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KGB ReportObservations by and for the vaguely disenchanted.
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Tempting the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. ISSN: 1525-898X |
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"Barkes writes like he speaks... incoherently."
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At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do
not cease to be insipid.
-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
(October 25, 1844 - August 25, 1900)
Categories: Quotes of the day
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The White House announced that Dr. Oz will serve on President Trump's Council on Sports
Fitness and nutrition. This after Trump was turned down by Doctors Phil, Dre, No, Doom,
Strange, J, and Zhivago.
-Seth Meyers
Categories: Quotes of the day, Seth Meyers
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Ani DiFranco (b. Angela Maria DiFranco; September :23, 1970) is an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, poet, songwriter and businesswoman. She has released more than 20 albums and is widely considered a feminist icon. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Actually I don't know if honesty is a strength or some kind of weakness.
And you can't really place blame, 'cuz blame is much too messy. Some is bound to get on you while you're placing it on me.
Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.
Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.
I have earned my disillusionment.
If you don't ask the right question, every answer seems wrong.
If you want to challenge the system, don't go to bed with it.
Life is a sleezy stranger who looks vaguely familiar, flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar.
Love makes me feel so dumb.
The fundamental imbalance that is behind all of the other social diseases is patriarchy.
There's a paradox in every paradigm.
Those who call the shots are never in the line of fire.
We barely have time to react in this world, let alone rehearse.
You've decided to love me for eternity and I'm still deciding who I want to be today.
Categories: Ani DiFranco, Quotes of the day
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Fay Weldon CBE FRSL (b. September 22, 1931) is an English author, essayist and playwright, whose work has been associated with feminism. In her fiction, Weldon typically portrays contemporary women who find themselves trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of British society. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A 'weakness,' I now realize, is nothing but a strength not properly developed.
A woman's body works as if it knew something she didn't, and does not have her best interests at heart.
Agree with your accusers, loudly and clearly. They will shut up sooner.
Ambition will, and should, always outstrip achievement.
Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.
Because one cause is bad does not make the opposing cause good.
By and large, nothing is as bad as you fear, or as good as you hope.
Every time you open your wardrobe, you look at your clothes and you wonder what you are going to wear. What you are really saying is 'Who am I going to be today?'
Food is the supremest of pleasures.
Guilt to motherhood is like grapes to wine.
Hell is not other people. Hell is no other people.
I am an ordinary person, but carried to extremes.
I am not cynical. I am just old. I know what is going to happen next.
If infinity is as they describe it, all things are not just possible but in the end certain.
If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens.
If you put a woman in a man's position, she will be more efficient, but no more kind.
Instinct' usually just means our conditioning to believe this or believe that, without thinking to investigate.
Marriage is what happens when one at least of the partners doesn't want the other to get away.
Memory is so selective; wishful thinking presses it into service all the time.
Men are irrelevant. Women are happy or unhappy, fulfilled or unfulfilled, and it has nothing to do with men.
Moaning men are no fun.
Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth; left to itself, it sweeps in like the tide.
Of course you have to believe in destiny; that everything is sheer chance is an intolerable notion.
People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever.
People give us credit only for what we ourselves believe.
Preserve your peace of mind. There is not much time; all things end in death. Do not lament the past too much, or fear the future too acutely, ot waste too much energy on other peoples' woes, in case the present dissolves altogether.
Pride is what you can afford or think you can afford.
Prudence says one thing, desire says another, and I'd rather go with desire any time.
The prophets of doom, in my experience, are generally ignored and usually right.
There seems to be a general overall pattern in most lives, that nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then all of a sudden everything happens.
There was no such thing as defeat if you didn't accept it.
What makes women happy? Nothing, for more than ten minutes at a time, so stop worrying.
Words are not simple things: they take unto themselves, as they have through time, power and meaning.
Categories: Fay Weldon, Quotes of the day
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Barbara Brown Taylor (b. September 21, 1951) is an American Episcopal priest, professor, author and theologian and is one of the United States' best known preachers. In 2014, Time magazine placed her in its annual Time 100 list of most influential people in the world. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Baptism and narcissism cancel each other out.
Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.
Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.
Every major spiritual tradition in world has something significant to say about importance of paying attention.
Every one of us will change the world, whether we mean to or not.
Human beings never behave more badly toward one another than when they believe they are protecting God.
Humanity can be pretty stinky.
I have found things while I was lost that I might never have discovered if I had stayed on the path.
I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.
I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.
I think we'd like life to be like a train, but it turns out to be a sailboat.
If outer darkness is the cloud where we store our inner fears, how much will the real world suffer from our collective fear of the dark? How much will we pay to fuel the engines that keep our world lit, rather than doing what is necessary to feel safer inside ourselves?
It does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see the least.
Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix.
Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are.
No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it.
Once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices.
Salvation happens every time someone with a key uses it to open a door he could lock instead.
The best way to grow empathy for those who are lost is to know what it means to be lost yourself.
The deep reason we need one another is to save us from believing in our own self sufficiency.
The great wisdom traditions of the world all recognize that the main impediment to living a life of meaning is being self- absorbed.
The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.
There is a light that shines in the darkness, which is only visible there.
There will always be people who run from every kind of pain and suffering, just as there will always be religions that promise to put them to sleep.
To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good.
To lie flat on the ground with the breath knocked out of you is to find a solid resting place.
We are all so busy constructing zones of safety that keep breaking down, that we hardly notice where all the suffering is coming from.
We are never more in danger of stumbling than when we think we know where we are going.
When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, 'Here, I guess, since this is where I am.'
Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.
Categories: Barbara Brown Taylor, Quotes of the day
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Annie Besant (October 1, 1847 - September 20, 1933) was a prominent British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.
A people can prosper under a very bad government and suffer under a very good one, if in the first case the local administration is effective and in the second it is inefficient.
An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.
Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.
Celibacy is not natural to men or to women; all bodily needs require their legitimate satisfaction, and celibacy is a disregard of natural law.
Every person, every race, every nation, has its own particular keynote which it brings to the general chord of life and of humanity.
Everything which is of strife makes the vision of the truth more difficult; everything which tends to controversy makes the grasping of the truth harder.
Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.
'God' is always the equivalent of 'I do not know.'
It is not monogamy when there is one legal wife, and mistresses out of sight.
It matters enormously what you think. If you think falsely, you will act mistakenly; if you think basely, your conduct will suit your thinking.
Knowledge is essential to conquest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.
Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.
Men are at every stage of evolution, from the most barbarous to the most developed; men are found of lofty intelligence, but also of the most unevolved mentality; in one place there is a highly developed and complex civilization, in another a crude and simple polity.
Morality is the science of harmonious relations between intelligent beings.
Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.
No circumstances can ever make or mar the unfolding of the spiritual life. Spirituality does not depend upon the environment; it depends upon one's attitude towards life.
No durable things are built on violent passion. Nature grows her plants in silence and in darkness, and only when they have become strong do they put their heads above the ground.
No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.
No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they who have suffered are able to save.
Not out of right practice comes right thinking, but out of right thinking comes right practice.
Quick condemnation of all that is not ours, of views with which we disagree, of ideas that do not attract us, is the sign of a narrow mind, of an uncultivated intelligence.
Refusal to believe unless proof is given is a rational position, denial of all outside our own limited experience is absurd.
Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.
Strange indeed would it be if all the space around us be empty, mere waste void, and the inhabitants of Earth the only forms in which intelligence could clothe itself.
The birth of science rang the death-knell of an arbitrary and constantly interposing Supreme Power.
The man of meditation is the man who wastes no time, scatters no energy, misses no opportunity.
The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution.
There can be no wise politics without thought beforehand.
There is no birthright in the white skin that it shall say that wherever it goes, to any nation, amongst any people, there the people of the country shall give way before it, and those to whom the land belongs shall bow down and become its servants.
There is no life without consciousness; there is no consciousness without life.
This coarse and insulting way of regarding woman, as though they existed merely to be the safety-valves of men's passions, and that the best men were above the temptation of loving them, has been the source of unnumbered evils.
Thought creates character.
When a man, a woman, see their little daily tasks as integral portions of the one great work, they are no longer drudges but co- workers with God.
Where love rules, laws are not needed.
You should always take a religion at its best and not at its worst, from its highest teachings and not from the lowest practices of some of its adherents.
Categories: Annie Besant, Quotes of the day
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Bergen Baldwin Evans (September 19, 1904 – February 4, 1978) was a Northwestern University professor of English, and a television host. He received a George Foster Peabody Award in 1957 for excellence in broadcasting for his CBS TV series The Last Word. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.
An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis.
For the most part our leaders are merely following out in front; they do but marshal us the way that we are going.
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think.
Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments.
Legislators who are of even average intelligence stand out among their colleagues.
Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
Most civilized lives are measured out with coffee spoons.
Stoicism is the wisdom of madness and cynicism the madness of wisdom.
The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical.... Any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.
The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.
There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led.
We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.
We see what we want to see, and observation conforms to hypothesis.
Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.
Words are one of our chief means of adjusting to all the situations of life. The better control we have of our words, the more successful our adjustment will be.
Categories: Bergen Evans, Quotes of the day
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Christopher Lynn "Chris" "The Hedge" Hedges (b. September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, activist, author, and Presbyterian minister. Hedges is also known as the best-selling author of several books including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002)— a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction— Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), Death of the Liberal Class (2010), the New York Times best seller, written with cartoonist Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), and his most recent Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt (2015). (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies.
A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.
Battling evil, cruelty, and injustice allows us to retain our identity, a sense of meaning, and ultimately our freedom.
Economics dominates politics- and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.
It is better to be an outcast, a stranger in one’s own country, than an outcast from one’s self. It is better to see what is about to befall us and to resist than to retreat into the fantasies embraced by a nation of the blind.
It is one of the great ironies of corporate control that the corporate state needs the abilities of intellectuals to maintain power, yet outside of this role it refuses to permit intellectuals to think or function independently.
No real journalist makes $5 million a year... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.
One needs solitude and quiet to think. The cacophony of modern culture is designed to make that impossible.
Patriotic duty and the disease of nationalism lure us to deny our common humanity.
The arts often realize human truths well before other branches of human endeavor.
The charade of politics is to make voters think that the personal narrative of the candidate affects the operation of the corporate state. It doesn't really matter on the fundamental issues whether the President is Republican or Democratic.
The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment.
The greatest danger that besets us does not come from believers or atheists; it comes from those who, under the guise of religion, science or reason, imagine that we can free ourselves from the limitations of human nature and perfect the human species.
The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism.
The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal.
The press, or at least most of it, has lost the passion, the outrage, and the sense of mission that once drove reporters to defy authority and tell the truth.
The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.
The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.
The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief.
There are always people willing to commit unspeakable human atrocity in exchange for a little power and privilege.
There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege, it will always be at the expense of truth and justice.
Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.
Violence is a disease, a disease that corrupts all who use it regardless of the cause.
War is addictive. Indeed, it is the most potent narcotic unleashed by mankind.
War is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of idealists by cynics, and of troops by politicians.
War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death.
We live in imaginary, virtual worlds created by corporations that profit from our deception.
We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.
Categories: Chris Hedges, Quotes of the day
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Sir Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRS (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher and professor. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence.
All things living are in search of a better world.
Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.
But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate.
By reluctance to criticize some of it, we may help to destroy it all.
Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realized.
Freedom is not a supplier who delivers goods to our door. Democracy does not ensure that anything is accomplished- certainly not an economic miracle.
I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous- from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows.
If God had wanted to put everything into the universe from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change. But he seems to have thought that a live universe with events unexpected even by Himself would be more interesting than a dead one.
If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.
It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy...
It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it.
It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
Our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship.
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification- the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.
Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.
The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong.
Theories are nets cast to catch what we call 'the world': to rationalize, to explain, and to master it. We endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and finer.
There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions.
There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.
True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.
We are social creatures to the inmost center of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.
We do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things- and above all on ourselves.
We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism.
Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.
You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy', and the other 'tyranny.'.
You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.
Categories: Karl Popper, Quotes of the day
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Robert Harold Schuller (September 16, 1926 – April 2, 2015) was an American Christian televangelist, pastor, motivational speaker, and author. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Again and again, the impossible problem is solved when we see that the problem is only a tough decision waiting to be made.
Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.
Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly.
Every problem has a limited life span.
Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet.
Faith is reacting positively to a negative situation.
If there exists no possibility of failure, then victory is meaningless.
It's impossible to fail completely and it's impossible to succeed perfectly.
Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.
Never bring the problem solving stage into the decision making stage. Otherwise, you surrender yourself to the problem rather than the solution.
Never underestimate your problem or your ability to deal with it.
Obstacles are seldom the same size tomorrow as they are today.
Some people are at the top of the ladder, some are in the middle, still more are at the bottom, and a whole lot more don't even know there is a ladder.
Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.
The good news is that the bad news can be turned into good news when you change your attitude.
The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.
Tough times never last, but tough people do.
What appears to be the end of the road may simply be a bend in the road.
What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?
When you can't solve the problem, manage it.
You will never win if you never begin.
Categories: Quotes of the day, Robert H. Schuller
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William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 - March 8, 1930) served as the 27th President of the United States (1909–1913) and as the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft chief justice, a position in which he served until a month before his death. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A government is for the benefit of all the people.
A man never knows exactly how the child of his brain will strike other people.
A system in which we may have an enforced rest from legislation for two years is not bad.
Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.
Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents- but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea.
Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.
Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.
Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man.
It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk.
No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.
One cannot always be sure of the truth of what one hears if he happens to be President of the United States.
Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.
Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken with out developing new evils requiring new remedies.
The cheerful loser is a sort of winner.
The intoxication of power rapidly sobers off in the knowledge of its restrictions and under the prompt reminder of an ever-present and not always considerate press, as well as the kindly suggestions that not infrequently come from Congress.
The world is not going to be saved by legislation.
Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them.
Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.
We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.
We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.
We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.
Categories: Quotes of the day, William Howard Taft
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Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (September 14, 1934 = April 24, 2002) was born in Queens, New York City. Her parents were first-generation Americans; her grandparents were immigrants from Calabria in Southern Italy. The turmoil of her childhood would have a strong influence on her writing. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
All is waiting and all is work; all is change and all is permanence.
All our loves are contained in all our other loves.
Belief in the absence of illusions is itself an illusion.
Belief sometimes precedes understanding; faith sometimes precedes scientific evidence.
Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.
Children hold us hostage; they represent our commitment to the future.
Desire creates its own object.
Facts mean nothing to wounded feelings.
Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
Food is my drug of choice.
For the unfashionably bulgy, life is a series of small humiliations.
Great unhappiness is incompatible with the belief that it will ever end.
I made the mistake of thinking that if you add up the past, you sum up the future; I forgot how frequently life astonishes us.
I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly. Tuna-fish casserole is at least as real as corporate stock.
If I wanted a new belief system, I'd choose to believe in God- He's been in business longer than Werner, and He has better music. (on Werner Erhard, founder of est)
Illness is regarded as a crime, and crime is regarded as illness.
In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.
Insanity is a lack of proportion.
It's perfectly possible to hate one's fat and to love one's body at the same time.
It's the perpetually unfinished quality of housework that makes it oppressive- it never ends, like bad psychoanalysis, or a dream interrupted. It is paradoxically true that it is exactly this daily re-creation of the world that lends housekeeping its nobility and romance.
Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: There are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
Nothing is more democratic, less judgmental, than water. Water doesn't care whether flesh is withered or fresh; it caresses aged flesh and firm flesh with equal love.
Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.
Porches are America's lost rooms.
Silence is the garment of light.
The gardens of our childhood are all beautiful.
The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and the lesser good.
The past can be tamed and controlled.
The past is a sorry country.
There are no inanimate objects.
There are no original ideas. There are only original people.
There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.
There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.
To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort.
To sleep is an act of faith.
Unhappiness makes beggars or accountants of us all.
Violence is its own anesthetist. The numbness it induces feels very much like calm.
Weather creates character.
What you desire you call into being.
Categories: Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Quotes of the day
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Óscar Arias Sánchez (b. September 13, 1940 in Heredia, Costa Rica) was President of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2010. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end the Central American crisis. He is also a recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2003, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Criminal Court's Trust Fund for Victims. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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I cannot accept that to be realistic means to tolerate misery, violence and hate.
I do not believe that the hungry man should be treated as subversive for expressing his suffering.
I shall never accept that the law can be used to justify tragedy, to keep things as they are, to make us abandon our ideas of a different world.
It is essential that justice be done, and it is equally vital that justice not be confused with revenge, for the two are wholly different.
Justice and peace can only thrive together, never apart.
Law is the path of liberty, and must as such open the way to progress for everyone.
Nuclear arms kill many people all at once, but other weapons kill many people, little by little, every day, everywhere in the world.
Only peace can write the new history.
Peace consists, very largely, in the fact of desiring it with all one's soul.
Peace is not a dream; it is hard work, and there is nothing naive, glamorous or simplistic about it.
Peace is not the product of a victory or a command. It has no finishing line, no final deadline, no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions.
The effect of one good-hearted person is incalculable.
The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
The most deadly disease truly is the failure of the heart.
War, and the preparation for war, are the two greatest obstacles to human progress, fostering a vicious cycle of arms buildups, violence and poverty.
When hope is born, it is necessary to unite courage with wisdom. Only then is it possible to avoid violence.
Categories: Oscar Arias Sanchez, Quotes of the day
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William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American short story writer. O. Henry's short stories are known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization, and surprise endings. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best.
Beauty is Nature in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples, the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter, and the 'round' of drinks.
Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.
Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.
If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life.
If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.
Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving.
No friendship is an accident.
Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's.
The only rule for writing short stories is that there is no rule.
The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.
There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other.
There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age; youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.
Those whom we first love we seldom marry.
We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.
You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife until she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on a shanty of a consul in a foreign town.
Categories: O. Henry, Quotes of the day
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David Michael Carr (September 8, 1956 - February 12, 2015) was an American writer, columnist, and author. He wrote the Media Equation column and covered culture for The New York Times. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Civilians are equally bewildering to the addict. I've watched people drink a glass and a half of wine and push away the rest. What exactly is the point of that?
Drugs, it seems to me, do not conjure demons; they reveal them.
End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame.
I became a single parent at a time when nobody would trust me with a ficus plant. Other than that, I've been sort of a model citizen.
I now inhabit a life I don’t deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn’t end soon.
If you dumped every reporter who ever sent a snide message or talked smack in private, there would be nothing but crickets chirping in newsrooms all over America.
if your head is in your phone, the scenery never changes.
It's more important that you fit in before you stick out.
Memory becomes not a faculty but a coconspirator, a tool for constructing the self that we show the world.
Necessity is a mother.
Regardless of how much blather you hear about the two parties bickering in Washington, the Beltway is really a monoculture that accommodates the two poles of a debate but very little in between.
Some of the burdens we carry include false weight, perhaps to make up for all the horrible stuff we actually did and forgot.
The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, 'Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to Wal- Mart.'
The web is kind of a self-cleaning oven and what you have up there can grow more accurate as time goes by. That's never true of print. It's always there for the ages.
There is something terribly existential in all of this: Work all of your life to scratch out a piece of suburban idyll, and then work some more so you can afford to get the hell away from it.
To be an addict is to be something of a cognitive acrobat. You spread versions of yourself around, giving each person the truth he or she needs- you need, actually- to keep them at a remove.
Truth is singular and lies are plural, but history- the facts of what happened is both immutable and mostly unknowable.
We tell ourselves that we lie to protect others, but the self usually comes out looking damn good in the process.
When memory is called to answer, it often answers back with deception.
When people fear for their futures, they like to gather in a dark room and stare at a screen, holding hands against the gloom.
Who you are and what you have been through should give you a prism on life that belongs to you only.
You can have the best search function in the world, but if it is crawling across a cesspool, it is not going to bring back much of anything interesting.
Keep in mind that when public figures get in trouble for something they said, it is usually not because they misspoke, but because they accidentally told the truth.
Facebook is a bit like that big dog galloping toward you in the park. More often than not, it’s hard to tell whether he wants to play with you or eat you.
Keep typing until it turns into writing.
Categories: David Carr, Quotes of the day
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Elizabeth I (September 7, 1533 - March 24, 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from November 17, 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, the childless Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing.
A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.
A good face is the best letter of recommendation.
A meal of bread, cheese and beer constitutes the perfect food.
A strength to harm is perilous in the hand of an ambitious head.
Affection! Affection is false.
All my possessions for a moment of time. (last words)
Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
Brass shines as fair to the ignorant as gold to the goldsmiths.
Chastity is the ermine of woman's soul.
Do not tell secrets to those whose faith and silence you have not already tested.
Eyes of youth have sharp sight but commonly not so deep as those of elder age.
Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness nor a lack of faith: it is the price of love.
I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.
It is good to jest, but not to make a trade of jesting.
It is hard to find beauty in the art of self expression.
Life is for living and working at. If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is in yourself.
Men fight wars. Women win them.
Prosperity provideth, but adversity proveth friends.
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy.
The end crowneth the work.
The stone often recoils on the head of the thrower.
Those who appear the most sanctified are the worst.
The past cannot be cured.
When we hang on to resentments, we poison ourselves.
Where minds differ and opinions swerve there is scant a friend in that company.
There is no marvel in a woman learning to speak, but there would be in teaching her to hold her tongue.
Categories: Elizabeth I of England, Quotes of the day
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A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely
foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
-Douglas
Adams
Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are
better than you think.
-T. Harv Eker
Do not underestimate the power of The Force.
-George Lucas
Don't underestimate the power of being underestimated.
-Tim Fargo
Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along,
listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.
-A.A.
Milne
Friendly cynics and fierce enemies alike often underestimate or ignore
the strong thread of moral purpose which runs through the fabric of
American history.
-Lyndon B. Johnson
Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe
whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.
-Theodore Dreiser
Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private
needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't
underestimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care
of social needs.
-George Soros
Never underestimate the corrective lens that is sentimentality.
-Sarah
Vowell
Never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe.
-Claud
Cockburn
Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they
already know.
-Enrico Fermi
Never underestimate the power of a lot of stupid people working in the
same company.
-Karen Boucher
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
-Robert A.
Heinlein
Never underestimate the power of psychosis.
-Variously attributed
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
-Variously
attributed
Never underestimate your adversary, not even in a snowball fight.
-J.P.
Donleavy
Never underestimate your listener's intelligence, or overestimate you
listener's information.
-Eric Sevareid
No one in this world, as far as I know.... has ever lost money by
underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
-H.L.
Mencken
Of course most people underestimate the warrior characteristics of the
Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples anyway. It takes a heap of piety to keep
a Viking from wanting to go sack a city.
-Jerry Pournelle
Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that
most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year- and
underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!
-Tony Robbins
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
-Henry
Adams
There's a persistent tendency for us to very seriously underestimate how
much design has gone into our brains in the course of our beloved Gaia's
yottaflop parallel computation running on a quintillion processors for
several billion years.
-Rudy Rucker
They misunderestimated me.
-George W. Bush
Those you say they give the public what it wants begin by
underestimating public taste and end by debauching it.
-T.S. Eliot
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a
listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all
of which have the potential to turn a life around.
-Leo Buscaglia
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years
and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let
yourself be lulled into inaction.
-Bill Gates
Categories: Quotes of the day, Underestimation
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Mary Renault (September 4, 1905 - December 13, 1983), born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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Tell a man what he may not sing and he is still half free; even all free, if he never wanted to sing it. But tell him what he must sing, take up his time with it so that his true voice cannot sound even in secret- there, I have seen is slavery.
A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.
All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.
But courage without conduct is the virtue of a robber, or a tyrant.
Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared.
Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.
Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.
Half the world's troubles come from men not being trained to resent a fallacy as much as an insult.
How can the people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown?
In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
It is a fact that you can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.
It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly.
It is better to learn war early from friends, than late from enemies.
It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.
Longing performs all things.
Never destroy without thought your enemy's pretenses; they are usually your best weapon against him.
Often beauty grows dull or common when speech breaks the mask.
One must live as if it would be forever, and as if one might die each moment. Always both at once.
The rightness of a thing isn't determined by the amount of courage it takes.
There is nothing like despair to make one throw oneself upon the gods.
There is only one kind of shock worse than the totally unexpected: the expected for which one has refused to prepare.
To crave revenge is to fall down before one's enemy and eat dust at his feet. What worse can we let him do to us? In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.
To hate excellence is to hate the gods.
What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence; the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?
When we serve the great, they are our destiny.
Categories: Mary Renault, Quotes of the day
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Loren Eiseley (September 3, 1907 - July 9, 1977) was an American anthropologist, educator, philosopher, and natural science writer, who taught and published books from the 1950s through the 1970s. He received many honorary degrees and was a fellow of multiple professional societies. At his death, he was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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As for men, those myriad little detached ponds with their own swarming corpuscular life, what were they but a way that water has of going about beyond the reach of rivers?
Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man.
Each one of us is a statistical impossibility around which hover a million other lives that were never destined to be born.
Every man contains within himself a ghost continent.
Evolution has to be lived forward.
If it should turn out that we have mishandled our own lives as several civilizations before us have done, it seems a pity that we should involve the violet and the tree frog in our departure.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.
In the desert, an old monk had once advised a traveler, the voices of God and the Devil are scarcely distinguishable.
It has been asserted that we are destined to know the dark beyond the stars before we comprehend the nature of our own journey.
It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe. Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in retreat.
It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man.
Life may exist in yonder dark, but it will not wear the shape of man.
Like the herd animals we are, we sniff warily at the strange one among us.
Man is always marveling at what he has blown apart, never at what the universe has put together, and this is his limitation.
Many of us who walk to and fro upon our usual tasks are prisoners drawing mental maps of escape.
Modern man lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present.
One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye other than human.
Seek out the sunshine. It is a simple prescription. Avoid the darkness.
The future is neither ahead nor behind, on one side or another. Nor is it dark or light. It is contained within ourselves; its evil and good are perpetually within us.
The journey is difficult, immense. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.
The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.
The plan is not what you think.
We are one of many appearances of the thing called Life; we are not its perfect image, for it has no perfect image except Life, and life is multitudinous and emergent in the stream of time.
We cannot pluck a flower witout disturbing a star.
We think we learn from teachers, and we sometimes do. But the teachers are not always to be found in school or in great laboratories. Sometimes what we learn depends upon our own powers of insight.
Categories: Loren Eiseley, Quotes of the day
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A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. Live long and prosper.
-Leonard Nimoy
Life is like a 10 speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. (In
the comic strip Peanuts).
-Charles M. Schulz
Life is like a B-grade movie. You don't want to leave in the middle of
it, but you don't want to see it again.
-Ted Turner
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
-Variously
attributed
Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it.
-Variously
attributed
Life is like a camel; you can make it do anything except back up.
-Marcelene
Cox
Life is like a cobweb, not an organization chart.
-H. Ross Perot
Life is like a corn maze. Sometimes you just sit down in the middle of
it and burst into tears.
-Ted Travelstead
Life is like a dog sled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery
never changes.
-Lewis Grizzard
Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents
determinism; the way you play it is free will.
-Jawaharlal Nehru
Life is like a hot bath. It feels good while you're in it, but the
longer you stay, the more wrinkled you get.
-Jim Davis
Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe
it only from the vantage point of distance.
-Charles A. Lindbergh
Life is like a library owned by the author. In it are a few books which
he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him.
-Harry
Emerson Fosdick
Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the
faster it goes.
-Andy Rooney
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends upon what you put
into it.
-Tom Lehrer
Life is like an analogy.
-Variously attributed
Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and
sometimes you weep.
-Carl Sandburg
Life is like an oven. It burns my buns. (From the comic strip Maxine).
-John
Wagner
Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was
going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then
being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
-Joseph
Campbell
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument
as one goes on.
-Samuel Butler (Novelist, 1835-1902)
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
-Albert
Einstein
Life is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you
can't erase it.
-E.B. White
Categories: Life is like..., Quotes of the day
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A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people
are still thinking.
-Jerry Seinfeld
A conclusion is simply the place where someone decided to stop thinking.
-Variously
attributed
A good listener is usually thinking about something else.
-Frank
McKinney (Kin) Hubbard
A king can stand people's fighting, but he can't last long if people
start thinking.
-Will Rogers
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial
appearance of being right.
-Thomas Paine
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
believe everything positively stinks.
-Lew Col
A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move
toward higher levels.
-Albert Einstein
All thinking men are atheists.
-Ernest Hemingway
An ethic isn't a fact you can look up. It's a way of thinking.
-Theodore
Sturgeon
An expert is a man who has stopped thinking- he knows!
-Frank
Lloyd Wright
And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about
the beginning, it's the end.
-Junot Diaz
Are we thinking here, or is this just so much pointing and clicking?
-Variously
attributed
As long as you're going to be thinking anyway, think big.
-Donald
Trump
At age 20, we worry about what others think of us. At 40, we don't care
what they think of us. At 60, we discover they haven't been thinking of
us at all.
-Ann Landers
Balance your thoughts with action. If you spend too much time thinking
about a thing, you'll never get it done.
-Bruce Lee
Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're thinking,.
-Frank
Loesser
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
-Thomas
Szasz
Determine to do some thinking for yourself. Don't live entirely upon the
thoughts of others. Don't be an automaton.
-James Cash Penney
Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.
-Malcolm S.
Forbes
Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he
is thinking.
-Oswald Chambers
Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag
about.
-Bill Maher
Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion,
rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as
individuals and about the good of the world.
-Tenzin Gyatso (The
14th Dalai Lama)
I always have a quotation for everything- it saves original thinking.
-Dorothy
L. Sayers
I can't concentrate when I'm thinking.
-Yogi Berra
I suspect our human 'thinking processes' often 'break down,' but you
rarely notice anything's wrong, because your systems so quickly switch
you to think in different ways, while the systems that failed are
repaired or replaced.
-Marvin Minsky
I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state appointed
psychiatrist is our 'friend.'.
-Jack Handey
I was going to buy a copy of 'The Power of Positive Thinking,' and then
I thought: what the hell good would that do?
-Ronnie Shakes
I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to
go to summer school.
-Peter De Vries
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box
when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
-Terry
Pratchett
I'm a firm believer in anxiety and the power of negative thinking.
-Gertrude
Berg
If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
-George
S. Patton, Jr.
If I had a dollar for every time I thought about you, I would start
thinking about you.
-Bill Murray
If I look confused it's because I'm thinking.
-Samuel Goldwyn
If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot
think well, others will do their thinking for them.
-George Orwell
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
-Lyndon B. Johnson
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think, they'll hate you.
-Don Marquis
If you're too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time
thinking that you don't do anything.
-John Malkovich
Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.
-Jonas
Salk
Keep on thinking. Keep your thinking close to the ground, where it
belongs. Don't ever trade your liberty for another man's offer to do
your thinking and make your mistakes for you.
-Poul Anderson
Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them.
-Mike
Nichols
May God prevent us from becoming 'right-thinking men'- that is to say,
men who agree perfectly with their own police.
-Thomas Merton
Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or
two he will feel as good as ever.
-Don Marquis
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
-Joseph Joubert
Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather
than mistakes of logic.
-Edward de Bono
No one is thinking about you. They're thinking about themselves, just
like you.
-Helen Fielding
No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
-Voltaire
(François Marie Arouet)
One of the basic causes for all the trouble in the world today is that
people talk too much and think too little. They act impulsively without
thinking.
-Margaret Chase Smith
Originality consists in thinking for yourself, and not in thinking
unlike other people.
-J. Fitzjames Stephen
People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It
spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking
responsibility for what they know.
-Brooks Atkinson
People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens
are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.
-Norman
Cousins
Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can
digest without eating!
-Iris Murdoch
Pride is therefore pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of
himself.
-Benedict Spinoza
Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is
thinking that makes what we read ours.
-John Locke
Reading without thinking is nothing, for a book is less important for
what it says than for what it makes you think.
-Louis L'Amour
Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and
unhappiness.
-James Thurber
Sometimes it feels like I'm thinking against the wind.
-Mortimer
J. Adler
The concept of logical thinking is selection and this is brought about
by the processes of acceptance and rejection. Rejection is the basis of
logical thinking.
-Edward de Bono
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of
thinking.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
The country that draws a broad line between its fighting men and its
thinking men will find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done
by cowards.
-William F. Butler
The emblem of a philosophy is not that it contains a set of specific
thoughts, but that it generates a way of thinking.
-Stanley R.
Delaney
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
-Matthew
Arnold
The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to
himself and to his fellow-men.
-Robert G. Ingersoll
The minute you get a religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing
too much and you have no room for new ideas.
-Ray Bradbury
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't
have any.
-Alice Walker
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that
we are still not thinking.
-Martin Heidegger
The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has, from
people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject
party-mindedness.
-Christopher Hitchens
The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to
raise people's hopes.
-Freeman Dyson
The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply
rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo.
-Albert Schweitzer
The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination.
-Carson
McCullers
The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority.
The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the
minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
-A.A.
Milne
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday
thinking.
-Albert Einstein
There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
-Hannah
Arendt
There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from
thinking.
-G.C. Lichtenberg
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
-William
Shakespeare
Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies.
-Buckminster
Fuller
Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge.
-Carl Jung
Thinking is hard work, which is why you don't see many people doing it.
-Sue
Grafton
Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything
self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do
things.
-Ray Bradbury
Thinking is what a great many people think they are doing when they are
merely rearranging their prejudices.
-William James
Thinking makes man great.
-Blaise Pascal
To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to
theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.
-William
Hazlitt
Tradition is an explanation for acting without thinking.
-Grace
McGarvie
Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. Thinking implies
disagreement; and disagreement implies nonconformity; and nonconformity
implies heresy; and heresy implies disloyalty- so, obviously, thinking
must be stopped. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and
reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.
-Adlai
E. Stevenson II
We always plan too much and always think too little.
-Joseph A.
Schumpeter
We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot
change our thinking.
-Santosh Kalwar
We need to get back to reasoning and thinking things through. The future
generation is being brought up in greed and without a true understanding
of civics. There is no more emphasis on knowledge and time. As a society
we need to process ideas and understand what certain principles are
based upon.
-Richard Dreyfuss
We're living longer, and thinking shorter.
-Esther Dyson
What the fool cannot learn he laughs at, thinking that by his laughter
he shows superiority instead of latent idiocy.
-Marie Corelli
When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I
cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now
exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after
you and I shall write and speak no more.
-John Adams
Categories: Quotes of the day, Thinking
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Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible
development of human capabilities.
-Paul Wellstone
Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection
must finish him.
-John Locke
Education can give you a skill, but a liberal education can give you
dignity.
-Ellen Key
Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know;
it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.
-John
Ruskin
Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important
lesson science can teach: skepticism.
-David Suzuki
Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive
propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the
perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and
repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well
proportioned and harmonious nature- this is alike the aim of parent and
teacher.
-Herbert Spencer
Education is a condition of imposed ignorance!
-Noam Chomsky
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
-Laurence
J. Peter
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
-Will
Durant
Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.
-Norman
Douglas
Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands
and at whom it is aimed.
-Josef Stalin
Education is a wonderful thing. If you couldn't sign your name you'd
have to pay cash.
-Rita Mae Brown
Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to
time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
-Oscar Wilde
Education is experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance.
-T.H.
White
Education is hanging around until you've caught on.
-Robert Frost
Education is learning to grow, learning what to grow toward, learning
what is good and bad, learning what is desirable and undesirable,
learning what to choose and what not to choose.
-Abraham Maslow
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
-Daniel
J. Boorstin
Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.
-Lyndon
B. Johnson
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
-John
Dewey
Education is one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of
thought.
-Bertrand Russell
Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and
incidentally or monetarily educative, another.
-Kingsley Amis
Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is
deluge.
-Horace Mann
Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to
the people who prepare for it today.
-Malcolm X
Education is preeminently a matter of quality, not amount.
-Henry
Ford
Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one
generation to another.
-G.K. Chesterton
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing
your temper or your self-confidence.
-Robert Frost
Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.
-Alfred
North Whitehead
Education is the best provision for old age.
-Aristotle
Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the
indifferent by the incompetent.
-John Maynard Keynes
Education is the mother of leadership.
-Wendell Willkie
Education is the process of throwing false pearls before real swine.
-Irwin
Erdman
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
-Variously
attributed
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if
you don't.
-Pete Seeger
Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to
govern, but impossible to enslave.
-Henry Peter Brougham
Education makes us more stupid than the brutes. A thousand voices call
to us on every hand, but our ears are stopped with wisdom.
-Jean
Giraudoux
Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment.
-Barbara
Jordan
Education seems to be in America the only commodity of which the
customer tries to get as little as he can for his money.
-Max Leon
Forman
Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
-Malcolm
S. Forbes
Education, like neurosis, begins at home.
-Milton R. Sapirstein
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the
foolish their lack of understanding.
-Ambrose Bierce
Education, the last hope of the liberal in all periods.
-Edmund
Wilson
Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great
equalizer of the conditions of men- the balance-wheel of the social
machinery.
-Horace Mann
Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for
future living.
-John Dewey
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to
distinguish what is worth reading.
-G.M. Trevelyan
Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
-Mark
Twain
Categories: Education, Quotes of the day
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Wisdom and good governance require more than the consistent application
of abstract principles.
-Theodore Dalrymple
Wisdom and understanding can only become the possession of individual
men by travelling the old road of observation, attention, perseverance,
and industry.
-Samuel Smiles
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave
to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself.
-Kahlil
Gibran
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
-George Santayana
Wisdom comes not from reason but from love.
-André Gide
Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.
-Norman
Cousins
Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the
organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.
-E.F.
Schumacher
Wisdom doesn't necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up
all by itself.
-Tom Wilson
Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career,
and consequences of human values.
-Sidney Hook
Wisdom is essential in a president, the appearance of wisdom will do in
a candidate.
-Eric Sevareid
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to
acquire it.
-Albert Einstein
Wisdom is not acquired save as the result of investigation.
-Sara
Teasdale
Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop
Than when we soar.
-William Wordsworth
Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.
-Thomas
J. Watson
Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where
you need it.
-Doug Larson
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have
preferred to talk.
-Doug Larson
Wisdom is the strength of the weak.
-Joseph Joubert
Wisdom is what's left after we've run out of personal opinions.
-Cullen
Hightower
Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely
because it comes late.
-Felix Frankfurter
Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil, not the strength to
choose between the two.
-John Cheever
Wisdom... is knowing what you have to accept.
-Wallace Stegner
Categories: Quotes of the day, Wisdom
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William Lyon Phelps (January 2, 1865 – August 21, 1943) was an American author, critic and scholar. He taught the first American university course on the modern novel. He was a well-known speaker who drew large crowds. He had a radio show, wrote a daily syndicated newspaper column, lectured frequently, and published numerous popular books and articles. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
-----
A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.
A cat pours his body on the floor like water. It is restful just to see him.
A student never forgets an encouraging private word, when it is given with sincere respect and admiration.
A well-ordered life is like climbing a tower; the view halfway up is better than the view from the base, and it steadily becomes finer as the horizon expands.
At a certain age, people's minds close up and they live off their intellectual fat.
Every household should contain a cat, not only for decorative and domestic values, but because the cat in quiescence is medicinal to irritable, tense, tortured men and women.
Honesty is not necessarily the best policy. The best policy would be to acquire a reputation for honesty and then to cheat at the psychological moment.
I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.
If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman; it would be, I think, an American cow.
If I were running the world, I would have it rain only between 2 and 5 a.m. Anyone who was out then ought to get wet.
If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.
Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense.
Never try to outsmart a woman, unless you are another woman.
One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.
The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on a fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.
The expression 'as right as rain' must have been invented by an Englishman.
The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century.
The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
The greatest of all the arts is the art of living together!
The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others.
The kind of happiness that stays with you is the happiness that springs from inward thoughts and emotions.
There is a strange reluctance on the part of most people to admit they enjoy life.
There is never much trouble in any family where the children hope someday to resemble their parents.
This is the first test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.
Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation- what are they? They are the happiest people in the world.
Whenever it is possible, a boy should choose some occupation which he should do even if he did not need the money.
You can be deprived of your money, your job and your home by someone else, but remember that no one can ever take away your honor.
You can learn more about human nature by reading the Bible than by living in New York.
Categories: Quotes of the day, William Lyon Phelps
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Clifford Donald Simak (August 3, 1904 – April 25, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. He was honored by fans with three Hugo Awards and by colleagues with one Nebula Award. The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its third SFWA Grand Master, and the Horror Writers Association made him one of three inaugural winners of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
-----
A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth.
Broken dreams are bad enough. But the dream that has no hope... the dream that is doomed long before it's broken, that's the worst of all.
How strange it is... how so many senseless things shape our destiny.
-----
(August 3 is also the birthday of P.D. James.)
If a man could look ahead and see some of the things that no doubt were going to happen, how could he be happy?.
If mankind were to continue in other than the present barbarism, a new path must be found, a new civilization based on some other method than technology.
Life must occupy but a single point in time, and as time moved forward, life moved with it.
Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it.
Much of what we see in the universe... starts out as imaginary. Often you must imagine something before you can come to terms with it.
Must faith be exactly that, the willingness and ability to believe in the face of a lack of evidence? If one could find the evidence, would then the faith be dead?.
That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself.
The chain of life runs smoothly from one generation to the next and none of the links stand out except here and there a link one sees by accident.
The old and the young... The old, who do not care; the young, who do not think.
There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out of the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith- and, indeed, our hope- the plan might well be it.I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid.
Time is still the great mystery to us. It is no more than a concept; we don't know if it even exists...
We are all genetic brothers. The chain of life, tracing back to that primordial day of life's beginning, is unbroken...
Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning.
Categories: Clifford Simak, Quotes of the day
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