"Every actual state is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
- Desmond Tutu
"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."
- Albert Einstein
"Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one."
- Chinese Proverb
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise"
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"In a state-run society the government promises you security. But it's a false promise predicated on the idea that the opposite of security is risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side."
- Theodore Forstmann
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
- Potter Stewart
"It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do."
- Edmund Burke
"We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was illegal."
- Martin Luther King, Jr
"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
- Louis D. Brandeis
"Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."
- William Lyon Mackenzie King
"Integrity has no need of rules."
- Albert Camus
"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law."
- Henry David Thoreau
"The price, good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men."
- Plato
"Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool."
- John J. Miller
"Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may."
- Mark Twain
"When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders."
- Veterans Fast for Life
"When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves."
- George Pataki
"Emotions are celebrated and repressed, analyzed and medicated, adored and ignored - but rarely, if ever, are they honored."
- Karla McLaren
"Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex."
- Frank Zappa
"Responsive leaders prefer knowledge and information to be spread as widely as possible among the population, because an informed public is necessary to govern effectively, independent thought produces original ideas and is the key factor by which we progress as a society. When independent thought is stifled society is and will remain stagnant until it is free to flourish once again."
- Teresa Stover
"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader."
- Plato
"Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion... In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience."
- Henry Steele Commager
"Manipulators rarely advise you to seek new and diverse information or to ‘learn and research for yourself,’ it tends to be safer for exploitative and irresponsible leaders to keep their citizens in the dark; in their view less independent thought is better. Independent thought leads to an inquiring mind, a mindset that eventually leads to the questioning of authority figures, and that is the one thing that inadequate leaders do not want."
- Teresa Stover
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
- Plato
"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more." - Mark Twain
"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality."
- Michael Ellner
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Samuel Adams
"Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart."
- Alan Alda
"...couples argue to burn up energy that could be used for something else. In fact, arguments often serve the purpose of using up energy, so that the couple do not have to take the courageous, creative leap into an unknown they fear. Arguing serves the function of being a zone of familiarity into which you can retreat when you are afraid of making a creative breakthrough."
- Gay Hendricks
"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other."
- Oscar Ameringer
"The mind can assert anything and pretend it has proved it. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept."
- D.H. Lawrence
"In the last few years, the very idea of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is dredged up only as a final resort when the alternative options of deception, threat and bribery have all been exhausted."
- Michael Musto
"Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth."
- Socrates
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
- Galileo Galilei
"A Law in excess of the authority confered by the constitution is no law; it is wholly void and inoperative; it confers no rights, it imposes no duties; it imposes no protection"
- 'Annotated Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia'
- Quick and Garran
"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” – Khalil Gibran
"No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.” – Mark Twain
"It is better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.” – Anatole France
"What a great advantage for leaders that the people do not think.” – Adolph Hitler
"Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.” – Alice Duer Miller
"The most beautiful thing in the world is, precisely, the conjunction of learning and inspiration. Oh, the passion for research and the joy of discovery!” – Wanda Landowska
"This is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
"All problems, depressions, wars, disasters, assassinations, all of them were planned, caused, instigated, and implemented by the International Bankers and their attempt to establish a central bank in every country in the world, which they have now done, thanks to corrupt politicians who have been bought and paid for. This is all you need to know about the history of the world.”
– Mary Elizabeth Croft
"Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.” – Hannah Arendt
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Albert Einstein
"Few is the number who think with their own minds and feel with their own hearts.” – Albert Einstein
"The mere possession of a vision is not the same as living it, nor can we encourage others with it if we do not, ourselves, understand and follow its truths. The pattern of the Great Spirit is over us all, but if we follow our own spirits from within, our pattern becomes clearer. For centuries, others have sought their visions. They prepare themselves, so that if the Creator desires them to know their life's purpose, then a vision would be revealed. To be blessed with visions is not enough...we must live them.”
– High Eagle
"There are no prescriptive solutions, no grand designs for grand problems. Life's solutions lie in the minute particulars involving more and more individual people daring to create their own life and art, daring to listen to the voice within their deepest, original nature, and deeper still, the voice within the earth.” – Stephen Nachmanovitch
"In the midst of global crises such as pollution, wars and famine, kindness may be too easily dismissed as a "soft" issue, or a luxury to be addressed after the urgent problems are solved. But kindness is the greatest need in all those areas - kindness toward the environment, toward other nations, toward the needs of people who are suffering. Until we reflect basic kindness in everything we do, our political gestures will be fleeting and fragile. Simple kindness may be the most vital key to the riddle of how human beings can live with each other in peace, and care properly for this planet we all share.”
– Bo Lozoff
"No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.”
– Amelia Earhart
"Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.” – Margaret Cousins
"We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” – Thomas Merton
"With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.” - Keshavan Nair
"In the midst of global crises such as pollution, wars and famine, kindness may be too easily dismissed as a "soft" issue, or a luxury to be addressed after the urgent problems are solved. But kindness is the greatest need in all those areas - kindness toward the environment, toward other nations, toward the needs of people who are suffering. Until we reflect basic kindness in everything we do, our political gestures will be fleeting and fragile. Simple kindness may be the most vital key to the riddle of how human beings can live with each other in peace, and care properly for this planet we all share.”
– Bo Lozoff
"I seem to have been like a child playing on the seashore, finding new and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.” – Isaac Newton
"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?” – Henry David Thoreau
"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Governments seem to work very hard to provide as many distractions in people’s daily lives as they can. This is because if you can keep the population living on the edge all the time they end up so caught up with the rigors of daily modern life, getting to work, paying the bills, looking out for the kids, worrying about the economy, the college fund, the groceries, the neighbors, terrorists, God, taxes, fine print, the environment and keeping up with the Jones, they don’t really notice, or even often care, about looking at the bigger picture to see what’s going on all around them, let alone what may have happened in the past.” – Max Igan
"It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.” – Sam Adams
"The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.” – Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
"A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.” – Thor Heyerdahl
"The more you care, the stronger you can be.” – Jim Rohn
"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much, performs much and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.” – Vincent van Gogh
"Ultimate freedom has nothing to do with your life circumstances - it is the freedom of allowing the self to dissolve into the waves of the ocean. It is the freedom that is born through one's absolute trust in life.” – Richard Rudd
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy
"Grace means more than gifts. In grace something is transcended, once and for all overcome. Grace happens in spite of something; it happens in spite of separateness and alienation. Grace means that life is once again united with life, self is reconciled with self. Grace means accepting the abandoned one. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful vocation. It transforms guilt to trust and courage. The word grace has something triumphant in it.” – Yrjo Kallinen
"The university is a vast public utility which turns out future workers in today’s vineyard, the military-industrial complex. They’ve got to be processed in the most efficient way to see to it that they have the fewest dissenting opinions, that they have just those characteristics which are wholly incompatible with being an intellectual. This is a real internal psychological contradiction. People have to suppress the very questions which reading books raises.” – Mario Savio
"If you banish fear, nothing terribly bad can happen to you.” – Margaret Bourke-White
"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.”– Erich Fromm
"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
"We need to build millions of little moments of caring on an individual level. Indeed, as talk of a politics of meaning becomes more widespread, many people will feel it easier to publicly acknowledge their own spiritual and ethical aspirations and will allow themselves to give more space to their highest vision in their personal interactions with others. A politics of meaning is as much about these millions of small acts as it is about any larger change. The two necessarily go hand in hand.” – Michael Lerner
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi
"The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”– Kahlil Gibran
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” – Albert Einstein
"Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.” – Voltaire
"Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.”
– Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Any culture that destroys its own life support systems and calls that progress is totally insane.”
– John Croft
"No road is too long for him who advances slowly and does not hurry, and no attainment is beyond his reach who equips himself with patience to achieve it.” – Jean de La Bruyere
"The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.” – Don Marquis
"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of Gods, religious or otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.” – Voltaire
"The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character.” – Margaret Chase Smith
"We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” – Thomas Merton
"All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
"When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect - but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate - may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical - always think for yourself.” – Linus Pauling
"People change and forget to tell each other.” – Lillian Hellman
"So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.” – Henri-Frederic Amiel
"Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.”– William James
"It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” – Albert Camus
"People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.”– Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
"The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.”
– Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” – Carl Rogers
"Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”– Rumi
"The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”– Kahlil Gibran
"I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water.” – D. H. Lawrence
"The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.”
– Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
"The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act.” – Daniel Goleman
"If you can't be a poet, be the poem.”– David Carradine
"He who angers you conquers you.”–Elizabeth Kenny
"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.”– Bernice Johnson Reagon
"If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.”– Peter Ustinov
"Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issue of how our lives fit into the greater cosmic scheme of things. This is true even when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is "spiritual" when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.”
– Robert C. Fuller
"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Love is a choice you make from moment to moment."
- Barbara De Angelis
"Grace means more than gifts. In grace something is transcended, once and for all overcome. Grace happens in spite of something; it happens in spite of separateness and alienation. Grace means that life is once again united with life, self is reconciled with self. Grace means accepting the abandoned one. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful vocation. It transforms guilt to trust and courage. The word grace has something triumphant in it."
- Yrjo Kallinen
"I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires."
- Kahlil Gibran
"Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves."
- Bonaro W. Overstreet
"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility." - Martha Nussbaum
"Everything you now do is something you have chosen to do. Some people don't want to believe that. But if you're over age twenty-one, your life is what you're making of it. To change your life, you need to change your priorities."
- John C. Maxwell
"The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy."
- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
"People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within."
- Ramona L. Anderson
"Never do things others can do and will do, if there are things others cannot do or will not do."
- Amelia Earhart
"There's no use talking about the problem unless you talk about the solution."
- Betty Williams
"People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within."
- Ramona L. Anderson
"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility."
- Martha Nussbaum
"Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
- Rumi
"If we ourselves remain angry and then sing world peace, it has little meaning. First, our individual self must learn peace. This we can practice. Then we can teach the rest of the world."
- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
"Transformation is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them. Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed, but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors."
- Paulo Freire
"A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality."
- Michael Ellner
"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."
- Vincent van Gogh
"Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
- Robert F. Kennedy
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
- Howard Zinn
"Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings."
- Hannah Arendt
"People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question."
- Samuel Richardson
"Politics is the art of controlling your environment."
- Hunter S. Thompson
"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."
- Hunter S. Thompson
"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction." - Bessie Stanley
"The heart is the first feature of working minds."
- Frank Lloyd Wright
"Few is the number who think with their own minds and feel with their own hearts."
- Albert Einstein
"Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit."
- Baltasar Gracian
"First, God created idiots. That was just for practice. Then He created school boards."
- Mark Twain
"The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it."
- Warren Bennis
"Our lack of compassion stems from our inability to see deeply into the nature of things."
- Lama Surya Das
"Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear."
- Cheri Huber
"No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine."
- William Blum
"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."
- Vincent van Gogh
"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results."
- Herman Melville
"There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."
- Carl Jung
"Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them - and then, the opportunity to choose."
- C. Wright Mills
"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate."
- Albert Schweitzer
"You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy."
- Eric Hoffer
"The beginning is always today."
- Mary Wollstonecraft
"Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives."
- Frederick F. Flack
"In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity."
- Albert Einstein
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
- Thomas Paine
"Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."
- Alexander Pope
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - Get it out with Optrex!"
- Spike Milligan
"You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity."
- Thomas Wolfe
"Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak. Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win." - Cesar Chavez
"Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible."
- Salman Rushdie
"The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."
- Albert Schweitzer
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection, and the base of a moral existence."
- Ayn Rand
"That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation."
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform."
- Susan B. Anthony
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality."
- Dante Aleghieri
"There is nothing like a dream to create the future."
- Victor Hugo
"Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to the path which nature has marked out for him."
- Johann von Goethe
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
- Abraham Lincoln
"When we try to live according to a self image we have created in our mind of being spiritual we fall into an ego trap and our consciousness gets lost in a dream of imaginary spirituality."
- Ekhart Tolle
"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
- Audre Lorde
"Learning without reflection is a waste, reflection without learning is dangerous."
- Confucius
"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention."
- Rudolf Arnheim
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
- John Lennon
"There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization."
- Felix Adler
"Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving."
- Kahlil Gibran
"Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." - Voltaire
"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful, murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind."
- George Orwell
"There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story." - Linda Hogan
"You really can change the world if you care enough." - Marian Wright Edelman
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."
- Frederic Bastiat
The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle."
- Anais Nin
"Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others."
- Cicero
"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
- Leo Tolstoy
"I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes."
- Douglas MacArthur
"Language falsifies Reality."- Frederick Nietzsche
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."- John F. Kennedy
"Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge."- Aristotle
"The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech."
- Edwin H. Friedman
"The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same."- Carlos Castaneda
"When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."- Audre Lorde
"Seriousness is the sister of desperation."
- Anon
"Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves."
- Sidney and Suzanne Simon
"There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life - happiness, freedom, and peace of mind - are always attained by giving them to someone else."
- Peyton Conway March
"The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct."
- Paul Ricoeur
"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."
- Thomas Paine
"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."
- John Wesley
"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group."
- Lillian Hellman
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
- William James
"We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race."- Cicero
"The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin."
- Gloria Steinem
"Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route."- Elizabeth Kenny
"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence."
- Dorothy Thompson
"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change."- Buddha
"If you want to study yourself -- look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people -- look into your own heart."Fredrich von Schiller
"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."
- Arthur Eddington
"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."
- Marcus Aurelius
"The most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently."- Pema Chodron
"He who does not punish evil, commands it to be done."- Leonardo da Vinci
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."
- Albert Einstein
"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free."
- Clarence Darrow
"If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth. This requires building economies with heart."- David Korten
"I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination."
- Adlai Stevenson
"Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality."
- Alexis Carrel
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."- Albert Einstein
"Put every great teacher together in a room, and they would agree about everything. Put their disciples in there and they would argue about everything."- Bruce Lee
"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible."- Henry David Thoreau
"The sage said, "The best thing is not to hate anyone, only to love. That is the only way out of it. As soon as you have forgiven those whom you hate, you have gotten rid of them. Then you have no reason to hate them; you just forget."- Hazrat Inayat Khan
"Peace and justice are nonviolence...the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history."
- Andre Trocme
"Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a polluted mind, suffering will follow you, as the wheels of the oxcart follow the footsteps of the ox. Everything is based on mind, is led by mind, is fashioned by mind. If you speak and act with a pure mind, happiness will follow you, as a shadow clings to a form."
- Buddha
"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."
- Paul Valery
"It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment."
- Elie Wiesel
"The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority."
- Will Durant
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."- Aesop
"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives."- Albert Schweitzer
"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."- Robert M. Hutchins
"I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end."
- Kahlil Gibran
"Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth."
- Edmund Burke
"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong."- G. K. Chesterton
"If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself."
- Norman Vincent Peale
"Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness."- James Thurber
"To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them."
- Hugh Prather
"It is not so much that man is a herd animal, but that he is a horde animal led by a chief."
- Sigmond Freud
"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."
- Jane Addams
"At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
- Johann Von Goethe
"Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice."
- Baruch Spinoza
"Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed."
- Corita Kent
"Perhaps the most important thing we can undertake toward the reduction of fear is to make it easier for people to accept themselves, to like themselves."
- Bonaro W. Overstreet
"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens."
- Carl Jung
"One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world."
- Ann Radcliffe
"Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive -- the risk to be alive and express what we really are."
- Don Miguel Ruiz
"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense."
- Robert Green Ingersoll
"Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule. "
- Buddha
