"The
reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
"That
men do not learn very much from the lessons of history
is the most important of all the lessons that History
has to teach" - Aldous Huxley
"The
true horror of 1984 is not what was done to Winston
Smith. The true horror was that the vast majority of
the populace was happy, content, and believed that what
their government was doing was "right."
- David MacLean, alt.smokers FAQ, 1998
"The
two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States
are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that
we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror
among the rich, lest we get it." - Edward Dowling,
Editor and Priest, Chicago Daily News (28 July 1941)
"Civilization
is the process in which one gradually increases the
number of people included in the term 'we' or 'us' and
at the same time decreases those labeled 'you' or 'them'
until that category has no one left in it." -
Howard Winters
"Make visible what, without you, might perhaps
never have been seen." - Robert Bressan
"Do
not regret growing older. It is a privilege denied to
many." - Unknown
"Mensa:
The organization for highly intelligent people who are
nevertheless not quite intelligent enough not to belong
to it. - Kieran Healy
"Not
to hurt our humble brethren, the animals, is our first
duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have
a higher mission - to be of service to them whenever
they require it...If you have men who will exclude any
of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and
pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with
their fellow men." - St. Francis of Assisi
"The
purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful,
to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make
some difference that you lived and lived well."
- Ralph W. Emerson
"People
are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they
take of them." - Unknown
"Love
truth, but pardon error." - Voltaire
"Most
students treat knowledge as a liquid to be swallowed
rather than as a solid to be chewed, and then wonder
why it provides so little nourishment." - Sydney
Harris
"How
far you go in life depends on your being tender with
the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic
with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong.
Because someday in your life you will have been all
of these." - George Washington Carver
"This
is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the
animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that
asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your
income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not
concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward
the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown
or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful
uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers
of families, read these leaves in the open air every
season of every year of your life, re-examine all you
have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss
whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh
shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not
only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips
and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in
every motion and joint of your body." - Walt
Whitman
"Forget
not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and
the winds long to play with your hair." - Kahlil
Gibran
"I
think it really pisses God off if you walk by the color
purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."
- Alice Walker
"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
"Do
not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where
there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph
Waldo Emerson
"The
only thing that matters now is to be part of the whole
that is moving forward to lessen the misery and increase
the joy of living for all the peoples of the world."
- Katherine Hepburn
"In
the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me
there lay an invincible summer." - Albert Camus
"Every great achievement was once considered impossible."
- Unknown
"To
know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the
meaning of true knowledge." - Confucius
"Mere
colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite
form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different
ways." - Oscar Wilde
"Anything
in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself
and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of
it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise."
- Marcus Aurelius
"The
past is of no importance. The present is of no importance.
It is with the future that we have to deal. For the
past is what man should not have been. The present is
what man aught not be. The future is what artists are."
- Oscar Wilde
"Never
give up on a dream just because of the time it will
take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway."
- Unknown
"Great
minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small
minds discuss people." - Unknown
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow
humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing." - Thomas Henry
Huxley
"I
am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design & shape
I do not understand. Nevertheless, with what I am, I
can reflect light into the black places of this world
- into the dark hearts of men - and maybe help change
some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and
do likewise. This is what I am...this is the meaning
of my life." - Alexander Papaderos
"Men
go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at
the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the
rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular
motions of the stars; and they pass by themselves without
wondering." - St. Augustine
"If
a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps
it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him
step to the music which he hears, however measured or
far away." - Henry David Thoreau
"Life
does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and
happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought
that is forever flowing through one's head." -
Mark Twain
"The
greatest American superstition is a belief in facts."
- Hermann Keyserling
"To
be nobody but myself, in a world which is doing its
best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means
to fight the hardest battle which any human being can
fight, and never stop fighting." - E.E. Cummings
"The
day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably
the day they start making vacuum cleaners." - Ernest
Jan Plugge
“You
are not thinking. You are merely being logical.”
-- Niels Bohr to Albert Einstein
"If
the solar system was brought about by an accidental
collision, then the appearance of organic life on this
planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution
of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present
thoughts are mere accidents — the accidental by-product
of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts
of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone
else’s. But if their thoughts — i.e. of
materialism and astronomy — are merely accidental
by-products, why should we believe them to be true?
I see no reason for believing that one accident should
be able to give me a correct account of all the other
accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental
shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should
give you a correct account of how the jug was made and
why it was upset." - C.S. Lewis
"It
is no more heretical to say the Universe displays purpose,
as Hoyle has done, than to say that it is pointless,
as Steven Weinberg has done. Both statements are metaphysical
and outside science. Yet it seems that scientists are
permitted by their own colleagues to say metaphysical
things about lack of purpose and not the reverse. This
suggests to me that science, in allowing this metaphysical
notion, sees itself as religion and presumably as an
atheistic religion (if you can have such a thing)."
- Shallis M.
"I
have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable,
racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know
quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."
- Agatha Christie
"Man
can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean
like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole.
Now, if only he could walk the earth like a man, this
would be paradise." - Tommy Douglas
"In
America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom
of choice, but nothing to choose from." - Peter
Ustinov
"Assertions
of impossibility are based on the metaphysical creeds
of the scientists of the day." - Professor
C.J. Ducasse
"The
scientific community often tends to treat investigations
into extraordinary phenomena as pseudoscience not on
grounds of methodological integrity but of subject matter
alone. This ... does not agree with the scientific method.
Science is a dispassionate process by which any subject
matter may be freely and legitimately investigated ...
[it] does not tolerate taboos, a priori judgments, circular
reasoning, ridicule or double standards ... In science,
one point of view requires as much impeccable proof
or disproof as another." - M. J. Carlotto,
Ph.D.
"Anybody
who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of
any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates
of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must
have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot
dispense with." - Max Planck
"Some
of the biggest men in the United States, in the field
of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something.
They know that there is a power somewhere so organized,
so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete,
so pervasive, that they better not speak above their
breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
- Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)
"Everyone
is free to reject and dissent from whatsoever herein
may seem to him to be untrue or unsound. It is only
required of him that he shall weigh what is taught,
and give it a fair hearing and unprejudiced judgment."
- Albert Pike
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