Quotes & Maxims

The Wisdom of Libraries

2009-02-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

"If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty."

~ Senator JOHN F. KENNEDY, Saturday Review, October 29, 1960, p. 44

Oligarchy or Democracy?

2008-07-25T07:16:00.001-07:00

"You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy, but you cannot have both."

~ Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

Finding Picasso

2008-07-20T11:22:00.001-07:00

"I do not seek. I find."

~ Pablo Picasso

True Teaching

2008-07-20T11:21:00.002-07:00

“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-distrust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciple.”

~Amos Bronson Alcott

Sincere Ignorance and Conscientious Stupidity

2008-07-20T11:21:00.001-07:00

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Kissing Moral Horses

2008-07-20T11:20:00.001-07:00

“In Westerns you were permitted to kiss your horse but never your girl.”

~ Gary Cooper

Never Surrender

2008-07-20T11:19:00.001-07:00

“I never surrendered, because the more you struggle, the more possibilities you have of winning and receiving help. It has always been in the last minutes, when everything seemed lost thast someone came to help me go beyond my limits.”

~ Silver Kane, Dispara, Dispara, Dispara

Apply and Do

2008-07-20T11:17:00.001-07:00

"Knowing is not enough, one must apply. Willing is not enough, one must do."

~ Bruce Lee

No Need For Diplomacy

2008-02-23T08:46:00.000-08:00

“It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy … The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States.”

~ Boutros-Boutros Ghali

Utopian Politics

2008-01-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

"Anyone who deliberately tries to get himself elected to a public office is permanently disqualified from holding one."

~ Sir Thomas More (Utopia)

Wage War

2008-01-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

"My home policy: I wage war; my foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war."

~ Georges Clemenceau (1918)

He Knows Nothing

2008-01-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."

~ George Bernard Shaw

Facts Are Stupid

2008-01-16T10:54:00.000-08:00

"Facts are stupid things."

~ Ronald Reagan

Counting Votes

2008-01-16T10:53:00.001-08:00

"As long as I count the votes what are you going to do about it? Say."

~ William M. "Boss" Tweed

A Tree Is a Tree

2008-01-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

"A tree is a tree. How many more do you need to look at?"

~ Ronald Reagan (1966, opposing the California Redwoods Park)

To Err, to Blame

2008-01-16T10:48:00.001-08:00

"To err is human. To blame someone else is politics."

~ Hubert Humphrey

Mind On Fire

2007-05-11T11:13:00.001-07:00

"Better your mind on fire than your soul."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

The Purpose of Life

2007-04-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

"The purpose of life is to bring forth goodness. Now, in this life."

~ Leo Tolstoy

Equality

2007-04-19T14:57:00.001-07:00

"Equality should be a non-issue. It is a universal right. There is no lesser class of humanity."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

People Are in Revolt

2007-04-17T09:08:00.001-07:00

"People are in revolt against life itself."

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Zinn's Deception

2007-04-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

"The modern liberal state... often uses deception to gain its ends, not so much deception of the foreign enemy, but of its own citizens, who have been taught to trust their leaders."

~ Howard Zinn

The Egg of the Phoenix

2007-03-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix."

~ Christina Baldwin

Music That Misses the Point

2007-03-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

"When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point."

~ Maria Callas (1923-1977), American opera singer.

The Lightness of Sadness

2007-03-27T08:08:00.001-07:00

"Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness."

~ Italo Calvino

Webster's Draft War

2007-03-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

"Where is it written in the Constitution that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or wickedness of government may engage it?"

~ Daniel Webster

This Inward Dwindling

2007-03-19T12:49:00.001-07:00

"Freedom, that he always thought was outward motion, turns out to be this inward dwindling."

~ John Updike, Rabbit Redux.

Wilson Arrives

2007-03-10T09:33:00.001-08:00

"Happiness is not the station we arrive at but the manner by which we arrive."

~ Oliver G. Wilson

Vonnegut's New Knowledge

2007-03-10T09:31:00.000-08:00

"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become."

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Release the Familiar

2007-03-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."

~ Alan Cohen

Change Is the Law of Life

2007-03-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

~ John F. Kennedy

Pruning Natural Abilities

2007-03-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

"Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study."

~ Francis Bacon

Different Possibilities Lead to Remarkable Things

2007-03-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

"Every land, then, presents different possibilities to every set of people that inhabit it. These possibilities are not infinite; there will not be a bronze industry where copper and tin are unprocurable. yet at each successive stage man's geographical environment gives him certain opportunities for alternative decisions. He may select from among these alternatives, conciously or unconciously, a course which leads to remarkable things."

~ Michael Grant, The Ancient Mediterranean

Emerson's Inconsistency

2007-02-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-27T10:04:00.001-08:00

"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

2007-02-27T10:02:00.000-08:00

"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 destructionhis own and that of others."

~ Ayn Rand

Writing Is Easy

2007-02-27T09:59:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-18T08:49:00.000-08:00

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

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

Change Responses

2007-02-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-18T08:44:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-18T08:41:00.000-08:00

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

~ Leo Tolstoy

A Good Leader

2007-02-15T13:38:00.001-08:00

"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

2007-02-15T12:53:00.001-08:00

"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

2007-02-15T12:51:00.000-08:00

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

~ Richard Dawkins

Skewed Perspective

2007-02-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-15T12:46:00.001-08:00

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

~ Douglas Adams

Hell on Earth

2007-02-15T12:44:00.000-08:00

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

~ Aldous Huxley

Never Grow a Wishbone

2007-02-10T08:11:00.000-08:00

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

~ Clementine Paddleford (1900-1967)

Never Assume

2007-02-10T08:10:00.001-08:00

"Never assume the obvious is true."

~ William Safire

Government Right and Wrong

2007-02-10T08:08:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-10T08:07:00.001-08:00

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

~ Aesop

Practice What You Preach

2007-02-10T08:02:00.002-08:00

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

~ Thomas Fortenberry

The Big Long Sleep

2007-02-10T08:02:00.001-08:00

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

~ Roger Bagula

It Is the Same

2007-02-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-10T07:52:00.001-08:00

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

~ Thomas Fortenberry

Coming Down, Rising Up

2007-02-03T06:41:00.001-08:00

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

~ Bella Abzug

Failure Is a Condiment

2007-02-03T06:36:00.000-08:00

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

~Truman Capote

Once a Slave

2007-02-02T10:35:00.000-08:00

"Once a slave, always a Spartacus."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

Must Be Filled With Fear

2007-02-01T19:16:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-02-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

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

~ Blaise Pascal

A Conspiracy So Monstrous

2007-02-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

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

~ J. Edgar Hoover

Mud & Manure

2007-01-26T13:15:00.000-08:00

"The stuff of which the future society will be made is Man himself and you cannot build a marble temple with a mixture of mud and manure."

~ Eugene O'Neill

The Poetry of Nature

2007-01-26T13:14:00.001-08:00

"It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us."

~ John Ruskin

Your Heart's Desire

2007-01-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."

~ George Bernard Shaw

Befriend Yourself

2007-01-26T11:36:00.001-08:00

"If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone."

~ Maxwell Maltz (1944-, Canadian-born American plastic surgeon, author of "Psycho-Cybernetics")

No Slacking

2007-01-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

"Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility and commitment."

~ H. Ross Perot, American Businessman/Politician

Newness

2007-01-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

"Americans have been conditioned to respect newness, whatever it costs them."

~ John Updike

The Impure Rust of Inaction

2007-01-10T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Set It on Fire

2007-01-09T14:49:00.000-08:00

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so set it on fire."

~ Thomas Fortenberry

Brigitte Bardot's Photograph

2006-12-18T12:45:00.000-08:00

"A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you."

~ Brigitte Bardot

Catherine Zeta-Jones Looks Like a Woman to Me

2006-12-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

"I like women who look like women. I hated grunge. No one's more feminist than me, but you don't have to look as if you don't give a - you know. You can be smart, bright, and attractive aesthetically to others - and to yourself."

~ Catherine Zeta-Jones

Free Our Minds

2006-12-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

"A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable."

~ Carl Sagan

The Purpose of Intelligence

2006-12-10T10:54:00.000-08:00

"The purpose of intelligence is to eliminate lies and establish the truth. However, intelligence under the sway of passion, becomes the lie's defender. It becomes not only perverted but ill, losing its ability to distingusih truth from lies, good from bad. Every kind of lie or misconception, no matter where it is found, should be dealt with, as there are no harmless or useful lies."

~ Leo Tolstoy

More Liberty, Not Less

2006-12-10T09:18:00.000-08:00

"Apparently there are some of us who cannot see that the only future for America is one that cherishes the freedoms won in the past, one in which we vanquish bad ideas with better ones, and in which we fight for liberty by having more liberty, not less."

~ Keith Olbermann

No Peace and Quiet

2006-12-09T11:03:00.000-08:00

"I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet."

~ Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

Nose Dive From Uplift

2006-12-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

"Just as soon as the uplifters get a country reformed it slips into a nose dive."

~ Don Marquis

The Truth

2006-12-09T10:56:00.000-08:00

"I cannot comprehend how any man can want anything but the truth."

~ Marcus Aurelius

Facts, Not Fiction

2006-12-09T10:55:00.000-08:00

"To those seaching for truth -- not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction -- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope."

~ Thomas Edison

Virtuous People Are Great People

2006-12-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

"No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.”

~ Samuel Johnson

Guided By Ideas

2006-12-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

"The human race is guided by its own ideas, and only by its ideas. If thought were left perfectly free from ban of legislative or ecclesiastical censor, the best thoughts would as naturally prevail over the worst as the best seeds of the forest naturally triumph over the worst seeds."

~ Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Women in the Early Christian Ministry

Go Against the Flow

2006-12-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."

~ G. K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man

I Object

2006-12-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

"I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose."

~ Spock, Star Trek, "The Squire of Gothos."

Poetry Heals

2006-11-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason."

~ Novalis

Rilke's Love

2006-11-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-11-28T10:42:00.000-08:00

"A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Edison on Religious Education

2006-11-28T10:39:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-11-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-11-28T10:32:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-11-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

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

~ Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution

Seek a Newer World

2006-11-15T10:44:00.000-08:00

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

~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Weapons Shape the Plan

2006-11-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-11-14T01:56:00.000-08:00

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

~ G. K. Chesterton

Eco's Library

2006-11-13T19:15:00.001-08:00

"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

2006-11-13T19:00:00.000-08:00

"Beware the man of one book."

~ St. Thomas Aquinas

Just Be Tolstoy

2006-11-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

"If you want to be happy, be.”

~ Leo Tolstoy

Al Gores the Critics

2006-11-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

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

~ Al Gore

Quayle's Quip

2006-11-10T23:58:00.000-08:00

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

~ Former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle

The Linux Philosophy

2006-11-10T23:57:00.000-08:00

"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?

2006-11-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

"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

2006-11-10T22:31:00.000-08:00

"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."