Emerson's Inconsistency

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- ` Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood .' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance", 1841

Swami's Teacher

"Life is our teacher. Life communicates with us all the time and it is a lesson to see how life continuously have led me to the people I need to met, to the situations I need to experience, and to the places I need to be. There has never been any real reason to worry since all small individual rivers are already on their way to the ocean, to the Whole. It is not about swimming, it is about relaxing and to float with the river in a basic trust that life already leads towards the sea of consciousness, towards the Whole."

~ Swami Dhyan Giten

The Emotional Ayn Rand

"An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions —provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows —or makes it a point to discover— the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow— then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others."

~ Ayn Rand

Writing Is Easy

"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."

~ Gene Fowler

The Power of Simplicity

"The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget what's important and what's not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. And as the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what's going on outside."

- Robert Stuberg

Fear Not the Future

"Fear not the future, weep not for the past."

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Revolt of Islam, Canto XI, st. 18

Change Responses

"If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people."

~ Timothy Leary

Give 'Em What They Want

"It's like you give men what they want and they don't want it anymore."

~ Olivia Honey (character in the 1989 film She-Devil)

Tolstoy's Undeniable Truth

"To accept ancient religious legends as undeniable truth can be a source of suffering for many people."

~ Leo Tolstoy

A Good Leader

"A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, 'We did this ourselves.'"

~ Laozi

A Better Place

"Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them."

~ Richard Dawkins

Opening Minds, Dropping Brains

"By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out."

~ Richard Dawkins

Skewed Perspective

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."

~ Douglas Adams

The Awe of Understanding

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."

~ Douglas Adams

Hell on Earth

"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."

~ Aldous Huxley

Never Grow a Wishbone

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."

~ Clementine Paddleford (1900-1967)

Never Assume

"Never assume the obvious is true."

~ William Safire

Government Right and Wrong

"If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong."

~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Wishes Granted

"We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified."

~ Aesop

Practice What You Preach

"We need more religions that practice what they preach."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

The Big Long Sleep

"Science and knowledge ends only when a culture takes the big long sleep."

~ Roger Bagula

It Is the Same

"It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we don't know at all that it is the same with others."

~ Sheldon VanAuken, "A Severe Mercy"

Just Murder

"There are no just wars. Murder is not just. It is just murder."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

Coming Down, Rising Up

"We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room."

~ Bella Abzug

Failure Is a Condiment

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."

~Truman Capote

Once a Slave

"Once a slave, always a Spartacus."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

Must Be Filled With Fear

"Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order."

~ Polybius

All Man's Miseries

"All man's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room
alone."

~ Blaise Pascal

A Conspiracy So Monstrous

"The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists."

~ J. Edgar Hoover