"The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men."
~ Henry David Thoreau
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. ”
~ Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World (among his last published words in 1995, he died 10 months later.)
“The instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”
~ Buddhist proverb
“Jis to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds, up thar at Sand Creek. His men shot down squaws, and blew the brains out of little innocent children. You call sich soldiers Christians, do ye? And Indians savages? What der yer ‘spose our Heavenly Father, who made both them and us, thinks of these things? I tell you what, I don’t like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I’ve fought ’em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would.”
~ Kit Carson - Brevet Brigadier General (comment on the Sand Creek Massacre)
“Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.”
~ Buddha
“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.”
~ Osho, The Power of Love
“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
~ Bertrand Russell
"It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man."
~ Psalm 118:8 - (Absolute Center of the Bible)
"There will come a time when the rich will own all the media, and it will be impossible for the public to make an informed opinion."
~ Albert Einstein - 1949
"If your in trouble or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones."
~ John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath
“Usually I spare myself from the news, because if it’s not propaganda, then it’s one threat or another exaggerated to the point of absurdity, or it’s the tragedy of storm-quake-tsunami, of bigotry and oppression misnamed justice, of hatred passed off as righteousness and honor called dishonorable, all jammed in around advertisements in which a gecko sells insurance, a bear sells toilet tissue, a dog sells cars, a gorilla sells investment advisers, a tiger sells cereal, and an elephant sells a drug that will improve your lung capacity, as if no human being in America any longer believes any other human being, but trusts only the recommendations of animals.”
~ Dean Koontz, Deeply Odd
"Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all."
~ Michael Rivero
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
~ Rob Siltanen - Ad Campaign for Apple
“There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading to the top. The only ones wasting time are the ones who run in circles around the mountain telling others that their path is wrong.”
~ Hindu Proverb
"We are all one. Only egos, beliefs, and fears separate us."
~ Nikola Tesla
"Angry people want you to see how powerful they are, loving people want you to see how powerful you are."
~ Chief Red Eagle
"You can ask 10 people what LGBTQ stands for and you won't get a straight answer."
~ Joke
“Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet to see who they really are.”
~ Will Ferrell
"A coward dies many times, a brave man only once."
~ End line of a western - I can't remember the name
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.”
~ Mark Twain
"The groves were God’s first temples."
~ William Cullen Bryant
"The sage does not collect precious things. He does not hold back on ideas. He brings men back to what they have lost."
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
"To the degree that I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears."
~ Plato
"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you."
~ Lao Tzu
"Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses."
~ Lao Tzu
"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."
~ Lao Tzu
"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."
~ Lao Tzu
"When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you."
~ Lao Tzu
"You're in pretty good shape for the shape you are in."
~ Dr. Seuss
"I love to go to Washington - if only to be near my money."
~ Bob Hope
"If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age."
~ George Burns
"Only the mediocre are always at their best."
~ Jean Giraudoux
"Life is hard. After all, it kills you."
~ Katharine Hepburn
"A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
~ Bill Cosby
"I'm sorry, if you were right, I'd agree with you."
~ Robin Williams
"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
~ Terry Pratchett
"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."
~ Carl Sandburg
“Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.”
~ Brian Tracy
“If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.”
~ Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes
“Love only grows by sharing. You can only have more for yourself by giving it away to others.”
~ Brian Tracy
“The nail that sticks out farthest gets hammered the hardest.”
~ Patrick Jones, Nailed
“Everything you do is triggered by an emotion of either desire or fear.”
~ Brian Tracy
“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”
~ Theodore Roosevelt
“You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.”
Gautama Buddha
"Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or later they are also going to die."
~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana
"If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things."
~ Confucius
"Greater in battle than the man who would conquer a thousand-thousand men, is he who would conquer just one — himself.
Better to conquer yourself than others.
When you've trained yourself, living in constant self-control, neither a deva nor gandhabba, nor a Mara banded with Brahmas, could turn that triumph back into defeat."
~ The Buddha
"When you're a short actor you stand on apple boxes, you walk on a ramp. When you're a short star everybody else walks in a ditch."
~ Michael J. Fox
"Pride attaches undue importance to the superiority of one's status in the eyes of others; and shame is fear of humiliation at one's inferior status in the estimation of others. When one sets one's heart on being highly esteemed, and achieves such rating, then he or she is automatically involved in fear of losing status."
~ Lao-tzu
"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."
~ E. B. White
"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."
~ William E. Gladstone
"The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river."
~ Ross Perot
"A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip."
~ Caskie Stinnett
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
~ Noam Chomsky
"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
~ P. J. O'Rourke
“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
~ Blaise Pascal
“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the truth.”
~ Blaise Pascal
“To ridicule philosophy is really to philosophize.”
~ Blaise Pascal
“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”
~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light is throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.”
~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.”
~ Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
~ Blaise Pascal
"There is no coming to consciousness without pain."
~ Carl Jung
"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism."
~ Carl Jung
"Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health."
~ Carl Jung
"There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum."
~ Carl Jung
"For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the aging person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself."
~ Carl Jung
"Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics."
~ Carl Jung
"Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal that robs the second half of life of its purpose."
~ Carl Jung
"It's funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can't afford the music."
~ Tom Petty
"Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There's not some trick involved with it. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things."
~ Tom Petty
"TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It's downright bad for your health now, and that's not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health."
~ Tom Petty
"I would never put my songs in a commercial."
~ Tom Petty
It's hard for me... If I don't have a project going, I don't feel like I'm connected to anything. I don't even think it's that healthy for me. I like to get out of bed and have a purpose.
~ Tom Petty
“Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?”
~ Lao-Tzu, The Way of Life
"He who asserts his own views is not distinguished;"
~ Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)
"Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same."
~ Tao Lin (Eeeee Eee Eeee)
“Never trust people who smile constantly. They're either selling something or not very bright.”
~ Laurell K. Hamilton, Burnt Offerings
“They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.”
~ John Green, Looking for Alaska
"The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”
~ George Carlin
“Carl Jung tells in one of his books of a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that in his perception most white people have tense faces, staring eyes, and a cruel demeanor. He said: “They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We don’t know what they want. We think they are mad.”
~ Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
"The Talmud states, "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
~ Bridges McCall
“In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it.”
~ Eduardo Galeano, Los hijos de los días
“As the British Empire fell, the Afrikaner rose up to claim South Africa as his rightful inheritance. To maintain power in the face of the country’s rising and restless black majority, the government realized they needed a newer and more robust set of tools. They set up a formal commission to go out and study institutionalized racism all over the world. They went to Australia. They went to the Netherlands. They went to America. They saw what worked, what didn’t. Then they came back and published a report, and the government used that knowledge to build the most advanced system of racial oppression known to man. Apartheid was a police state, a system of surveillance and laws designed to keep black people under total control. A full compendium of those laws would run more than three thousand pages and weigh approximately ten pounds, but the general thrust of it should be easy enough for any American to understand. In America you had the forced removal of the native onto reservations coupled with slavery followed by segregation. Imagine all three of those things happening to the same group of people at the same time. That was apartheid.”
~ Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
“Pain expanded my heart.”
~ Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries
"It is easy to be brave from a distance."
~ Omaha
"Before eating, always take time to thank the food."
~ Arapaho
“Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench.”
~ Chief Seattle
“The Holy Land is everywhere”
― Black Elk
"Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future."
~ Jimmy Carter
"I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office."
~ Andrew Jackson
"I have heard you intend to settle us on a reservation near the mountains. I don't want to settle. I love to roam over the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die."
~ Chief Satanta, Kiowa
"Friend do it this way-that is, whatever you do in life, do the very best you can with both your heart and minds. And if you do it that way, the Power of the Universe will come to your assistance, if you heart and mind are in Unity. When one sits in the Hoop Of The People, one must be responsible because All of Creation ins related. And the Hurt of one is the hurt of all. And the honor of one is the honor of all. And whatever we do effects everything in the universe. If you do it that way-that is, if you truly join your heart and mind as One-whatever you ask for, that the Way it's Going to be."
~ Lakota Instructions for Living passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman
"And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being."
- Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks
"It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand."
~ Apache Tribe
"All who have died are equal."
~ Comanche People
"May the stars carry your sadness away, May the flowers fill your heart with beauty, May hope forever wipe away your tears, And, above all, may silence make you strong."
~ Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation
"Hold on to what is good, Even if it's a handful of earth. Hold on to what you believe, Even if it's a tree that stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, Even if it's a long way from here. Hold on to your life, Even if it's easier to let go. Hold on to my hand, Even if someday I'll be gone away from you."
~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator 1830 - 1890
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
~ Epictetus
"It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody."
~ Maya Angelou
"It is in pardoning that we are pardoned."
~ Francis of Assisi
"Forgiveness is the economy of the heart... forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits."
~ Hannah More
"Forgiveness is the final form of love."
~ Reinhold Niebuhr
"Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There's nothing to do but to stand there and take it."
~ Lyndon B. Johnson
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
~ Plato
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen.
~ George MacDonald
“It is better to die of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a troubled spirit, amid abundance”
~ Epictetus
“Events do not just happen, but arrive by appointment.”
~ Epictetus
“We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.”
~ Epictetus
“Never depend on the admiration of others. There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source. It is not to be found in your personal associations, nor can it be found in the regard of other people. It is a fact of life that other people, even people who love you, will not necessarily agree with your ideas, understand you, or share your enthusiasms. Grow up! Who cares what other people think about you!”
~ Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness
“Small-minded people blame others. Average people blame themselves. The wise see all blame as foolishness”
~ Epictetus
“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
~ Epictetus
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”
~ Epictetus
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
~ Epictetus
“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”
~ Epictetus
“To accuse others for one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.”
~ Epictetus
“No man is free who is not master of himself.”
~ Epictetus
“A person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.”
~ Alan Watts
“Everybody should do in their lifetime, sometime, two things. One is to consider death...to observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up-never. That is a most gloomy thing for contemplation; it's like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative of creating life. You'll get wonderful things out of that.”
~ Alan Watts
“But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.”
~ Alan Watts
“The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?”
~ Alan Watts
“The energy and material which we have all squandered on making war since even 1914 could have warmed, fed, and clothed everyone on Earth, but we go about this atrocious squandering in the name of such immaterial and irrelevant fantasies as religion, honor, ideology, progress, racial purity, and patriotism—the last being not love of one’s country but of the idea of one’s country”
~ Alan W. Watts, Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
“No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.”
~ Alan Watts
"By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us."
~ Alan Watts
“About the nicest thing God ever invented was alcohol. He’s proud of it, too. The Bible’s full of kind remarks about booze.”
~ Herman Wouk, Marjorie Morningstar
“Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.”
~ Frank Sinatra
“Hitler was the archetype of the abstemious man. When the other krauts saw him drink water in the Beer Hall they should have known he was not to be trusted.”
~ A. J. Liebling
“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
~ Hunter S. Thompson
"Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness."
~ Alveda Angela King
“It perhaps might be said--if any one dared--that the most worthless literature of the world has been that which has been written by the men of one nation concerning the men of another.”
~ Stephen Crane, The Portable Stephen Crane
“Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.”
~ Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man
“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Laziness can be a value on its own for those who want to show supremacy through contempt for work and wish to be free individuals by fighting the enslavement to labor. While they don’t want to become dependent on ‘wage slavery’ and their livelihood only hinges on salaries, they feel confined to a social stratification, causing a collective stigma that results in poverty and underfeeding. (The daily job)”
~ Erik Pevernagie
“Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man's true worth.”
~ Criss Jami, Killosophy
“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”
~ Aristotle, Selected Writings From The Nicomachean Ethics And Politics
“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”
~ John Steinbeck
What should be shrunken must first be stretched. What should be weakened must first be strengthened. What should be abolished must first be cherished. What should be deprived must first be enriched. This is called understanding the hidden. The soft and weak overcome the hard and strong. The fish cannot leave the deep waters. The state's weaponry should not be displayed.
~ Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching Chapter 36
He (the sage) is good to those who are good. He is also good to those who are not good. That is the virtue of good. The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings. He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to: no illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body. He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being. He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work.
~ Lao Tzu
"The Master’s power is like this. He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old."
~ Lao Tzu
“To understand the limitation of things, desire them.”
~ Lao Tzu
“When you accept yourself, the whole world accepts you.”
~ Lao Tzu
“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.”
~ Lao Tzu
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
~ Lao Tzu
Stop thinking, and end your problems
~ Lao Tzu
“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.”
~ Lao Tzu
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
~ Lao Tzu
"The simplest pattern is the clearest. Content with an ordinary life, you can show all people the way back to their own true nature."
~ Lao Tzu
"I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world."
~ Lao Tzu
In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone
~ Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching verse 48)
“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.”
~ Confucius
“The noble-minded are calm and steady. Little people are forever fussing and fretting.”
~ Confucius
“He who searches for evil, must first look at his own reflection.”
~ Confucius
“The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does.”
~ Confucius
“If I understand Change, I shall make no great mistake in Life”
~ Confucius
“Not to discuss with a man worthy of conversation is to waste the man. To discuss with a man not worthy of conversation is to waste words. The wise waste neither men nor words.”
~ Confucius
“Not to discuss with a man worthy of conversation is to waste the man. To discuss with a man not worthy of conversation is to waste words. The wise waste neither men nor words.”
~ Confucius
“Humankind differs from the animals only by a little and most people throw that away.”
~ Confucius
“Your life is what your thoughts make it.”
~ Confucius
“He who flatters a man is his enemy. he who tells him of his faults is his maker.”
~ Confucius
“Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.”
~ Confucius
“Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.”
~ Confucius
“The more people have weapons, the more the state is in confusion”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Taoism Ultimate Collection
“What all men fear is indeed to be feared;”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“Two names emerge from a single origin and both are called mysterious.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“Why do the people starve? It is because those at the top eat too much, and taxes are too high. This is why the people starve. Why are the people difficult to lead? It is because those in authority are meddlesome in their affairs. This is why the people are difficult to lead.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“The wise consider themselves “orphaned,” “widowed,” and “worthless.” Their humility is the source of their strength.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear. When the body's intelligence declines, cleverness and knowledge step forth. When there is no peace in the family, filial piety begins. When the country falls into chaos, patriotism is born.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“Truly good people are not aware of their goodness, And are therefore good.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“What is firmly rooted cannot be pulled out.”
~ Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
“The road you can talk about is not the road you can walk on”
~ Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised. If you don't trust people, you make them untrustworthy. The Master doesn't talk, he acts. When his work is done, the people say, "Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!”
~ Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“The world belongs to those who let go.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“The further one goes, the less one knows.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. Thus the Master is available to all people and doesn't reject anyone. He is ready to use all situations and doesn't waste anything. This is called embodying the light. What is a good man but a bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's job? If you don't understand this, you will get lost, however intelligent you are. It is the great secret.”
~ Laozi, Tao Te Ching
“Do you want to improve the world? I don't think it can be done. The world is sacred. It can't be improved. If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it. If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it. There is a time for being ahead, a time for being behind; a time for being in motion, a time for being at rest; a time for being vigorous, a time for being exhausted; a time for being safe, a time for being in danger. The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them. She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.”
~Sun Tzu
“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.”
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.”
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
~ Sun Tzu
"The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers."
~ Sun Tzu
"Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions."
~ Sun Tzu
"We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors."
~ Sun Tzu
"The host thus forming a single united body, is it impossible either for the brave to advance alone, or for the cowardly to retreat alone. This is the art of handling large masses of men."
~ Sun Tzu
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.”
~ Rumi
“You gotta be careful: don't say a word to nobody about nothing anytime ever.”
~ Johnny Depp
“I once had a dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events some of those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. But I didn't really mind, because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.”
~ Lana Del Rey
"Who are you? Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself where you can experience them? I have. I am fucking crazy. But I am free.”
~ Lana Del Rey
“A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.”
~ Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
“You don’t need a significant other to lead a significant life.”
~ Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
“Being brave enough to be alone frees you up to invite people into your life because you want them and not because you need them.”
~ Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
“Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love…but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.”
~ Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
“A busy, vibrant, goal-oriented woman is so much more attractive than a woman who waits around for a man to validate her existence.”
~ Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
“[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”
~ Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays
“The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.”
~ Charlotte Brontë
“A person who is another man's slave is better than one who is a slave to lust.”
~ Michael Bassey Johnson
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
~ Albert Camus
”It is the nature of the ego to take, and the nature of the spirit to share.”
~ Proverb
“The foundation of the Buddha’s teachings lies in compassion, and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion.”
~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
"He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened."
~ Lao Tzu
"He is his own best friend, and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude."
~ Aristotle
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
~ Lao Tzu
"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either."
~ Albert Einstein
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
~ Winston Churchill
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting."
~ Buddha
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
Oscar Wilde
"Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth."
~ Swami Vivekananda
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair."
~ C. S. Lewis
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light."
~ George Washington
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
~ Mark Twain
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
~ Marcus Aurelius
"Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins."
~ Mark Twain
Jesus died to forgive our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?
~ Jules Feiffer
"No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true."
~ Oscar Wild
“The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.”
~ Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“Almost every sinful action ever committed can be traced back to a selfish motive. It is a trait we hate in other people but justify in ourselves.”
~ Stephen Kendrick, The Love Dare
"Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure."
~ Jane Austen
"Being sorry is the highest act of selfishness, seeing value only after discarding it."
~ Douglas Horton
"Selfishness is the only real atheism; aspiration, unselfishness, the only real religion."
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty."
~ Henry Ward Beecher
"Abortion and racism are both symptoms of a fundamental human error. The error is thinking that when someone stands in the way of our wants, we can justify getting that person out of our lives. Abortion and racism stem from the same poisonous root, selfishness."
~ Alveda King
"One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love."
~ Sophocles
"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain."
~ William Shakespeare
"If you have it [love], you don't need to have anything else. If you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you do have."
~ Sir James M. Barrie
"People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
"Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
"I don't fear death so much as I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach."
~ Mary Roach
"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives."
~ Theodore Roosevelt
"Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish - too much handling will spoil it."
~ Lao Tzu
The more laws and restrictions there are, The poorer people become. ... The more rules and regulations, The more thieves and robbers.
~ Lao Tzu
In the pursuit of knowledge, something is added every day. In the pursuit of the Tao, something is dropped every day.
~ Lao Tzu
"The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest."
~ Lao Tzu
"In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it."
~ Lao Tzu
"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit."
~ Christopher McCandless
"There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed."
~ Robert Kennedy
"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
"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity."
~ Douglas MacArthur
“The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.”
~ Lao Tzu
“Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn’t possess, acts but doesn’t expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.”
~ Lao Tzu
“He who clings to his work will create nothing that endures.”
~ Lao Tzu
“If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked. If you want to become full, let yourself be empty. If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.”
~ Lao Tzu
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect—you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”
~ Bob Marley
"The sole aim of Okinawa Karate is to teach A person to handle violence and violent individuals; whether it is tactile, mental or spiritual."
~ Soke Behzad Ahmadi
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."
~ Sun Tzu
"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show us how badly we want something."
~ Randy Pausch
"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."
~ Jim Ryun
"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
~ Francis of Assisi
"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
~ C. S. Lewis.
"Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent."
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
"Listen to many, speak to a few."
~ William Shakespeare
"Speak when you are angry - and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret."
~ Laurence J. Peter
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
~ Winston Churchill
"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."
~ Audrey Hepburn
"The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor."
~ H. L. Mencken
"He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander."
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
"Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times."
~ Gustave Flaubert
"Slander slays three persons: the speaker, the spoken to, and the spoken of."
~ Hebrew proverb
"Wrongdoers eagerly listen to gossip; liars pay close attention to slander."
~ Proverbs 17:4
"When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment, he needs help. That’s the message he is sending."
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
"When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."
~ Socrates
Often those that criticize others reveal what he himself lacks.
~ Shannon L. Alder
“I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”
~ Margaret Thatcher
“People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.”
~ George Eliot, Middlemarch
“What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave.”
~ Criss Jami, Killosophy
“If people find fault with you and try to put you into bad light, wrongly slandering and vilifying you, just step back and observe yourself. Don’t harbor any dislike, don’t enter into it any contests, and don’t get upset, angry, or resentful. Just cut right through it and be as if you never saw it. Eventually malevolent pest will disappear of themselves. If you contend with them, then a bad name will bounce back and forth with never an end in sight.”
~ Master Yuanwu
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjust the sails."
~ William Arthur Ward
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
~ William Shakespeare
"He that's secure is not safe."
~ Benjamin Franklin
"In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it."
~ Benjamin Franklin
"Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it."
~ Benjamin Franklin
"A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age."
~ Robert Frost
"Music in the soul can be heard by the universe."
~ Lao Tzu
“Make a friend when you don't need one.”
~ Jamaican Proverb
“Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.”
~ Ally Condie
“Age does not protect you from love but love to some extent love protects you from age.”
~ Jeanne Moreau
“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”
~ Sam Keen
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention.”
~ Richard Warren
“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”
~ Victor Hugo
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
~ William Faulkner
“Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.”
~ Pete Seeger
“I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.”
~ Harold Kushner
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
~ C.G. Jung
“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
~ Thomas Carlyle
“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”
~ Auguste Rodin
“Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.”
~ John Keats
“People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
“All teachings are mere references. The true experience is living your own life. Then, even the holiest of words are only words.”
~ Ming-Dao Deng
“You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.”
~ Mary Tyler Moore
“How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?”
~ Robert Frost
“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”
~ W. M. Lewis
“Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.”
~ Vivian Komori
“Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.”
~ Dennis P. Kimbro
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.”
~ Alexander Graham Bell
“Today is life--the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”
~ Dale Carnegie
“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.”
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
“I think people run out of love much earlier than they run out of money, especially true with rich people because so many want to love them.”
~ unknown
“No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.”
~ Socrates
“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
~ Socrates
“To find yourself, think for yourself.”
~ Socrates
“An unexamined life is not worth living.”
~ Socrates
“A honest man is always a child.”
~ Socrates
"Even though you are on the right track - you will get run over if you just sit there.”"
~ Will Rogers
“An ignorant person is one who doesn’t know what you have just found out.”
~ Will Rogers
“It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.”
~ Will Rogers
“Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.”
~ Will Rogers
"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
~ Will Rogers
“Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.”
~ Will Rogers
“The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer.”
~ Will Rogers
“It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”
~ Will Rogers
“It’s not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.”
~ Will Rogers
“Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.”
~ Will Rogers
"If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.”
~ Will Rogers
“A fool and his money are soon elected.”
~ Will Rogers
“Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.”
~ Will Rogers
“I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
~ Will Rogers
“You have to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.”
~ Will Rogers
“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
~ Will Rogers
“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”
~ Will Rogers
“Good judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.”
~ Will Rogers
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”
~ Lily Tomlin
“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
"They say marriages are made in heaven, but so is thunder and lightning.”
~ Clint Eastwood
"I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”
~ Charles M. Shulz
“It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day just exactly fits the newspaper.”
~ Jerry Seinfeld
“Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”
~ Will Rogers
“A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
“Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life.”
~ Brooke Shields
“All generalizations are false, including this one.”
~ Mark Twain
“Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you.”
~ Joey Adams
“I found there was only one way to look thin; hang out with fat people.”
~ Rodney Dangerfield
"The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.”
~ Oswald Chambers
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”
~ Francis Bacon
“A year from now, you're gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.”
~ Phil McGraw
"Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.”
~ Jane Austen
“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”
~ Hal Borland
“It is the set in the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.”
~ Jim Rohn
“What a man takes in by contemplation, that he pours out in love.”
~ Meister Eckhart
"Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder."
~ Plato
“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
~ Pablo Picasso
“Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.”
~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature."
~ Socrates
"Santa Claus has the right idea - visit people only once a year."
~ Victor Borge
“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”
~ George Carlin
“The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.”
~ Jay Leno
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
~ African Proverb
"Fall seven times, stand up eight."
~ Japanese Proverb
"Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow."
~ Swedish Proverb
"Words should be weighed, not counted."
~ Yiddish Proverb
"If you can’t live longer, live deeper."
~ Italian Proverb
"A man who uses force is afraid of reasoning."
~ Kenyan Proverb
Still waters run deep.
~ Latin Proverb
"He who does not travel, does not know the value of men."
~ Moorish Proverb
"The night rinses what the day has soaped."
~ Swiss Proverb
"There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out."
~ Russian Proverb
"Age is honorable and youth is noble."
~ Irish Proverb
"In a battle between elephants, the ants get squashed."
~ Thai Proverb
"A beautiful thing is never perfect."
~ Egyptian Proverb
"The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour."
~ Japanese Proverb
"Character is always corrupted by prosperity."
~ Icelandic Proverb
"A fault confessed is half redressed."
~ Zulu Proverb
"He who always thinks it is too soon is sure to come too late."
~ German Proverb
"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you."
~ New Zealander Proverb
"A bad worker blames his tools."
~ Australian Proverb
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
~ Mexican saying
"A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs"
~ German Proverb
"A poor beauty finds more lovers than husbands."
~ English proverb
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in"
~ Greek Proverb
"A tree falls the way it leans"
~ Bulgarian Proverb
"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion."
~ Chinese Proverb
"A woman has the form of an angel, the heart of a serpent, and the mind of an ass."
~ German Proverb
"A single stick may smoke, but it will not burn."
~ African proverb
“He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.”
~ Confucius
"To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.”
~ Confucius
“To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”
~ Confucius
“Read nature; nature is a friend to truth.”
~ Edward Young
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?”
~ Albert Einstein
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
~ Albert Einstein
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
~ Aristotle
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
~ Albert Einstein
"A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new."
~ Albert Einstein
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover."
~ Mark Twain
"People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily"
~ Zig Ziglar
"Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will."
~ Zig Ziglar
"You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."
~ Zig Ziglar
"There are no traffic jams on the extra mile."
~ Zig Ziglar
"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude."
~ Zig Ziglar
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
~ H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
~ Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat
"If a man does his best, what else is there?"
~ General George S. Patton (1885-1945)
"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."
~ Charlton Heston (1924-2008)
"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
~ A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is."
~ Yogi Berra
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
~ Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
~ Bjarne Stroustrup
"Happiness equals reality minus expectations."
~ Tom Magliozzi (1937-2014)
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
~ Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
"If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance."
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
~ Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn."
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger
"We have art to save ourselves from the truth."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
~ Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"He who has a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions."
~ Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."
~ Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
"When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
~ George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."
~ Anais Nin (1903-1977)
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
~ Anais Nin
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
~ Anais Nin
"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls."
~ Anais Nin
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
~ Anais Nin
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
~ Anais Nin
"You cannot save people, you can only love them."
~ Anais Nin
"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."
~ Anais Nin
"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."
~ Anais Nin
"There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do."
~ Anais Nin
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
~ Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
~ Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)
"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
~ Steven Wright
"I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it."
~ Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
~ James Branch Cabell
"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."
~ John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher."
~ Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered."
~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
~ Umberto Eco
"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."
~ Jimmy Durante
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
~ Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
~ Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
~ Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
~ Antoine de Saint Exupery
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
~ Jimi Hendrix
"Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage."
~ Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
"A witty saying proves nothing."
~ Voltaire (1694-1778)
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
~ Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"It was the experience of mystery - even if mixed with fear - that engendered religion."
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means."
~ Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
~ Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."
~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
~ Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
~ Mel Brooks
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
~ Gore Vidal
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."
~ Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
~ Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."
~ Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower - (1887-1956) on the game's opening position
"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."
~ Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
~ Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
~ General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy.
"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."
~ Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
~ Yogi Berra
"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
~ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
~ Mae West (1892-1980)
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
~ Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
~ Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
~ Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
~ George Santayana (1863-1952)
"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
~ Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
~ Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
~ T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
~ Sun Tzu
"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Sometimes it is not enough that we do our best; we must do what is required."
~ Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
~ Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
~ Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943
"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
~ Will Rogers (1879-1935)
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
~ Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
~ Tom Clancy
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
~ Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live
"Half this game is ninety percent mental."
~ Yogi Berra
"Write drunk; edit sober."
~ Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
~ Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper
"Pray, v.: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
~ Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
~ Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan.
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil, that takes religion."
~ Steven Weinberg
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
~ Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Man’s heart away from nature becomes hard."
~ Standing Bear
"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."
~ St. Augustine
“[T]hose who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.”
~ Plato, Phaedo
“No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.”
~ Plato, Critias
"The fewer our wants the more we resemble the Gods."
~ Socrates
"The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own."
~ Alistair Cooke
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
~ Socrates
Bad men live to eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink in order to live.
~ Socrates
"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have."
~ Socrates
"Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him."
~ Samuel Butler
“This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavoured to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits; and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind. She was pre-eminent in courage and military skill, and was the leader of the Hellenes. And when the rest fell off from her, being compelled to stand alone, after having undergone the very extremity of danger, she defeated and triumphed over the invaders, and preserved from slavery those who were not yet subjugated, and generously liberated all the rest of us who dwell within the pillars. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island. ”
~ Plato, Timaeus/Critias (on Atlantis)
“...each living creature is said to be alive and to be the same individual - as for example someone is said to be the same person from when he is a child until he comes to be an old man. And yet, if he's called the same, that's despite the fact that he's never made up from the same things, but is always being renewed, and losing what he had before, whether it's hair, or flesh, or bones, or blood, in fact the whole body. And don't suppose that this is just true in the case of the body; in the case of the soul, too, its traits, habits, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears-- none of these things is ever the same in any individual, but some are coming into existence, others passing away.”
~ Plato, The Symposium
“No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker that shadow becomes.”
~ Plato, Critias
“Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.”
~ Plato
“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate beings, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
~ Plato
“Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.”
~ Plato
“To the degree that I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will gradually be controlled by my deepest fears.”
~ Plato
"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."
~ Socrates
"Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down."
~ Socrates
“According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.”
~ Plato, The Symposium
“A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul.”
~ Plato
“if you are willing to reflect on the courage and moderation of other people, you will find them strange...they all consider death a great evil...and the brave among them face death, when they do, for fear of greater evils...therefore, it is fear and terror that make all men brave, except for philosophers. yet it is illogical to be brave through fear and cowardice...what of the moderate among them? is their experience not similar?...they master certain pleasures because they are mastered by others...i fear this is not the right exchange to attain virtue, to exchange pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fears for fears, the greater for the less like coins, but that they only valid currency for which all these things should be exchanged is wisdom.”
~ Plato, Phaedo
“I once had a dream of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events some of those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. But I didn't really mind, because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.”
~ Lana Del Rey
"Who are you? Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies? Have you created a life for yourself where you can experience them? I have. I am fucking crazy. But I am free.”
~ Lana Del Rey
“A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.”
~ Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
~ Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women
“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.”
~ Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
“Relationships are mysterious. We doubt the positive qualities in others, seldom the negative. You will say to your partner: do you really love me? Are you sure you love me? You will ask this a do times and drive the person nuts. But you never ask: are you really mad at me? Are you sure you’re angry? When someone is angry, you don’t doubt it for a moment. Yet the reverse should be true. We should doubt the negative in life, and have faith in the positive.”
~ Christopher Pike, Remember Me
“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
~ T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that is is stupid."
~ Albert Einstein
“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”
~ Vladimir Ilich Lenin
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”
~ Bil Keane
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
~ Mark Twain
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
~ Mark Twain
“I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: "Go down again - I dwell among the people.”
~ John Henry Newman
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
~ Socrates
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
~ Aristotle
“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”
~ Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
~ Albert Einstein
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
~ Joseph Campbell
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
~ Albert Einstein
“The mouth is made for communication, and nothing is more articulate than a kiss.”
~ Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me
“If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!”
~ Adolf Hitler
“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”
~ Confucius
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
~ Rumi
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
~ Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and Selected Critical Prose
“A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.”
~ Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”
~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
~ Confucius