ASSORTED QUOTES
"Thus to be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science." --G.W.F.Hegel
"The principal effect of the power of custom is to seize and ensnare us in such a way that it is hardly within our power to get ourselves back out of its grip and return unto ourselves to reflect and reason about its ordinances." --Montaigne
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." --e. e. cummings "A Poet's Advice to Students"
"It is never too late to give up your prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be a falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields." --Henry David Thoreau
"See," he would say, pointing to a vine curled around a sapling, "That is a Stinkwood sapling which can grow thirty meters, but the vine will win and the tree will be choked to death long before it will ever see the sky." He would often use an analogy from nature. "Ja, Peekay, always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky." He looked at me and continued. "The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous" --Courtenay, Bryce. The Power of One. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989.
"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience." --Goethe
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." --Henry David Thoreau
"Any sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic." --Arthur C. Clark
"The unexamined life is not worth living!" --Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
"When you've once said a thing, that fixes it, and you must take the consequences." --Lewis Carroll
"One of the hardest things in the world is to convey a meaning accurately from one mind to another." --Lewis Carroll
"It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when out time is up - that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had." --Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
"Open rebuke is better than secret love."--Old Testament
"The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss." --Thomas Carlyle
"Were born, we live, and we die." --Lou Grant on the Mary Tyler Moore Show
"Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions" --Luke 12:15
"When you fail to hit the target, never in history has it been the target's fault." --Larry Winget
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --Mark Twain
"There are two things to aim at in life; first, to get what you want; and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second." --Logan Pearsall Smith
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!" --John Greenleaf Whittier
"In the long run, we are all dead." --John Maynard Keynes (Economist)
"There is only one success- to be able to spend your life in your own way." --Christopher Morely
"If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done." --Ecclesiastes 11:4
"A man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready." --Henry David Thoreau
"Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims… Happiness is possible only to a rational man." --Ayn Rand
"He that walketh with wise men shall be wise." –-Proverbs 13:20
"If you always live with those who are lame, you will yourself learn to limp." --Latin Proverb
"Tell me thy company and I will tell thee what thou art." --Cervantes
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." --Theodore Roosevelt
"Let each become all that he was created capable of being." --Thomas Carlyle
"Become all you are capable of becoming." --Robert J. McKain
"Be all you can be." --N. W. Ayer, Inc. (advertising campaign for the U.S. Army)
"We first make our habits, and then our habits make us." --John Dryden
"Chose always the way that seems best, however rough it may be, and custom will soon render it easy and agreeable." --Pythagoras, Greek philosopher and mathematician
"Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand." --Carlyle
Life is what happens while we’re making other plans
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." --Henry David Thoreau
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." --Henry David Thoreau
"What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate." --Henry David Thoreau
"Most men, even in this comparatively free county, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them." --Henry David Thoreau
"Happiness is not a reward, it is a consequence." --Robert G. Ingersoll
"Man is disturbed not so much by things, but by the view he takes of then." --Epictetus
"Teachers open the door… You enter by yourself." --Chinese Proverb
"He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything." --Arabian Proverb
"Good resolutions are like babies crying in church; they should be carried out immediately." --Charles M. Sheldon
"No wind can be favorable for one who knows not where he’s going." --Sixteenth century Dutch prince William of Orange
"We ought always to see ourselves as people who are going to die the next day. It is the time we think we have before us that kills." --Elisa Triolet (French writer, 1896-1970)
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." --Helen Keller
"The important thing is not where you were or where you are but where you want to get." --Dave Mahoney
"Plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life." --Mark Twain
"Goals are as essential to success as air is to life." --David Schwartz
"The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." --Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"The man who succeeds above his fellows is the one who early in life, clearly discerns his object, and towards that object habitually directs his powers. Even genius itself is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose. Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius." --Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
"A man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder - a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you." --Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." --Lao-tzu (604-531 BC)
"Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise." --Dr. Sigmund Freud
"The man is most original who can adapt from the greatest number of sources." --Thomas Carlyle
"To understand is hard. Once one understands, action is easier." --Sun Yat-Sen
"None of those who have been raised to a loftier height by riches and honors is really great. Why then does he seem great to you? It is because you are measuring the pedestal with the man." --Seneca
"He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has."--Epictetus
"Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like." --Will Rogers
"We should aim rather at leveling down our desires than leveling up our means." --Aristotle
"Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find what he has to do, and restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension." --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We first make our habits, and then our habits make us." --John Dryden
"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds." --Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"One must always look ahead, but it is difficult to look farther than one can see." --Winston Churchill
"Cheshire-Puss," … said Alice, "would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where-" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"-so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if only you walk long enough."
--Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves." --Goethe
"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." --Edgar Allan Poe
"The devil can site Scripture for his purpose." --Shakespeare
"He who returns from a journey is not the same as he who left." --Chinese proverb
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, all foes of real understanding. Likewise tolerance, or broad wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." --Mark Twain
"The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world." --Bertrand Russell
"The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known." --John Stuart Mill
"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians." --Martin Luther
"Knowledge is ruin to my young men." --Adolph Hitler
"There always will be a battle between authority and freedom of thought." --Maxwell Maltz, M.D.
"The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion." --Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear." --Thomas Jefferson
"Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot therefore be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of [hu]mankind trained from infancy to believe in error." --Robert Owen
"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." --David Hume
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." --Pascal
"There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter our civil affairs, our government would soon be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be destroyed." --Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Weiss v. District Board, March 18, 1890
Three umpires were asked, "How do you tell a strike from a ball?" The first said, "I calls them as they are." The second says, "I calls them as I sees them." The third said, "They ain't nothing until I calls them." --A parable
"Life is half spent before one knows what life is." --French Proverb
"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood." --Helen Keller
"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." --Evan Hardin
"Young men's love lies not in the heart, but in the eyes." --Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
"If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much." --Lewis Carroll
"We lose half the pleasure we might have in life, by not really attending." --Lewis Carroll
"To most of us Life and its pleasures seem like a mine that is nearly worked out." --Lewis Carroll
"I have had more trouble with myself than with any other person I have ever met." --Dwight L. Moody
"Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to the dust." --Emperor Marcus Aurelius
"When you are down and think you are out, get up and fight one more round." --Jim Corbett, heavyweight champion of the world.
"... I believe that for the great majority of our people, preadolescence is the nearest that they come to untroubled human life - that from then on the stresses of life distort them to inferior caricatures of what they might have been." --Harry Stack Sullivan, psychiatrist
"He [mankind] has throughout history shown a compelling need to arrive at conceptions of the universe in terms of which he could regard his own life as meaningful. He wants to know where he fits into the scheme of things... He seeks some kind of meaningful framework in which to understand (or at least to reconcile himself to) the indignities of chance and circumstances and the fact of death... He seeks conceptions of the universe that give dignity, purpose and sense to his own existence." --John W. Gardner. Self-Renewal
"... men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more then ruin, more even than death." --Bertrand Russell
"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." --Romans 7:15, 18b, 19
"I shall present human growth from the point of view of the conflicts, inner and outer, which the healthy person weathers, emerging and re-emerging with an increased sense of inner unity, with an increase of good judgement, and an increase in the capacity to do well, according to the standards of those who are significant to him." --Erik H. Erikson, psychiatrist
"God enters every life by a private door." --Emerson
"For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" --Mark 8:36
"Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves." --Rollo May
"A sense of uselessness is the severest shock which our system can sustain." --Thomas Huxley
"This thing we tell of can never be found by seeking, yet only seekers find it." --Sufi saying
"My philosophy is: Don't think." --Charles Manson
"I was only following orders." --Adolf Eichmann
"It was necessary to destroy the town in order to save it." --The Pentagon Papers
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer." --Henry Kissinger
"You must put the worm on the hook before the fish will bite." --Reverend Jim Jones
"When you lose your money you lose nothing. When you lose your soul you lose everything." --Meyer Lansky
"I've never had a problem with drugs; I've had a problem with the police." --Keith Richards
"I see many enemies around and mighty few friends." --Billy the Kid
"I trust no one, not even myself." --Joseph Stalin
"I have spent a lot of time searching through the Bible for loopholes." --W.C.Fields
"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without results." --Winston Churchill
"Justice is incidental to law and order." --J. Edgar Hoover
"Without a doubt man is the most dangerous microbe imaginable." --Adolph Hitler
"The great masses of people will fall more easily victim to a great lie than a small one." --Adolph Hitler
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." --Joseph Stalin
"There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content." --Joseph Goebbels
"If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." --Harry Truman
"And what is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered." --Ralph Waldo Emmerson
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
--William Blake, poet
"The days that make us happy make us wise." --John Masefield, poet
"The road is always better than the inn." --Cervantes, author of Don Quixote
"Nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Our life is frittered away in detail. Simplify, simplify." --Henry Thoreau
"They fail, and they alone, who have not striven." --Thomas Bailey Aldrich
"Failure teaches success." --Old proverb
"It is better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot." --Anatol France
"Often the test of courage is not to die but to live." --Alfieri
"Compassion is the basis of all morality." --Schopenhauer
"What I made I lost: what I gave I have." --Epictetus, Greek philosopher
“He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” --Matthew X:39
"The great man is he who does not lose this child's heart." --Mencius
"The sages do not consider that making no mistake is a blessing: they believe, rather, that the great value of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually to make a new man of himself." --Wang Yang-ming, Chinese philosopher
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
--William Blake
"All men desire by nature to know." --Aristotle
"Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true." --Bacon
"Pleasure and action make the hours seem short." --William Shakespeare, Othello
"Life is a long lesson in humility." --James S. Barrie
"Happiness is a habit - cultivate it." --Elbert Hubbard
"The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion." --James Russel Lowell
"Obstinacy and heat of opinion are the surest proof of stupidity." --Michel de Montaigne
"One is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else in the world." --Dorothy Gurney
"He who undervalues himself is justly undervalued by others." --William Hazlitt
"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair." --Edmund Burke
“As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor know how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all.” --Ecclesiastes XI:5
The great path has no gates,
Thousands of roads enter it.
When one passes through the gateless gate
He walks freely between heaven and earth.
--Mumonkan
“Look within, thou art the Buddha.” --Words of the Buddha
“The kingdom of Heaven is within you.” --Words of Jesus Christ
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?
--Emerson, “Forbearance”
The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection
The water has no mind to receive their image.
--Zenrin Kushu
“Let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive.” --John Keats, (from a letter)
On how to sing
the frog school and the skylark school
are arguing.
--Shiki (translated by Harold Henderson)
“Truly, I say to you, whosoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” --Luke XVIII:17
“Eternity is an infinite extent of time, in which every event is future at one time, present at another, past at another.” --Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Dagobert D. Runes
“He not busy being born is busy dying.” --Bob Dylan
Don’t walk in front of me,
I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me,
I may not lead.
Walk beside me
and just be my friend.
--Camus
“Until man comes to know himself, all other knowledge is useless.” --Edmund Sinnot
“Some people’s minds are like concrete. Thoroughly mixed up and firmly set.” --Popular saying
“You don’t have to know how to lay an egg to boil one.” --Popular saying
“Perfectionism is slow death.” --Popular saying
“There are no trains to yesterday.” --Popular saying
“The secret to reaching a goal is to be rigidly flexible.” --Popular saying
“I believe in expanding the areas of my awareness.” --Zona Gale
“Someone stands on everybody’s road to God.” --Bishop William Quayle
What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
--Shakespeare in Hamlet
“If each of us can be helped by science to live a hundred years, what will it profit us if our hates and fears, our loneliness and remorse will not permit us to enjoy them? What is an extra year or two to the man who “kills” what time he gets?” --David Neiswanger, President, The Menninger Foundation, 1941-1958
"The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever." --Anatold France
“Enjoy yourself, it is later than you think.” --Chinese saying
“Every tragedy we can imagine comes back to one: time slipping by.” --Simone Weil
“The undiscovered country… [that] makes us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to others we know not of.” --Shakespeare in Hamlet
“To live is to change time into experience.” --Caleb Gattegno
“The goal matters less than the path by which we reach it.” -- Chinese saying
“Until you are willing to be confused about what you already know, what you know will never grow bigger, better, or more useful.” --Milton Erickson
“We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands.” --Carl Sagan
“No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.” --Friedrich Nietzsche
“The most dangerous prejudices reign in ourselves, against ourselves. To dissolve them is a creative act.” --Hugo von Hofmannsthal
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” --June Jordan
“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.” --Oscar Wilde
“To confront a person with their own shadow is to show them their own light.” --Carl Jung
“Those who are victorious plan effectively and change decisively. They are like a great river that maintains its course but adjusts its flow.” --Sun Tzu
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” --Anais Nin
“No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.” --Agnes de Mille
“To observe is to destroy and to go with the flow of time; to create is to construct and to stem the flow of time.” --Jacques Attali (French presidential advisor)
“One can forget time only by making use of it.” --Charles Baudelaire (French poet, 1821-1867)
“Time is the sole capital of people whose only fortune is their intelligence.” --Honore de Balzac (French novelist, 1799-1850)
“The time of men is eternity folded.” --Jean Cocteau (Frebch dramatist, 1899-1963)
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are.
--T. S. Eliot (American poet 1895-1965)
“In fact, being in a position to decide the use of one’s time - and the hours one is present at the office - indicates that one has arrived. --E. Hall
“Persons who use their time ill are the first to complain of its brevity.” --Jean de La Bruyere (French writer and moralist, 1645-1696)
“Men’s regrets about using poorly the time they have already lived do not always lead them to make better use of the time they have yet to live.” --Jean de La Bruyere (French writer and moralist, 1645-1696)
“Lamentably, there is too short an interval between the time when one is too young and the time when one is too old.” --Charles de Montesquieu (French lawyer and political philosopher, 1689-1755)
“It is possible that for persons who use their time well, knowledge and experience increase throughout life.” --Michel de Montaigne (French essayist, 1533-1592)
“Time is the field of human development.” --Karl Marx (German political philosopher and socialist, 1818-1883)
“Time is the great art of man.” --Napoleon (French emperor, 1769-1821)
“We never keep to the present. We try to steal a march the future as if it were too slow in coming, or as if we could hasten its flow; or we recall the past to halt its retreat as if it were to rapid; so imprudent are we that we wander in times that are not ours, and give no thought to the only time that does belong to us.” --Blaise Pascal (French mathematician and philosopher, 1623-1662)
“Tell me how you treat the present, and I will tell you what kind of philosopher you are. … If you connect the present, everything is connected. If you keep the present free, only then can the other freedoms be arranged or arranged well. If you sterilize the present, all is sterile, all is empty. If you keep the present fertile, only then can all the other fertilities be arranged, and arranged well.” --Charles Peguy (French writer, 1873-1914)
“Time is the most beautiful thing with its ruins, its thromboses, its vanished hopes, its illusions that die, and gives each breaking day a new illusion…” --Ettore Scola
“Like all important things in life, making good use of one’s time is not taught in school.” --Jean-Louis Servan-Schreiber
“It’s really a wonder I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” --Anne Frank, 1944
“Enter to grow in wisdom. Depart to better serve thy country and mankind.” --Charles William Eliot (Inscription on the 1890 Gate to Harvard Yard)
“It does not matter if you have been born in a duck yard, if only you came out of a swan’s egg! The Ugly Duckling was so happy and in some way he was glad that he had experienced so much hardship and misery; for now he could fully appreciate his tremendous luck and the great beauty that greeted him. …And he rustled his feathers, held his long neck high, and with deep emotion he said: “I never dreamt of so much happiness, when I was the Ugly Duckling!” --H. C. Anderson, The Ugly Duckling
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.” --George Bernard Shaw
“A great deal of living and struggling went into this evolution of thought recorded in the Bible.” --Harvey H. Potthoff
“It is at the point of painful awareness that one’s inner life is not adding up to what it might be, and at the point that one sincerely desires to find a more significant quality of life, that hope begins to break through. …It is out of a sense of personal need and the desire for a more meaningful, fulfilling life that the journey of the spirit begins in earnest.” --Harvey H. Potthoff
“Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.” --John Mason Brown
“…Spiritual fatigue shows itself in loss of power as well as in a lack of feeling for life. We see neither straight nor far. We magnify trifles and ignore the universe.” --Richard C. Cabot
“How seldom we weigh our neighbors in the same balance with ourselves.” --Thomas a Kempis
“The business of life is to go forward.” --Samuel Johnson
“Desire accomplished is sweet to the soul.” --Proverbs XIII:19
“Bear shame and glory with an equal peace and an ever tranquil heart.” --From the sacred book of the Hindus
“Alas! The fearful unbelief is the unbelief in yourself.” --Carlyle
“What we ardently wish, we soon believe.” Edward Young
“Hope is the inner state of mind and spirit which enables one to move ahead against great odds and when there is no guarantee of victory. No one is defeated until he is inwardly defeated. Where there is hope, there is life.” --Harvey H. Potthoff
“Quit dressing your sole in somebody else’s piety. Your soul is not a pauper. Lit it live its own life.” --Samuel H. Miller, The life of the Soul
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” --Henry David Thoreau, Walden
In eastern lands the holiest gents
Are those who live at least expense.
They rarely speak; they seek release
From active life in prayer and peace.
But in the western hemisphere
A saint must catch the public ear,
And rush about, and shout and bustle
Combining holiness and hustle.
--Harvey H. Potthoff
“In our era, the road to holines necessarily passes through the world of action.” --Dag Hammarskjold
And, truly, what of good
ever have prophets brought to men?
Craft of many words,
only through
evil your message speaks.
Seers bring aye
terror, so to keep
men afraid.
--Agamemnon of Aeschylus ( about 550 BC)
“All things were in chaos when Mind arose and made order.” --Anaxagoras (early Greek philosopher)
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.” --Thomas Fuller
“Scrutinize the mystery underlying all things. Seek in higher dimensions of understanding a meaning behind all of our sufferings. Unmask what appears to be the caprice of human destiny.” --Pir Vailayat Inayat Khan
“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man, but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.” --Plutarch
“There is nothing permanent except change.” --Heraclitus
“One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes… the process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibilities.” --Eleanor Roosevelt
“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” --William James
“There is no meaning in life except the meaning a person gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.” --Eric Fromm
“Birth is not one act; it is a process. The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born. To live is to be born every minute. Death occurs when birth stops.” --Eric Fromm
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” --Nietzsche
“Religion persists among all peoples because it infuses life with meaning.” --Harvey H. Pottoff, Inner life, p.180
When the Duke of Wellington was discussing the defeat of the French by the English at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he said, “The British soldiers are not braver than the French soldiers. They were merely braver five minutes longer.”
There are a number of us who creep
Into this world, to eat and sleep;
And know no reason why we’re born,
But only consume the corn,
Devour the cattle, fowl, and fish,
And leave behind an empty dish.
--Insignificant Existence, by Isaac Watts
“The great are great only because we are on our knees.” --Pierre Proudhon
“What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn… that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. … Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems, and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” --Victor Frankle, Man’s Search for Meaning, 1959
“The world still seeks the church… at those times when life most matters. Parents who have drifted away from the church still bring their children back for baptism. Young people who profess to have outgrown religion still enter the church to be made man and wife. The last low whispers of the world’s dead are not uniformly burdened with God’s name but the church is always requisitioned to speak that name over those dead. In obedience to some deep unreasoned prompting men seek churches when life is most real.” --Dean Willard Sperry, (Harvey H. Potthoff, The Inner Life, 1969, p.175)
“All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.” --George Santayana
“This is how, without realizing it, civilized people came to find themselves like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, tied down by the multitude of subtle bonds, none of them which is individually strong enough to immobilize them, but which together deprive them of their freedom of movement.“-- Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Louis. The Art of Time, 1988, p.8
“…adopting the goals that others project on us relieves us of the need to ask too-searching questions about ourselves.” -- Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Louis. The Art of Time, 1988, p.89
“The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed. It focuses on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.” --Stephen R. Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic, 1989
“One British humorist said that the only important question in life is: “What do I do next?” This must be a preliminary step in the organization of our time, for the question does indeed arise several times a day: we are creatures of action who, as Pascal once noted, find it almost impossible to sit for an hour doing nothing. To answer the question without going too far wrong, we obviously must refer to something broader: our plans, expressed in goals that are ordered by priorities. …Thus, goals are technically indispensable, for they constitute the grid of choices implied by the optimal use of our time.” -- Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Louis. The Art of Time, 1988, p.88
“Our desire for novelty, the unexpected, breaking routine, plays the same role as a cold shower. We desire the small or large changes for they help us meet up anew with the present.” -- Servan-Schreiber, Jean-Louis. The Art of Time, 1988, p.82
“In searching for a more balance in my life, I’ve tried to eliminate the unnecessary clutter. This means saying no to things. I wonder what would happen if each of us wrote down all the unnecessary things that drain our energies and consume our time, things that have just become habits… I’ve also decided I don’t need any more crusades. The rescuer is retired. I want a slower and less-complicated pace of life. I realize how easy it would be for me to get my life all complicated again.” --Dr. Ken Olson, Hey, Man! Open Up and Live, 1978, p.244
“One of the most important and well established psychological findings is that we tend to perform at about the same level as those people who are close to us. Groups of people working together set up informal norms of performance, and these norms are reinforced, usually in subtle ways by the group members. People in different settings have different expectations of themselves and their coworkers. The implication for you as an individual is that you ought to seek out a place where you will be encouraged to achieve. Usually, this means finding people who are better than you and trying to raise yourself to their level.” --lost this citation
“Man is forever moving toward larger worlds of knowledge and experience. He breaks through old perspectives into new visions of his world, his fellow men, and self. Sometimes the challenge of change and growth threatens him. He feels the desire to pull back and enjoy the security of the familiar, limited world. But also there is an opposite pull to move out and ahead. In the process he sometimes finds older ways of thinking seriously challenged. Sometimes he moves toward new visions and a more adequate faith. This may be a painful process, indeed. For to grow is to outgrow, and to outgrow is to move beyond ways of thinking and acting to which we have been accustomed. The coming of a deeper faith has its stresses and pain.” --Harvey H. Potthof, The Inner Life, 1969, p.74
“The new discoveries and developments contribute to the unfolding of a magnificent universe; to be a participant is in itself a glory. With our confreres on distant planets; with our fellow animals and plants of land, air and sea; with the rocks and waters of all planetary crusts, and the photons and atoms that make up the stars-with all these we are associated in an existence and an evolution that inspires respect and deep reverence. We cannot escape humility. And as groping philosophers and scientists we are thankful for the mysteries that still lie beyond our grasp.” --Harlow Shapely (Astronomer), Of Stars and Men, 1958, p.149
“Each human being is called to place his stamp upon the world. Whether it be in classroom, in home, in office, shop, factory, on the farm, in legislative hall, or on some bed of helplessness and suffering - each one of us is saying something to the world. We are saying something about what we have heard life saying to us. We are saying something about the light we have seen, the music we have heard, the call which has come to us.” -- --Harvey H. Potthof, The Inner Life, 1969, p.186
“Lacking a basic trust, we sometimes engage in deception and self-deception. We wear masks or pretend to be what we are not. Sometimes we immerse ourselves in endless activity so that we need not confront ourselves. We may seek escape into a world of unreality. We may make rigid demands on life, insisting on blueprints for the future. Between a basic mistrust of life and a basic trust is the crucial difference between anxious existence and meaningful life.” --Harvey H. Potthof, The Inner Life, 1969, p.39
“True understanding, happiness, enlightenment [A happy, meaningful life] is available to all of us. A [insufficient, inadequate] dysfunctional belief system, however, cuts us off from [happiness, motivation] reality, so most of us have little conviction that there is actually anything more to life than what we ordinarily experience. When we have these doubts, we may not even try to transcend the limitations our belief system places on us. But when we see that there may be some [hope] (truth in spiritual beliefs), we set out on a path that leads us beyond our limitations and to increasingly higher states of awareness. We become more and more awakened to reality, until finally there is nothing between us and the experience of enlightenment.”
“Afghan vendettas date back centuries. Not only do the Pashtun tribes despise the ethnic minorities of the Northern Alliance, but they often blast away at one another too. Feuds drag on for generations, with every man called upon to defend his tribe's honor. The Pashtun unite briefly when an outsider swaggers in, such as Alexander the Great, the Soviets and now the Americans. Left to themselves, they plant land mines to settle a property dispute. A youth from Peshawar was recently celebrated in the newspapers as a true Pashtun hero for shooting his father's assassin. The boy was six.” --CNN.com, 11/20/2001
"Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better." --Chief Seattle
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” --Macbeth, Act V, Scene V
“God is a comedian playing to an audience that’s afraid to laugh.” --George Burns
“Seek not to understand what is too difficult for you, search not for what is hidden from you. Be not over-occupied with what is beyond you, for you have been shown more then you can understand.” --Apochrypha (Ben-Sira)
“How can you hit and think at the same time.” --Yogi Berra
We are here and it is now.
Further than that
all human knowledge is moonshine.
--H. L. Mencken
“All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked.” --Ecclesiastes 9:2
“To understand all is to forgive all.” --French proverb
“The universe is impartial; it doesn’t care what we think is right or wrong, good or bad. The universe just is. …It is our words, particularly our labels for each other, that give us the idea that aspects of the universe have value. …Watch out for the conflict between what is and what you have been taught ought to be! …Do not label others’ actions, and do not allow yourself to be influenced by their labels of yours.” --Louis Wynne, Ph.D., Warm Logic: The Art of the Intuitive Lifestyle, 1990, p.47
“The only new thing is the history you don’t know.” --Harry S. Truman
“Any fool can make a rule.” --Henry David Thoreau
“What we call results are beginnings.” --Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Setting goals, despite what the experts-in-living have written, is often a sure-fire way to add stress and discontent to your life. Goals may not be what you really want because they are frequently statements of what you have been taught to think you ought to want. That is, they are the universal statements of should or ought which, because of their incredible potential for hamstringing your intuitive dealing with your world, must be at least examined if not modified… and possibly even discarded… What you really want is what you really do. Wanting is best not spoken of as a verbal act - but as a non-verbal one. Never accept at face value what people tell you they want. What any person wants is what that person (non-verbally) chooses to do.” --Louis Wynne, Ph.D., Warm Logic: The Art of the Intuitive Lifestyle, 1990, p.82
“Man is not troubled by events, but by the meaning he gives to them.” --Epictetus
“It’s not what folks know that’s the problem; it’s what they know that ain’t so.” --Josh Billings
“The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.” --Leo Tolstoy
“Unfortunately… by the time the young person’s rearing and schooling is complete, words and rules and “rational thinking” have come to govern a large part of behavior, with intuitive propensities downplayed if not even ridiculed or punished. It is usually in mid-life that people begin to recognize the limitations imposed by rationality, and start to “go with their guts.” --Louis Wynne, Ph.D., Warm Logic: The Art of the Intuitive Lifestyle, 1990, p.114
“Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of the way and lets it act of its own accord.” --John Cage
"...no philosophical opinion, however ancient, however generally received, ought to rest upon authority. There is no presumption in requiring evidence for it, or in regulating our belief by the evidence we can find." --Thomas Reid (1710-1796), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785)
"Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better." --Chief Seattle
"Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see." --Chief Seattle
"No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress." --Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994), Against Method (1975)
"...the animal has a simple, but man a twofold, life. In the case of the animal the inner life is one with the outer, whereas in the case of man there is an inner and an outer life. The inner life of man is constituted by the fact that man relates himself to his species, to his mode of being. Man thinks, that is to say, he converses, enters into a dialogue with himself." --Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), The Essence of Christianity
"A man who retires from life does no harm to society: He only ceases to do good; which, if it is an injury, is of the lowest kind. -- All our obligations to do good to society seem to imply something reciprocal. I receive the benefits of society, and therefore ought to promote its interests; but when I withdraw myself altogether from society, can I be bound any longer?" --David Hume (1711-1776), Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul (1783)
"Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things." --Epictetus (c.55-c.135), The Enchiridion
"...it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things." --Epictetus (c.55-c.135), The Enchiridion
"Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself, abide by them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating any of them. Don't regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours." --Epictetus (c.55-c.135), The Enchiridion
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT...our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Common Sense (1776)
"To preach skepticism to us as a duty until 'sufficient evidence' for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law." --William James (1842-1910), The Will To Believe (1897)
"And by what, forsooth, is the supreme wisdom of this passion warranted? Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear? I, for one, can see no proof; and I simply refuse obedience to the scientist's command to imitate his kind of option, in a case where my own stake is important enough to give me the right to choose my own form of risk." --William James (1842-1910), The Will To Believe (1897)
“Some things have to be believed to be seen.” --Ralph Hodgson
“It does not matter what has been made of us; what matters is what we make ourselves make of what has been made of us.” --Jan Kott
“[Enlightenment]… involves the continuous awareness of and sensitivity to the world’s contingencies. Anything you might say can interfere with that sensitivity. Best to say nothing.” --Louis Wynne, Ph.D., Warm Logic: The Art of the Intuitive Lifestyle, 1990, p.129
“Thinking happens in the mouth.” --Tristan Tzara, Romanian-French poet
“The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.” --John Stuart Mill, political philosopher
“The “Human Condition,” becomes “The Human Comedy” (the phrase is Balzacs) only because humans insist on struggling against the world instead of yielding to it. “Thy will be done,” say the pious as they personify all that is ineffable in nature. It is human nature to be free, to be creative, intuitive, even mystical, and to intimate with and a part of Nature. “Man,” as Jean-Paul Sarte said, “is condemned to be free.” It is when you try to limit the risks of being free, when you invoke recipes, criteria, plans, policies, procedures, and rules - particularly given rules and formulas for future action that you violate your essential humanity and cause yourself stress. You regain that freedom and you escape stress when you let go of such rules.
Living …a life filled with meaning, personal fulfillment, and contentment - involves no special technique, formula, or method. It does not involve your starting to do certain things that have thus far been missing from your life and which, if you started doing them, would add the missing ingredients of happiness and success. At most it involves a “way.”
Let go of many of your given rules. Given rules, what we’ve also called the universal statements of should and ought, are the guides for living which you picked up as your were growing up, and they are usually implicit, i.e., unconscious. They tell how you ought to act, how things ought to be, what should happen, etc. Search them out, however you can, examine them, and either confirm, modify, or reject them. (135)
Let go of firmly defined goals. Goals can be problematic whether or not they are attained. If they are too specific, or if they are held on to too firmly, they can hamper your intuitive actions. If you must have goals, keep them vague and be ready to alter them. Focus on how you want to feel when you attain them, not on the outcome itself. (137)
Let go of labeling and of giving meaning to the actions of others. This is akin to analyzing and understanding why others do what they do. To the extent that you label people, or give your own meaning to what they have done, you restrict your ability to deal intuitively with both the people and their actions. Let go of your labels. Deal with people’s actions as they present themselves to you. (137)
Let go of what you are holding in your mind. This is certainly the most difficult to do of all the things we’ve suggested; the clutter and “noise,” the details and trivia that make up much of what you think about each waking moment. Let it all go! (139)
Life can still be beautiful, free of stress, meaningful, happy, and filled with accomplishments if we do not try to understand it, to explain it, analyze and rationalize it. Life doesn’t make sense, It doesn’t have to for you to find fulfillment. (140)” --Louis Wynne, Ph.D., Warm Logic: The Art of the Intuitive Lifestyle, 1990, p.134-140
“Man is condemned to be free.” --Jean-Paul Sarte
On the night before he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary, “Nothing, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come.”
“One indication of the validity of a principle,” according to psychologist Charles Osgood, “is the vigor and persistence with which it is opposed.” “In any field,” says Dr. Osgood, “if people see that a principle is obvious nonsense and easy to refute, they tend to ignore it. On the other hand, if the principle is difficult to refute and it causes them to question some of their own basic assumptions…, they have to go out of their way to find something wrong with it.” --Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, p.190
And you remember what Liberace said about the bad reviews one of his concerts received. “I cried all the way to the bank.”
"I have lost all my mirth...the earth...seems...sterile" --From Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 1601
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages." --From As You Like It - 1598
“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
--From As You Like It - 1598
"Not that I lov'd Caesar less, but that I lov'd Rome more." --From Julius Caesar - 1599
"To be, or not to be,--that is the question:-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?" --From Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 1601
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.”
--From Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 1601
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet." --From Romeo and Juliet - 1595
“'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.”
--From Romeo and Juliet - 1595
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." --From Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 1601
"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go." --From Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 1601
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." --From Julius Caesar - 1599
"Out, damned spot! out, I say!" --From Macbeth - 1605
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - 1601 - Act II. - Scene 2.
Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." --From Macbeth - 1605
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
--From Macbeth - 1605
[My book says] that there is an old, old conflict between the secular view of the world and the religious view of the world, and particularly between texts which claim to be divinely inspired and texts which are imaginatively inspired. . . . I distrust people who claim to know the whole truth and who seek to orchestrate the world in line with that one true truth. I think that's a very dangerous position in the world. It needs to be challenged. It needs to be challenged constantly in all sorts of ways, and that's what I tried to do. -- Salman Rushdie (ABC's "Nightline" on February 13, 1989, in regard to his novel The Satanic Verses).
When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell. The dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts and bars and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free--free to think, to express my thoughts--free to live my own ideal, free to live for myself and those I loved, free to use all my faculties, all my senses, free to spread imagination's wings, free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope, free to judge and determine for myself . . . I was free! I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously faced all worlds. -- Robert G. Ingersoll
So, the choice is yours. Are you a Humanist? You needn't answer "yes" or "no." For it's not an either-or proposition. Humanism is yours--to adopt or simply to draw from. You may take a little or a lot, sip from the cup or drink it to the dregs. It's up to you. © Copyright 1989 by Frederick Edwords So long as profit is not your motive and you always include this copyright notice, please feel free to reproduce and distribute this material in electronic form as widely as you please. All nonprofit Humanist and Freethought publications have additional permission to publish this in print form. Other permission must be sought from the author through the the American Humanist Association, which can be contacted at the following address: http://www.jcn.com/humanism.html
The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday--but never jam today. --Lewis Carroll
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. --Lewis Carroll
Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. --Lewis Carroll
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. --Lewis Carroll
Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face. --Albert Camus
Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. --Albert Camus
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is. --Albert Camus
Who says I am not under the special protection of God? --Adolf Hitler
When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already...What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community." --Adolf Hitler
What luck for rulers, that men do not think. --Adolf Hitler
Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction. --Adolf Hitler
Those who carry the weapons decide the form of government. -- Aristotle
This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future! --Adolf Hitler
I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom. --Charlton Heston
The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. --Adolf Hitler
The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category. --Adolf Hitler
“You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” --President George W. Bush, 2001
The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. --Adolf Hitler
The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. --Adolf Hitler
Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong. --Adolf Hitler
Strength lies not in defense but in attack. --Adolf Hitler
How fortunate for leaders that men do not think. --Adolf Hitler
Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized. --Adolf Hitler
"The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians; their land and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights, and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress." --Northwest Ordinance of 1787
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. --J. D. Salinger
I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it. --Charles Schulz
My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right? --Charles Schulz
No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it. --Charles Schulz
Try not to have a good time... This is supposed to be educational. --Charles Schulz
Wisdom comes by disillusionment. --George Santayana
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --George Santayana
The Bible is literature, not dogma. --George Santayana
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world. --George Santayana
All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible. --George Santayana
Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. --George Santayana
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds. --George Santayana
I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads. --George Santayana
To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say. --George Santayana
The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer. --George Santayana
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. --George Santayana
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. --Joseph Stalin
“Socrates needed hemlock, as Jesus needed the Crucifixion, to fulfill a mission.” --Stone, I. F., The Trial of Socrates, Little, Brown and Company, 1988 p.230
“[Is god divinely inspired]… or a figment of mortal minds?” --Stone, I. F., The Trial of Socrates, Little, Brown and Company, 1988 p.237
Aristotle remarked that those who carry the weapons decide the form of government.
As Aristotle somewhere put it: luck is when the guy next to you gets hit with the arrow. --Becker, Ernest, The Denial of Death, Free press Paperbacks, 1997, p.2
"Critical thinking is best understood as the ability of thinkers to take charge of their own thinking. This requires that they develop sound criteria and standards for analyzing and assessing their own thinking and routinely use those criteria and standards to improve its quality."-- Elder, L. and Paul, R. "Critical Thinking: Why we must transform our teaching." Journal of Developmental Education 18:1, Fall 1994, 34-35.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic, is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober man." G. B. Shaw
“Nothing appeals more strongly to the irrational, emotional side of us than religion. Humans are more readily motivated by emotion than by reason.”-- Diana M. Walton
“Out of all the sects in the world, the overwhelming majority of people just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to not the sect that has the most evidence in its favor, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music. Religion seems to be inherited. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of heredity somehow manage to believe in "their" religion with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one. Faith appeals to people.” --Anonymous
Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than one can suppose.”-- J. B. S. Haldane
The field cannot well be seen from within the field. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
In The Ecclesiastical History of the English, written by the Venerable Bede sometime around A.D. 700, Bede tells how King Edwin of Northumbria held a council in A.D. 627 to decide on the religion to be accepted in his kingdom, and gives the following speech to one of the king's chief men "Your majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like a swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thanes and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. The sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or what follows, we know nothing."
It is an almost irresistible temptation to believe with Bede and Edwin that there must be something for us outside the banqueting hall. The honor of resisting this temptation is only a thin substitute for the consolations of religion, but is not entirely without satisfactions of its own.
The main product sold by religious and New Age groups and persons competing in the spiritual marketplace is "life after death". Whatever else they do, their core appeal, which is difficult for people to resist, is their claim that for you to have life in the hereafter you must follow their religious beliefs and/or practices and their personal God. People have a very strong drive to survive. Almost anyone would love to continue this life after death if it were available.
We know better now than Bede and Edwin did then. Science strongly suggests that this life is our only existence -- that God and other supernatural imaginings that we (our right temporal lobe and associated brain parts), with the help of others around us, have created; die with us. Either side of the hall there is not even a winter storm or wintery world for anyone.
To many people knowing this is upsetting -- to me and others knowing this truth is more satisfying than believing the untruths of religion -- the claims regarding the existence of the supernatural and supernatural entities.
"Now they say that this book is inspired. I do not care whether it is or not; the question is, Is it true? If it is true, it doesn't need to be inspired. Nothing needs inspiration except a falsehood or a mistake."-- Robert G. Ingersoll:
“I tried for years to live according to everyone else's morality. I tried to live like everyone else, to be like everyone else. I said the right things even when I felt and thought quite differently. And the result is a catastrophe.”--Albert Camus
"The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it; ignorance may deride it; malice may distort it, but there it is."-- Winston Churchill