Poetry Heals

"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason."

~ Novalis

Rilke's Love

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Goethe's Kiss

"A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Edison on Religious Education

"I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States."

~ Thomas Edison

Black's Freedom of Speech

"Freedom of speech means that you shall not do something to people either for the views they express, or the words they speak or write."

~ Hugo Black, One Man's Stand For Freedom

The Pious Tyrant

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."

~ Aristotle, Politics

Not a True Religion

"That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it."

~ Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution

Seek a Newer World

"Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Weapons Shape the Plan

"And everywhere the good prepare for perpetual war
And let their weapons shape the plan
The way the hammer shapes the hand."

~ Jackson Browne, 2002

Chesterton's Last Laugh

"The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man."

~ G. K. Chesterton

Eco's Library

"Have you read them all?"

"No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office."

~ Umberto Eco, "How to Justify a private Library"

Aquinas Knows Best

"Beware the man of one book."

~ St. Thomas Aquinas

Just Be Tolstoy

"If you want to be happy, be.”

~ Leo Tolstoy

Al Gores the Critics

"The day I made that statement, I was tired because I'd been up all night inventing the Camcorder."

~ Al Gore

Quayle's Quip

"If Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell-check."

~ Former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle

The Linux Philosophy

"The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it."

~ Linus Torvalds

Who Knows Science and Technology?

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

~ Carl Sagan

The Game of Chess

"Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse."

~ Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), "A Liberal Education and Where to Find It."

The Greatest Tyrannies

"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes."

~ Thomas Paine

Franklin's Law of Liberty

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

~ Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

Look For Women's Names

"If you have any doubts that we live in a society controlled by men, try reading down the index of contributors to a volume of quotations, looking for women's names."

~ Elaine Gill

Speak Softly and Carry a Lipstick

"Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick."

~ Bella Abzug

The Real Problem

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."

~ B. F. Skinner

Where Is All the Knowledge?

"Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?"

- T.S. Elliot

Damage Done

"The damage that a man causes outlives him."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

The American Soul

"True myth concerns itself centrally with the onward adventure of the integral soul. And this, for America, is Deerslayer. A man who turns his back on white society.... An isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring man, who lives by death, by killing, but who is pure white.

"You have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never melted.

~ D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

Behold the Turtle

"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out."

~ James Bryant Conant

Dog's Best Problem

"When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem."

~ Edward Abbey

Ted Nugent's Question

"Do you want to feel good, or do you want to do good?"

~ Ted Nugent

America is Unique

"America is unique in that it endlessly creates its own identity: it invents and reinvents itself every day. America sees what America wants to see, then paints a new canvas in a new style. It is an improv act: it acts impulsively by feel or want. It is contrary and impetuous: When others walk, it dances; When they dance, it sits down to wallflower. When others speak, it interrupts. It listens to itself and then sings a new song out of boredom."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

The Quicker Picker Upper

"Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker."

~ Ogden Nash

What Time Are You?

"Does age matter? Time doesn't matter."

~ Sandra Bullock

Floating In Space

"At night, when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space."

~ Natalie Wood

Subverting Rights

"From the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert your neighbor's rights without striking a dangerous blow at your own."

~ Carl Schurz

The Depressing Side of War

"Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war."

~ Donald Rumsfeld

Miss Stereotyped

"The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It's a girl."

~ Shirley Chisholm

The TV Hearth

"I secretly understood: the primitive appeal of the hearth. Television is -- its irresistible charm -- a fire."

~ John Updike

Real or Not Real

"I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words."

~ Tim Burton

Lack o' Woody

"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy."

~ Woody Allen

Ben Franklin Was Never a Fool

"Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain, and most fools do."

~ Benjamin Franklin

Frank Lloyd's Right

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters."

~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Language Is Courage

"The real language problem: how to bend it shape it, how to let it be our freedom, how to repossess its poisoned wells, how to master the river of words of time of blood: about all that you haven’t got a clue. How hard that struggle, how inevitable the defeat. Nobody’s going to elect me to anything. No power-base, no constituency: just the battle with the words...Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true."

~ Salmon Rushdie

The Modern City

"The modern city is the locus classicus of impossible realities."

~ Salmon Rushdie

Our Truest Responsibility

" Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth."

~ Madeleine L'Engle

Open Books

"Open books are open minds."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

One Long Regret

"Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently."

~Charles Dudley Warner

Sustained Outrage

"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority."

~ Molly Ivans

There Is No Law

"There is no 'law,' there is only power."

~ George Orwell, "Rudyard Kipling"

Only a Fool Fights

"Only a fool fights in a burning house."

~ Klingon proverb

Paul's Government

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul."

~ G. B. Shaw

Wagging the Truth

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

New Truths

"It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and end as superstitions."

~ T. H. Huxley

The Permanent Benefactor

"The man who discovers new knowledge is the permanent benefactor of humanity."

~ Ayn Rand

Are You Genuine?

"Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor.”

~ Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

The Tools of Conquest

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices- to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own- for the children, and the children yet unborn."

~ Rod Serling

What Is Dangerous About Extremists

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists, is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."

~ Robert Kennedy

Come, My Best Friends

"Come, my best friends, my books! and lead me on."

~ Abraham Cowley

It Strikes!

"It strikes! one, two,
Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch,
Thy pulse hath beat enough. Now sleep and rest;
Would thou could'st make the time to do so too;
I'll wind thee up no more."

~ Ben Jonson, Staple of News (act I, sc. 1)

Knaves Starve Not

"Knaves starve not in the land of fools."

~ Charles Churchill

Write For Untermeyer's Sake

"Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always for money."

~ Louis Untermeyer

Religion, Politics, and the Great Pumpkin

"There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin."

~ Charles Schulz (Linus, Peanuts)

Inconspicuous

"He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."

~ Raymond Chandler

Fraud and Falsehood

"Fraud and falsehood are his weak and treacherous allies; and he lurks trembling in the dark, dreading every ray of light, lest it should discover him, and give him up to shame and punishment."

~ Henry Fielding

A Book!

"A book! Oh, rare one! Be not, as in this fangled world, a garment nobler than it covers."

~ William Shakespeare

Equally Wise and Foolish

"Before God we are equally wise and equally foolish."

~ Albert Einstein

Tyranny Absolves All Faith

"Tyranny
Absolves all faith; and who invades our rights,
Howe'er his own commence, can never be
But an usurper."

~ Henry Brooke, Gustavus Vasa (act IV, sc. 1)

The Jewelry of Our Minds

"Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds."

~ Elihu Burritt (1810-1879)

Man Must Have Freedom

"Besides, in this century of the overwhelming triumph of science, the appeal of the cause of human freedom is no longer that it is great and noble; it is essential. It is no greater than the cause of edible food or the cause of effective shelter. Man must have freedom or he will cease to exist as man."

~ Rex Stout (Nero Wolfe in The Black Mountain)

Alternate Your Horses

"A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other. So when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins, and cramp in his mind; a club-foot and a club in his wit; a sour face, and a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in his affectation; or is ground to powder by the vice of his race; he is to rally on his relation to the Universe, which his ruin benefits. Leaving the dæmon who suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures universal benefit by his pain."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Read Deeply

“We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.”

~ Harold Bloom

Not of Them

"Among them, but not of them."

~ Lord Byron, Childe Harold (canto III, st. 113)

Out of the Dead, Cold Ashes

"Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again."

~ John Banister Tabb (1845 - 1909), Evolution

Peace Is the Outcome

"Peace is the outcome of reason."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

Peace Rules

"Peace rules the day, where reason rules the mind."

~ Wilkie (William) Collins, Eclogue II--Hassan (l. 68)

Conquer Your Heart

"Can you walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you fly in the air? You have done no better than a bluebottle. Conquer you heart; then you may become somebody."

~ Abdullah Ansari of Herat
(Sufi master, 1006 - 1089 CE)

Liberty of the Press

"There is no freedom either in civil or ecclesiastical [affairs], but where the liberty of the press is maintained."

~ Matthew Tindal

Dare To Think

"Dare to think for yourself."

~ Voltaire