smile and write in his book every time I drool.
--Pavlov's Dog

Future

People give less weight to the future, but that's a brain bug.
--Peter Singer

Work

Work was traditionally seen as a curse or an obligation for which we received payment. Nonwork was viewed as an experience of freedom for which we pay but that gives us pleasure.
--Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster

History

History may be a succession of absurdities, tragedies and crimes; but--everyone insists--the future can still be better than anything in the past. To give up this hope would induce a state of despair.
--John Gray

Controversial

We know that climate change is real. We know creationism is wrong. These are no longer scientific controversies. When people call these "controversial topics," that's misleading. They are only controversial politically. And politics is not necessarily evidence-based.
--Phil Plait

Attention

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
--Simone Weil

Cooperation

"Survival of the fittest"--a phrase that Darwin himself only used twice in On the Origin of Species, compared to hundreds of references to altruism, love and cooperation.
--Russell Brand

Listening

Each act of listening to music may be thought of as both recapitulating the past and predicting the future.
--Robert J. Zatorre and Valorie N. Salimpoor

Yes

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.
--e. e. cummings

Technology

Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat.
--Jonathan Safran Foer

Constantly

You do not pass through this life, it passes through you. You experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing the world.
--Joss Whedon

Lying

Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

Creatures

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes.
--Jonathan Safran Foer

Direction

There's no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.
--Oprah Winfrey

Data Mining

A founding principle of our jurisprudence is that you're innocent until proved guilty; data mining is based on the opposite principle.
--Reed Hundt (former chairman of the FCC)

Two Things

What I believe is that all people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: curious and kind.
--Roger Ebert

Honesty

Unalloyed honesty is the iridium of the information economy--vanishingly rare, and therefore precious.
--Tim Kreider

Yourself

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
--e. e. cummings

Memory

When you have a memory of something, you are actually having a memory of your last memory of it.
--Sarah Polley

Fart Around

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
--Kurt Vonnegut