"Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind."
- John Lancaster Spalding
"A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
- James Madison
"Whatever difficulty you face, there are time-tried ways you can listen your way through. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive."
- Mark Nepo
"In union there is strength."
- Aesop
"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept."
- Ansel Adams
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
- Seneca the Younger
"The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred."
- Aldous Huxley
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?"
- Anonymous
"We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today."
- Stacia Tauscher
"A man searching for enlightenment is like a man sitting on an Ass in search of an Ass "
- Thomas Merton
"Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life."
- Simone Weil
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
- John Stuart Mill
"Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them."
- Mark Twain
"The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion."
- Henry Steele Commager
"A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad."
- Bob Edwards
"There are at least two kinds of cowards. One kind always lives with himself, afraid to face the world. The other kind lives with the world, afraid to face himself."
- Roscoe Snowden
"The human race has had long experience and a fine tradition in surviving adversity. But we now face a task for which we have little experience, the task of surviving prosperity."
- Alan Gregg
"To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee."
- William H. Walton
"People who are brutally honest often get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty."
- Richard J. Needham
"History shows that there is nothing so easy to enslave and nothing so hard to emancipate as ignorance, hence it becomes the double enemy of civilization. By its servility it is the prey of tyranny, and by its credulity it is the foe of enlightenment."
- Lemuel K. Washburn
"If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all thinking, damages his personality and makes him a landlord to a ghost."
- Lloyd Douglas
"Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work."
- Aldous Huxley
"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."
- John Perry Barlow
"Begin each day as if it were on purpose."
- Anonymous
"Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves."
- Anonymous
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
- James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788
"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent."
- William Blake
"One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
- Buddha
"History is a vast early warning system."
- Norman Cousins
"In about the same degree as you are helpful, you will be happy."
- Karl Reiland
"I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again."
- William Penn
"Even if it's a little thing, do something for those who have need of a man's help, something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. For, remember, you don't live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too."
- Albert Schweitzer
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."
- Edmund Burke
"Nobody can do everything, but everyone can do something."
- Anonymous
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
- Desmond Tutu
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
- Harvey Fierstein
"The recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing is to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be."
- Oscar Wilde
"We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths."
- Ricardo Flores Magon
"Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury."
- E.H. Chapin
"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."
- John Gardner
"Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions."
- Anonymous
"Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit."
- Eli Khamarov
"Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity."
- Aldous Huxley
"The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't."
- Henry Ward Beecher
"No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys."
- Doug Horton
"We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be."
- Jane Austen
"Few people have the imagination for reality."
- Johann von Goethe
"History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided."
- Konrad Adenauer
"Perhaps nobody has changed the course of history as much as the historians."
- Franklin P. Jones
"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
- Kahlil Gibran
"All the ancient histories are just fables that have been agreed upon"
- Voltaire
"People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them."
- James Baldwin
"Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters."
- African Proverb
"Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity." - Aldous Huxley
"Adversity is the first path to truth."
- Lord Byron
"Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things."
- Elise Boulding
"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
- Buddha
"All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field."
- Albert Einstein
"Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and all for the same reason."
- José Maria de Eça de Queiroz
"A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past."
- Eric Hoffer
"If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history."
- Pierre Bayle
"My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants."
- J. Brotherton
"People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history."
- Plato
"Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body."
- Cicero
"If you don't decide what your life is about, it defaults to what you spend your days doing."
- Robert Brault
"Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than submit to the desolation of an empty abundance."
- Michael Harrington
"Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters. This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting."
- Johann von Goethe
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
- Attributed to Howard Thurman
"What you need to know about the past is that no matter what has happened, it has all worked together to bring you to this very moment. And this is the moment you can choose to make everything new. Right now."
- Anonymous
"Few rich men own their property; the property owns them."
- Robert Ingersoll
"Stubbornly persist, and you will find that the limits of your stubbornness go well beyond the stubbornness of your limits."
- Robert Brault
"Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws."
- Charles Simmons
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."
- George Jean Nathan
"The ultimate folly is to think that something crucial to your welfare is being taken care of for you."
- Robert Brault
"Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds."
- Albert Einstein
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
- Pablo Picasso
"Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain."
- Anonymous
"When you blame others, you give up your power to change."
- Anonymous
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca the Younger
"Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one's neighbor. In the days of astrology it was customary to unload it upon a star."
- Ambrose Bierce
"Laundry is the only thing that should be separated by color."
- Anonymous
"Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else."
- Ivern Ball
"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future."
- George Bernard Shaw
"What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature."
- Voltaire
"Do not take anything for granted - not one smile or one person or one rainbow or one breath, or one night in your cozy bed."
- Terri Guillemets
"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be."
- Paul Valery
"Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom."
- Merry Browne
"There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock."
- Anonymous
"We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love."
- Whitney Moore, Jr.
"The first gold star a child gets in school for the mere performance of a needful task is its first lesson in graft."
- Philip Wylie, Generation of Vipers, 1942
"It's a sad and stupid thing to have to proclaim yourself a revolutionary just to be a decent man."
- David Harris
"Like it or not, everything is changing. The result will be the most wonderful experience in the history of man or the most horrible enslavement that you can imagine. Be active or abdicate. The future is in your hands."
- William Cooper
"The world has achieved brilliance without conscience."
- Omar Bradley
"I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance."
- Reuben Blades
"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."
- Gertrude Stein
"Science is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth."
- Erwin Chargaff, Columbia Forum, Summer 1969
"When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?"
- Chuck Palahniuk
"The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned. "
- Nirmalananda
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention."
- Anonymous
"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots."
- Erich Fromm
"Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own."
- George Christoph Lichtenberg
"Let me ask you something, what is not art?"
- Anonymous
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Never give up on yourself. Then you will never give up on others."
- Pema Chodron
"Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at."
- Anonymous
"In the end you regret less the things you believed that weren't true than the things that never came true because you didn't believe."
- Robert Brault
"The recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain, not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing is to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be."
- Oscar Wilde
"Instead of complaining that the rosebush is full of thorns, be happy that the thorn bush has roses."
- Proverb
"There is no coming into consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
- Carl Jung
"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome."
- Samuel Johnson
"Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one."
- Chinese Proverb
"Don't try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough."
- Arthur Freed
"Preconceived notions are the locks on the door to wisdom."
- Merry Browne
"Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself."
- Samuel Butler
"Use of advanced messaging technology does not imply an endorsement of western industrial civilization." - Anonymous email sig
"Procrastination is the thief of time."
- Edward Young
"Let freedom never perish in your hands."
- Joseph Addison
"What most of us must be involved in - whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world."
- Howard Zinn (Artists in Times of War and Other Essays)
"The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change."
- Howard Zinn
"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is."
- Albert Camus
"You are a human being. You have rights inherent in that reality. You have dignity and worth that exists prior to law."
- Lyn Beth Neylon
"Man - despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments - owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."
- Anonymous
"Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom."
- Aldous Huxley
"The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion but rather to know it."
- André Maurois
"Education makes machines which act like men and produces men who act like machines."
- Erich Fromm
"We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."
- Carl Sagan
"Technology: the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."
- Max Frisch
"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards."
- Aldous Huxley
"To the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems of your life, you are the only solution."
- Jo Coudert
"A life without cause is a life without effect."
- Anonymous
"In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, then turn on other victims."
- Howard Zinn
"Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners."
- Howard Zinn
"You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him."
- Leo Aikman
"The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers."
- William James
"Character is higher than intellect."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it."
- Faith Baldwin
"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."
- Golda Meir
"The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.
Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back."
- Howard Zinn
"Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness."
- James Thurber
"I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us."
- Dorothy Day
"Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life."
- Rumi
"If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it."
- Toni Morrison
"Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you."
- Frank Tyger
"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are."
- Malcolm S. Forbes
"There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day."
- Alexander Woollcott
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true."
- Polish Proverb
"Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor."
- James Russell Lowell
"No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session."
- Anonymous
"When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves."
- George Pataki
"Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else."
- Nicolas Walter
"Governments should not possess instruments of coercion and violence denied to their citizens."
- Edgar A. Suter
"Live simply that others might simply live."
- Elizabeth Ann Seton
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
- Tacitus
"It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it."
- A.A. Hodge
"Genius is a plodding intellect, incapable of dreaming up the obstacles that stop the rest of us."
- Robert Brault
"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right."
- H.L. Mencken
"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
"The past can't see you, but the future is listening."
- Terri Guillemets
"I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly."
- Buckminster Fuller
