Quotations

Many millions, united into nations, strive for the common good, each individual for his own sake; but many thousands fall sacrifice to it. Now senseless delusion, now intriguing politics, incite them to wars with one another; then the sweat and blood of the multitude must flow, to carry through the ideas of individuals, or to atone for their shortcomings. In peace, industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all the ends of the earth; the waves engulf thousands. All push and drive, some plotting and planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But what is the ultimate aim of it all? To sustain ephemeral and harassed individuals through a short span of time, in the most fortunate cases with endurable want and comparative painlessness (though boredom is at once on the lookout for this), and then the propagation of this race and of its activities. With this evident want of proportion between the effort and the reward, the will-to-live, taken objectively, appears to us from this point of view as a folly, or taken subjectively, as a delusion. Seized by this, every living thing works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something that has no value. But on closer consideration, we shall find here also that it is rather a blind urge, an impulse wholly without ground and motive. -- Arthur Schopenhauer

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. -- John Kenneth Galbraith

The bicycle is the most civilised conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. -- Iris Murdoch

It is only by generating insight which sees through delusion that we can become liberated -- the Dalai Lama, Dzogchen, pg 129

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. -- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became... Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. -- Elizabeth West

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. -- Albert Einstein

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room -- Blaise Pascal

I've been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. -- Mark Twain

No one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone . . . [and] that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world. -- Unknown

The punishment of wise men who refuse to take part in the affairs of government is to live under the government of unwise men. -- Plato

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly. -- Thomas Paine

There is a crack, a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen

We all tend to seek out information that confirms our beliefs, values, and actions, and ignore or discredit everything else. -- Randall Strossen

Trouble comes out of the mouth. -- Chinese proverb

[T]he difference between left and right of center...originated in the French parliament. The people left of center were liberals; the people right of center were conservatives. Broadly speaking. And generally speaking, people on...the right of center, are interested in property values, property, property rights. The rights and the rights of property. And generally speaking again - it's all generalized - the left-of-center people are more concerned with humans and human beings and human concerns; to the care of humans, not the care and worry about property rights. That's generally been true. -- George Carlin

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation, as to spare it the burden of existence? Or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood. -- Arthur Schopenhauer

To one whose mind is free, there is something even more intolerable in the suffering of animals than in the sufferings of humans. For with the latter, it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the person who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any person were to refer to it, they would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime. That alone is the justification of all that humans may suffer. It cries vengeance upon all the human race. If God exists and tolerates it, it cries vengeance upon God. -- Romain Rolland

Love animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble their joy, dont harrass them, dont deprive them of their happiness, dont work against God's intent. Man, do not pride yourself on superiority to animals; they are without sin, and you, with your greatness, defile the earth by your appearance on it, and leave the traces of your foulness after you - alas, it is true of almost everyone of us! -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian author

What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see or take into my body as long as I don't harm another human being whilst on this planet? -- -Bill Hicks

It is the fate of every truthto be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed. It was once considered foolish to suppose that black men were really human beings and ought to be treated as such. What was once foolish has now become a recognized truth. Today it is considered as exaggeration to proclaim constant respect for every form of life as being the serious demand of a rational ethic. But the time is coming when people will be amazed that the human race existed so long before it recognized that thoughtless injury to life is incompatible with real ethics. Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility to everything that has life. -- Albert Schweitzer

There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud. In this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard -- Jerome K Jerome

Never run after a bus or a person. There will always be another one. -- Anonymous

Loathing Monday is a lame way to spend 1/7 of your life. -- Anonymous

Strange lot this, to be dropped down in a world of barbarians - men who see clearly enough through the barbarity of all ages except their own. -- Ernest Crosby

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person, is a little like expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian. -- Dennis Wholey

I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men. -- Leonardo Da Vinci

No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back. -- Turkish proverb

You asked me why I do not eat meat.... I refuse to eat animals because I cannot nourish myself by the sufferings and by the death of other creatures. I refuse to do so, because I suffered so painfully myself that I can feel the pains of others by recalling my own sufferings. ... These creatures are smaller and more helpless than I am, but can you imagine a reasonable man of noble feelings who would like to base on such a difference a claim or right to abuse the weakness and the smallness of others? Don't you think that it is just the bigger, the stronger, the superior's duty to protect the weaker creatures instead of persecuting them, instead of killing them? 'Noblesse oblige.' I want to act in a noble way. -- Edgar Kupfer-Koberwitz, written in the Concentration Camp Dachau, in the midst of all kinds of cruelties

You will find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?... Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy. -- Unknown

I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do. -- Helen Keller

We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our children. -- Antoine de St. Exupery

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him. -- Epictetus

If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man; it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil. -- James A. Garfield

The direst foe of courage is the fear itself, not the object of it, and the man who can overcome his own terror is a hero and more. -- George Macdonald

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. -- Jack London

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. -- Arthur Schopenhauer

"But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice; The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!" -- Robert Browning

In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes. -- John Ruskin

The joy of killing! the joy of seeing killing done - these are traits of the human race at large. We white people are merely modified Thugs; Thugs fretting under the restraints of a not very thick skin of civilization; Thugs who long ago enjoyed the slaughter of the Roman arena, and later the burning of doubtful Christians by authentic Christians in the public squares, and who now, with the Thugs of Spain and Nimes, flock to enjoy the blood and misery of the bull-ring. We have no tourists of either sex or any religion who are able to resist the delights of the bull-ring when opportunity offers; and we are gentle Thugs in the hunting-season, and love to chase a tame rabbit and kill it. Still, we have made some progress--microscopic, and in truth scarcely worth mentioning, and certainly nothing to be proud of--still it is progress: we no longer take pleasure in slaughtering or burning helpless men. We have reached a little altitude where we may look down upon the Indian Thugs with a complacent shudder; and we may even hope for a day, many centuries hence, when our posterity will look down upon us in the same way. -- Mark Twain

I believe with all my heart that civilization has produced nothing finer than a man or woman who thinks and practices true tolerance. -- Frank Knox

The more virtuous any man is, the less easily does he suspect others to be vicious. -- Cicero

Can whatever be wrong be fixed? If so, what is the point of being unhappy? And, if it cannot be remedied, what is the point of being unhappy? -- Shantideva, an Indian yogi

One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. -- Sigmund Freud

The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous. -- Margaret Fontey

Don't wait for your "ship to come in" and feel angry and cheated when it doesn't. Get going with something small. -- Irene Kassorla

Gentlemen, why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh, I should die. -- Abraham Lincoln

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing up against your legs and jumping into your lap. -- William Bennett

Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time. -- Unknown - seen on Slashdot

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. -- Oscar Wilde

The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery. -- Janet Erskine Stuart

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. -- Helen Keller

What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it. -- Johann von Goethe

Vacillating people seldom succeed. Successful men and women are very careful in reaching their decisions, and very persistent and determined in action thereafter. -- L. G. Elliott

Courage isn't the absence of fear; it's the dealing with it. -- Tex Randall

The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear. -- William Jennings Bryan

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well-hammered yourself. -- George Bernard Shaw

A human being is part of the whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences hmself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. -- Albert Einstein

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. -- Thomas Edison

Would you sell both your eyes for a million dollars...or your two legs..or your hands...or your hearing? Add up what you do have, and you'll find you won't sell them for all the gold in the world. The best things in life are yours, if you can appreciate them. -- Dale Carnegie

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. -- Albert Einstein

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. -- Mark Twain

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. -- Dale Carnegie

The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. -- Anonymous

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle. -- John Watson

...the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last. -- Charles Dickens

All I would tell people is to hold onto what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You've got to find it on your own terms. -- Harrison Ford

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances. -- Bruce Barton

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. -- George Bernard Shaw

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. -- Albert Einstein

It's never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Elliot

There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way. -- (unknown)

The self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates. -- Thomas Szasz

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that? Come up with a smiling face. It's nothing against you to fall down flat, but to lie there, that's disgrace. -- (unknown)

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation. -- Pearl S. Buck

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? -- Jeremy Bentham

Those who first advocated religious toleration were thought wicked, and so were the early opponents of slavery. The Gospels tell how Christ opposed the stricter forms of the Sabbath tabu. It cannot, in view of such instances, be denied that some actions which we all think highly laudable consist in criticizing or infringing the moral code of one's own community. Of course this only applies to past ages or to foreigners; nothing of the sort could occur among ourselves, since our moral code is perfect. -- Bertrand Russell

The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas... And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." -- Thomas Friedman

We [the U.S.A.] have about 50 percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population," wrote George Kennan in 1948. "In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. "The day is not far off," Kennan concluded, when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. -- George Kennan