Quotes From Everywhere

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.

Make your thinking orderly and free from emotional overtones, and you will see people and things as they are, with clarity and charity

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other -Eric Hoffer

Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one’s own person is its ultimate reward

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired but by controlling the desire.

“All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed, Second it is violently opposed, Third it is accepted as being self-evident.”

“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”

Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time

I would rather be ashes than dust; I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brillant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot; I would rather be in a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow than in a sleepy and permanent planet; the proper function of man is to live, not to exist; I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them; I shall USE my time. — -Jack London

Theodore Roosevelt

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.

The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.

— Albert Einstein

I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it any time.

Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say. it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.
— Louis Agassiz (Swiss naturalist, 1807–1873, attributed)

“Every truth goes through three steps
It is called ridiculous
It is attacked seriously
It is accepted as self-evident.”

When in doubt, cause as much confusion as you can, and, with luck, there’ll always be a loophole. — Richard Mueller

The way to capture a student’s undivided attention is with a demonstration where there is a possibility the teacher may die.”

Jeff’s scientific method:
play with it until —
1) you break it
2) it breaks you
3) you figure it out what it is
4) your mom/boss /teacher/Hooker catches you
5) you discover something more interesting to play with.

34th Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army (1999–2003) If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less. [Chief of Staff, U. S. Army]

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea — Pearl S. Buck

Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work — on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself — it must be organized for constant change.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something. — Woodrow Wilson

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.

Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius. — Fulton J. Sheen

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world. — Lily Tomlin

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. — Henry David Thoreau

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reality is a sliding door.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence — Friedrich Nietzsche

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others
Friedrich Nietzsche

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness
Friedrich Nietzsche,

Out of life’s school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche

. He said, “You do not need to do anything, just remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, just wait. Do not even wait, just be quiet, still and solitary, and the universe will expose itself to you. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

“You know that feeling… you’re not completely embarrassed yet, but you look forward to tomorrow’s embarrassment? — Jerry Maguire”,

“You know you’ve reached middle age when you have two temptations, and you pick the one that will get you home earliest. — Lee Tully”,

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

You can never get enough of what you really donʼt need.
Eric Hoffer

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

The first lesson of philosophy is that we may all be mistaken.
Will Durant

He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.

Marcus Tullius Cicero : Roman orator, statesman, philosopher & writer

He used to raise a storm in a teapot.

Torture numbers, and theyʼll confess to anything.
Gregg Easterbrook

An era can be said to have ended when its basic illusions are exhausted. Arthur Miller

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise -
Tacitus

No sane man will dance.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero : Roman orator, statesman, philosopher & writer

The injuries that befall us unexpectedly are less severe than those which are deliberately anticipated.
Marcus Tullius Cicero : Roman orator, statesman, philosopher & writer

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.
Oscar Wilde

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Oscar Wilde

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Oscar Wilde

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Oscar Wilde

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
Oscar Wilde

My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Oscar Wilde

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
Oscar Wilde

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
Oscar Wilde

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Oscar Wilde

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.
Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. -Oscar Wilde

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar Wilde

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde

I have nothing to declare except my genuis.
Oscar Wilde

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Oscar Wilde

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Oscar Wilde

The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.
by Atisha

“Don’t have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.”

“The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.”

“I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody’s.”

“Wedding: a ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.”

“I viewed my fellow man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape.”

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

“We must repsect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart.”

“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”

“It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was going to blame it on you!

My answer is right it is your question that is wrong.

“Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it.” — Alex Schure

“You know that feeling… you’re not completely embarrassed yet, but you look forward to tomorrow’s embarrassment? — Jerry Maguire”,

Wayne Dyer, what you think of me is none of my business.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. This is part of the penalty for greatness, and evey man understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness.
Herbert B. Swope:

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.
James A. Froude:

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

I couldn’t wait for success… so I went ahead without it. ~Jonathan Winters

“If something comes to life in others because of us, then we have made an approach to immortality.”
- Norman Cousins

Your current conditions do not reflect your ultimate potential, but rather the size and quality of goals upon which you are currently focusing”
Unknown

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

“The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“When you follow your bliss doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.” — Joseph Campbell

“When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So, what the hell, leap.” — Cynthia Heimel

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” — Elinor Smith

“The way we live our days, is the way we live our lives.” — Annie Dillard

“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah. It makes absolutely no difference, what people think of you.” — Rumi

“What’s terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.” — Doris Lessing

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” — Emily Dickinson

“I have always had a dread of becoming a passenger in life.” — Queen Margret II of Denmark

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” Mark Twain

Without continuous personal development you are now all that you will ever become, and hell starts when the person you are, meets the person you could have been — Eli Cohen

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

“Living itself is a risky business. If we spent half as much time learning how to take risks as we spend avoiding them, we wouldn’t have nearly so much to fear in life.” — E. Paul Torrance

Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth: To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
-Bertrand Russell

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so. -Bertrand Russell

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” — Elinor Smith

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” (Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988)

“Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” (Lewis Carroll)

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

“Never confuse motion with action.” (Benjamin Franklin)

“At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.” (Benjamin Franklin)

“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

“In times of change, the learner will inherit the earth while the learned are beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.” (Eric Hoffer)

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.” (Abraham Lincoln)

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.” (Vince Lombardi)

“I don’t know who discovered water but it wasn’t a fish!” (Marshall McLuhan)

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” (Bertrand Russell)

“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.” (George Bernard Shaw)

“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” (George Bernard Shaw)

You see things and say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and I say, ‘Why not?’ (George Bernard Shaw)

“Adults are obsolete children.” (Dr. Seuss)

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be the one who can not read and write, but the one who can not learn, unlearn, and relearn.” (Alvin Toffler)

It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution.
Alvin Toffler

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Winston Churchill

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Winston Churchill

Danger — if you meet it promptly and without flinching — you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
Winston Churchill

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.
Winston Churchill

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Winston Churchill

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill

I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right place to use his claws.
Winston Churchill

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
Winston Churchill

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
Winston Churchill

I am easily satisfied with the very best.
Winston Churchill

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Winston Churchill

If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
Winston Churchill

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Winston Churchill

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.
Winston Churchill

“No comment” is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
Winston Churchill

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
Winston Churchil

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.
Winston Churchill

We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.
Winston Churchill

When you took your seat I felt as if a woman had come into my bathroom and I had only the sponge to defend myself.
Winston Churchill

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.
Winston Churchill

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Winston Churchill

A am realistic — I expect miracles.
Wayne Dyer

Anything inside that immobilizes me, gets in my way, keeps me from my goals, is all mine.
Wayne Dyer

Everything is perfect in the universe — even your desire to improve it.
Wayne Dyer

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
Wayne Dyer

Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.
Wayne Dyer

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.
Wayne Dyer

The last suit that you wear, you don’t need any pockets.
Wayne Dyer

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
Confucius

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
Carl Jung

Experience shows that success is due less to ability than to zeal.’
- Sydney Charles Buxton

‘Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.’
- Dale Carnegie

‘The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.’
- Thomas Alva Edison

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.’
- Abraham Lincoln

‘I have learned this at least by my experiment: that 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.’
- Henry David Thoreau

‘We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.’
- Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
Carl Jung

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl Jung

A “scream” is always just that — a noise and not music.
Carl Jung

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.
Carl Jung

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
Carl Jung

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Carl Jung

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
Carl Jung

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
Carl Jung

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
Carl Jung

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.
Carl Jung

Good. There are many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
Carl Jung

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.
Carl Jung

I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.
Carl Jung

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life — that is to say, over 35 — there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.
Carl Jung

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.
Carl Jung

If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
Carl Jung

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.
Carl Jung

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.
Carl Jung

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.
Carl Jung

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.
Carl Jung

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
Carl Jung

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
Carl Jung

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.
Carl Jung

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.
Carl Jung

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.
Carl Jung

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.
Carl Jung

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
Carl Jung

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.
Carl Jung

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Carl Jung

Our blight is ideologies — they are the long-expected Antichrist!
Carl Jung

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.
Carl Jung

Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man who is as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself.
Carl Jung

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
Carl Jung

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.
Carl Jung

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.
Carl Jung

The brain is viewed as an appendage of the genital glands.
Carl Jung

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl Jung

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung

The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed. It is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed to produce valuable and lasting results.
Carl Jung

“I have in my life concentrated more on self-expression than on self-denial.”

Do what you can to prolong your life, in the hope that someday you’ll learn what it’s for.

i have got thank you notes from people i said i never see again.
Grean Weapons

i din’t come here to be liked. you certainly came to the right place

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. ~Aldous Huxley

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

You can’t have everything… where would you put it? ~Steven Wright

He’s turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he’s miserable and depressed. ~Harry Kalas, on Garry Maddox, 1981

Love your enemies. It makes them so damned mad. ~P.D. East

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fiber, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes. ~Douglas Adams

The chicken came first — God would look silly sitting on an egg. ~Author Unknown

A great name for a new country song: If I’d Shot You Sooner, I’d Be Out of Jail by Now. ~Author Unknown

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile way and you have their shoes. ~Author Unknown

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. ~Carl Zwanzig

I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college, won the case, and got my tuition back. ~Fred Allen

Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. ~Colin Sautar

Who says nothing is impossible. I’ve been doing nothing for years. ~Author Unknown

Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. ~Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

For a moment, nothing happened.Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Newton’s Law of Gravitation:
What goes up must come down. But don’t expect it to come down where you can find it.

Murphy’s Law applies to Newton’s.
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better… while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
— Woody Allen, “Side Effects”

You can’t break eggs without making an omelet.

… The prejudices people feel about each other disappear when they get to know each other.
— Kirk, “Elaan of Troyius”, stardate 4372.5

Q: What’s a light-year?
A: One-third less calories than a regular year.

Bulls do not win bull fights; people do. People do not win people fights; lawyers do.

It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.

It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
— Hawkwind

If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn’t a horse.

“Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people I had to kill because they pissed me off.”

Blinding speed can compensate for a lot of deficiencies.
— David Nichols

It’s amazing how nice people are to you when they know you’re going away.
— Michael Arlen

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire. So enjoy my absence .
~Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld, translated from French

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
Simone Weil

“Show me a man who has enjoyed his school days and I’ll show you a bully and a bore.” — Robert Morely

If The Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me.

What makes a man think he’s so great

-He has a bellybutton that won’t work.
-He has tits that won’t give milk.
-He has a cock that won’t crow.
-He has balls that won’t roll.
-He has as ass that won’t carry a thing.

If you have nothing to do, don’t do it here.

If I want your opinion, I’ll ask you to fill out the necessary form.

If it works, don’t fix it!

I like your approach, now let’s see your departure.

Always try to do things in chronological order; it’s less confusing that way.

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up — they have no holidays.
Henny Youngman

When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’
Sydney J. Harris

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt

When one person suffers from a delusion It is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion It is called Religion.
Robert M. Pirsig

I have such a high regard for the truth that I use it sparingly.
Timothy Connor

My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.
Henny Youngman

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
Rodney Dangerfield

An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
Robert A. Humphrey

The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.

One Day Quotes

“Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have-and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.”
- James Belasco and Ralph Stayer

“Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It’s a state of mind-you could call it character in action.”
- Vince Lombardi

“Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
- Mark Twain

“Cultivate optimism by committing yourself to a cause, a plan or a value system. You’ll feel that you are growing in a meaningful direction which will help you rise above day-to-day setbacks.”
- Dr. Robert Conroy

“What you think means more than anything else in your life. More than what you earn, more than where you live, more than your social position, and more than what anyone else may think about you.”
- George Matthew Adams

Be careful what you choose. You may get it.

Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.

“Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.”
- Marshall McLuhan

“I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened.”
- Mark Twain

“In the age-old contest between popularity and principle, only those willing to lose for their convictions are deserving of posterity’s approval.”
- Gerald R. Ford

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
- Sir Ken Robinson

“One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”
- E. M. Forster

“Chase your passion, not your pension.”
- Denis Waitley

“Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.”
- Thomas Browne

“If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.”
- Aldous Huxley

“Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Eagles don’t flock.”
- Ross Perot

“If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to meet it.”
- Jonathan Winters

“If opportunity doesn’t knock — build a door.”
- Milton Berle

“Let’s make a dent in the universe.”
- Steve Jobs

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
- Mark Twain

“If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.”
-Mario Andretti

“Fullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance, and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence.”
- Robert A. Millikan

“When we become aware of our humility, we’ve lost it.”
- Unknown

“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
- Lady Dorothy Nevill

“If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.”
- Michelangelo

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.”
- E. B. White

“If I miss a day of practice, I know it. If I miss two days, my manager knows it. If I miss three days, my audience knows it.”
- André Previn

“The very essence of leadership is [that] you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”
- Theodore Hesburgh

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.”
- T.E. Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“The paradox of the prophet: his very success is his failure. The prophet whose time has come no longer shocks; he entertains.”
- Peter Drucker

“So many of our dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.”
- Christopher Reeve

“In order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.”
- David Ben-Gurion

“IIf you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and morning star.

. Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

Society is a hospital of incurables.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

“I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.” — R. Buckminster Fuller

“Always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” — Richard M. Nixon

“History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.” — James A. Forude

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” — W. M. Lewis

No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won’t start.
~ Larry McMurty

“I don’t understand you. You don’t understand me. What else do we have in common?” — Ashleigh Brilliant

Do not pursue what is illusory-property, position, all that is gained at the expense of your nerves, decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life-don’t be afraid of misfortune and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same-the bitter doesn’t last forever and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.
~Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.” — Stephen Jay Gould

Tolerance is the virtue of men with no convictions.
~G.K. Chesterton

“The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.” — Ralph W. Sockman

“People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it’s safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.” — Unknown

“Emergencies have always been necessary to progress. It was darkness which produced the lamp. It was fog that produced the compass. It was hunger that drove us to exploration. And it took a depression to teach us the real value of a job.” — Victor Hugo

“Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.” — Oscar Wilde

“It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.” — Philip Adams

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before… He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.” — Kurt Vonnegut

Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession — their ignorance.
~Hendrick Van Loon

“If I had my life to live over, I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax; I’d limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.” — Nadine Stair

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.” — C.S. Lewis

“Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.” — Alfred Hitchcock

“We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.” — Cesar Chavez

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.” — Og Mandino

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.
George Bernard Shaw

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
Eric Hoffer

It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
Eric Hoffer

Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
Eric Hoffer

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.
Eric Hoffer

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, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both

The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.

The awareness of their individual blemishes and shortcomings inclines the frustrated to detect ill will and meanness in their fellow men.

∙••••• The awareness of their individual blemishes and shortcomings inclines the frustrated to detect ill will and meanness in their fellow men. Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves.

∙••••• To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.

∙••••• Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.

∙••••• When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other.

∙••••• To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats — we know it not.

∙••••• The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

∙••••• When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

∙••••• The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.

∙••••• Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny…. It is thus with most of us: we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement.

∙••• There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life. Moreover, when we have an alibi for not writing a book, painting a picture, and so on, we have an alibi for not writing the greatest book and not painting the greatest picture. Small wonder that the effort expended and the punishment endured in obtaining a good alibi often exceed the effort and grief requisite for the attainment of a most marked achievement.

∙••••• With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith

∙••••• Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.

∙••• A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

∙••••• There is a powerful craving in most of us to see ourselves as instruments in the hands of others and thus free ourselves from the responsibility for acts which are prompted by our own questionable inclinations and impulses.

∙••••• We usually see only the things we are looking for — so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.

∙•••• The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements. Thus we find that people who fail in everyday affairs often show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. They become responsive to grandiose schemes, and will display unequaled steadfastness, formidable energies and a special fitness in the performance of tasks which would stump superior people. It seems paradoxical that defeat in dealing with the possible should embolden people to attempt the impossible, but a familiarity with the mentality of the weak reveals that what seems a path of daring is actually an easy way out: It is to escape the responsibility for failure that the weak so eagerly throw themselves into grandiose undertakings. For when we fail in attaining the possible the blame is solely ours, but when we fail in attaining the impossible we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task.
o Ch. 15: “The Unnaturalness Of Human Nature”

∙••••• Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

∙••••• In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

∙••••• It is the malady of our age that the young are so busy teaching us that they have no time left to learn.

∙••••• Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation.

∙••••• Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.

∙••••• It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.

One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world’s problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive — it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.

It almost seems that those who have yet to discover the known are particularly equipped for dealing with the unknown. The unlearned have often rushed in where the learned feared to tread, and it is the credulous who are tempted to attempt the impossible. They know not whither they are going, and give chance a chance

∙••••• It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations — past and present — are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual’s hunger, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia. Thus, we are up against the paradox that the individual who is more complex, unpredictable, and mysterious than any communal entity is the one nearest to our understanding; so near that even the interval of millennia cannot weaken our feeling of kinship. If in some manner the voice of an individual reaches us from the remotest distance of time, it is a timeless voice speaking about ourselves.

There is nothing like a feud to make life seem full and interesting

∙••••• What merit there is in my thinking is derived from two peculiarities: (1) My inability to be familiar with anything. I simply can’t take things for granted. (2) My endless patience. I assume that the only way to find an answer is to hang on long enough and keep groping.

∙••••• Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don’t know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don’t know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don’t find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else.

∙••••• Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people’s assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

∙••••• It has been my experience that there is no substitute for time where thinking is concerned. Why is it so? The answer seems to be that in many cases to think means to be able to allow the mind to stray from the task at hand. The mind must be able to be “elsewhere.” This needs time.

∙••••• We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.

∙••••• It is apparently vital that we should be in the dark about ourselves — not to be clear about our intentions, fears, and hopes. There is a stubborn effort in us to set up a compact screen between consciousness and the self.

∙••••• Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.

∙••••• I could never figure out — or probably did not take the trouble to figure out — what the great philosophical problems are about. The momentous statements I come across are at best a storm in a teacup. There are quite a number of people who have a vested interest in the stuff, make a noble living out of it, and they conspire with one another to keep it alive.

∙••••• The best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

∙••••• The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance.

∙••••• The individual’s most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

∙••••• The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others.

∙••••• The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents.

∙••••• We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.

∙••••• We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

∙••••• We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

We run fastest and farthest when we run from ourselves

“If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem wonderful at all.”
- Michelangelo

“Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have-and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.”
- James Belasco and Ralph Stayer

“One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.”
- E. M. Forster

“The characteristic of a genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If opportunity doesn’t knock — build a door.”
- Milton Berle

“If I miss a day of practice, I know it. If I miss two days, my manager knows it. If I miss three days, my audience knows it.”
- André Previn

“The paradox of the prophet: his very success is his failure. The prophet whose time has come no longer shocks; he entertains.”
- Peter Drucker

“So many of our dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.”
- Christopher Reeve

“IIf you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) US philosopher, poet, essayist

He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
Aeschylus

Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.
Aeschylus,

“You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”
Timothy Leary

“We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they’ve got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.”
Timothy Leary

“All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination. Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.” — Napoleon Hill

You’ve come to this juncture in your life, merely because something in you kept saying, “You deserve to be happy.” You were born to add something, to add value to this world. To simply be something, bigger and better than you were yesterday.

Every single thing you’ve been through, every single moment that you’ve come through, were to all prepare you for this moment right now. Imagine what you can do from this day forward with what you now know. Now you get that you are the creator of your destiny. So how much more do you get to do? How much more do you get to be? How many more people do you get to bless, simply by your mere existence? What will you do with the moment? How will you seize the moment? No one else can dance your dance, no one else can sing your song, no one else can write your story. Who you are, what you do, begins right now!

Your questions are again thoughts and therefore reactive. All thought is reactive. you are not really interested in the future of man, only your own petty little destinies.

The saints and saviors have only succeeded in setting you adrift in life with pain and misery and the restless feeling that there must be something more meaningful or interesting to do with one’s life.

Q: Philosophers are often heard talking of a “now”, independent of past and future. Is there such a thing as an eternal present?

U.G.: The demand for more and more experience constitutes your “present”, which is born out of the past. Look. Here is a microphone before you. You are looking at it. Is it possible for you to look at it without the word “Microphone”? The instrument you are using to look at and experience the microphone is the past, your past. If that is seen there is no future at all. Any achievement you are interested in is in the future. The only way that the future can come into operation is in the present moment. Unfortunately, in the present moment what is in operation is the past. Your past is creating your future; in the past you were happy or unhappy, foolish or wise, in the future you will be the opposite. So the future can’t be any the different from the past.

When the past is not in operation there is no “present” at all, for what you are calling the “present” is the past repeating itself. In an actual state of “here and now” there is no past in operation and, therefore, no future. I do not know if you are following me…. The only way the past can survive and maintain its continuity is through the constant demand to experience the same thing over and over. That is why life has become a bore. Life has become boring because we have made of it a repetitive thing. So what we mistakenly call the “present” is really the repetitive past projecting a fictitious future. Your goals, your search, your aspirations are cast in that mould.

What I am emphasizing is that we are trying to solve our basic human problems through a psychological framework, when actually the problem is neurological. The body is involved. Take desire. As long as there is a living body, there will be desire. It is natural. Thought has interfered and tried to suppress, control, and moralize about desire, to the detriment of mankind. We are trying to solve the “problem” of desire through thought. It is thinking that has created the problem. You somehow continue to hope and believe that the same instrument can solve your other problems as well. You hope against hope that thought will pull you through, but you will die in hope just as you have lived in hope. That is the refrain of my doom song.

Wanting to be free from fear is itself fear.

Q: It seems to me that a special sort of valor is necessary for what you are describing. Am I right?

U.G.: Yes. But it is not courage in the usual sense. It is not the courage you associate with struggle or overcoming. The valor I am talking about is the courage that is naturally there when all this authority and fear is thrown out of the system. Courage is not an instrument or quality you can use to get somewhere. The stopping of doing is courage. The ending of tradition in you is courage.

Any solution you think of is in the future, and is, therefore, useless. If there is anything that can happen, it must happen NOW. Since you don’t want anything to happen NOW, you push it away into something you have named “the future”. What you have in place of the present is FEAR. Then begins the whole exhausting search for a way to be free from fear. Do you really want THIS kind of freedom? I say you do not.

The knowledge you have about freedom denies the very possibility of freedom. When you stop looking at yourself with the knowledge you have, the demand to be free from that self drops away.

Thought has produced fear, there is no question about it. Thought has produced the aching loneliness in oneself. Thought has said, I must fulfil, I must be, I am little — I must be big. Thought has brought about this jealousy, this anxiety, this guilt, thought is responsible for it. Thought is that, thought is guilt, not thought makes for guilt, thought is guilt. So how can I observe myself and the world, of which I am part, observe without any interference of thought in that observation, and therefore out of that observation a different action which doesn’t produce fear, regrets and all the rest of it? Therefore I must learn to observe myself and the world and my action quite differently. There must be a learning of observation in which thought doesn’t interfere at all. Because the moment thought interferes it gives it a distortion, it gives it a bias. Perception is in the present; you can’t perceive tomorrow. You perceive now and in that perception, when thought interferes, thought is the response of the past and therefore it must distort the present. It’s logically so.

But thought-feeling is weaving back and forth, like a shuttle, between the past, the present and the future; it is ever rearranging its memories; ever maneuvering itself into a better position, more advantageous and comforting to itself. It is forever dissipating and formulating and how can such a mind be still, creatively empty? It is continually causing its own becoming by endless effort, and how can such a mind understand the still being of the present? Right thinking and meditation only can bring about the clarity of understanding and in this alone is there tranquillity.

If you are silently aware, as we explained, then the thinker and his thought are one, they are not separate but indivisible; then only is there complete transformation of ambition. But most of us, if we are aware at all, are conscious of the cause and effect of ambition and unfortunately we stop there; but if we looked more closely into this process of choice we would abandon it, for conflict is not productive of understanding. In abandoning it we would come upon the thinker and his thought. just as the qualities cannot be separated from the self, so the thinker cannot be separated from his thought. When such integration takes place there is complete transformation of the thinker. This is an arduous task demanding alert pliability and choiceless awareness. Meditation comes from right thinking and right thinking from self-knowledge. Without self-knowledge there is no understanding. Through silent awareness of the outer and in being objectively aware of the events of life you are inevitably forced to be aware of the inner, the subjective; in comprehending the self the outer becomes clear and significant. The outer has no significance in itself; it has significance only in relation to the inner. Uncertainty and fear seek guidance and compel obedience and worship of authority; tradition, education create for us many patterns of obedience. If sometimes we do not accept and obey symbols of outward authority we create our own inner authority, the subtle voice of our self. But through obedience freedom cannot be known; freedom comes with understanding, not through acceptance of authority nor through imitation. To meditate is to penetrate the many conditioned, educated layers of consciousness. Without understanding oneself meditation becomes a process of self-hypnosis inducing experiences according to one’s conditioning, one’s belief.

Meditation is often a self-hypnotic process; it may produce certain desired results but such meditation does not bring enlightenment.
The unforced receptivity is much more significant than the effort made to understand.Any definite pattern of thought prevents understanding. Understanding is not substitution; mere change of patterns, of conclusions, does not yield understanding. Understanding comes with self-awareness and self-knowledge.

There is no substitute for self-knowledge. Is it not important first to understand oneself, to be aware of one’s own conditioning rather than seek understanding outside of oneself? Understanding comes with the awareness of what is. you have lost the song in your heart and you pursue the singer and ask him whether he can teach you how to sing.

He wants to find out from someone,make a collection of purposes of life and choose one out of them.

Memory is merely the residue of experience. We experience through the screen of the past and therefore there is no experience at all but only a modification of experience. If we have a certain belief, that belief not only creates that experience, but also translates that experience according to its conditioning.

So there is never an experience which is free from conditioning.

Accumulated memory is static. It has no life unless we inject new life into it, ie, by our recalling the memory, we revive it. By this static memory which is dead we translate life which is a living thing.

Why does the mind go backwards and forwards like this? In our attempt to understand the problem of memory, we have now found that mind which is itself a result of the past and is the current of the past, the present and the future, has separated itself in the present from the current, as though it is a separate entity; it looks on itself as the thinker, the feeler, the perceiver, goes back to the past and says “I remember”. It also conceives of the future, thus giving rise to three entities — the thinker, the past, and the future — as through they are different from one another.

We now see the absurdity of the whole process — the observer, though the same as the observed, imagines himself to be separate from, and superior to it, and attempts to examine the observed through memory; finally, he realises that he is not separate from the observed and the separation was false.

In seeing the false as false, Truth is perceived.

Memory by itself is static; it is dead, and is given life when I recollect it either as pain or pleasure. Who is the entity that recalls it? That entity is the result of memory. This has to be pursued and understood.

Mind is constantly wrapping itself in belief, belief in ideation, belief in memory, etc. Essentially we believe in order to be secure, not to get lost in the wood, to have a lighthouse, to have a point towards which thought is culminating, progressing, focussing. This focal point helps us to guide ourselves. A belief, whether physiological or psychological, is a necessity to him who is frightened. ‘It is my experience and therefore I hold on to it as a guide, a conviction which helps me to progress in life.’ Surely belief, a conclusion, a working hypothesis, a conviction, an experience which I hold on to as a guide, an ideal, a conviction which helps me to progress in life, are all merely a pattern, a mould in which the thought functions.

Your beliefs divide you into antagonistic groups. Beliefs induce mere habits which make you dull and which make you do things without knowing why you do them. It may be that what you call your inner voice is merely yourself talking in the guise of a voice.

Thus, the conflict of duality exists only when there is the naming of the feelings, and if we do not term the feelings, there is freedom from the conflict. What is then important for you is to find out, in our daily life, the truth of this, and then you will be content with a more peaceful and serene and intelligent life.

When you come to that point you can find out the significance of life, what it really means to love, and not its dictionary meaning, not a philosophical meaning for you to follow. When we come to that point, we can talk of other subjects like dreams, whether the Communist is right or the Rightist is right, and so on.

The understanding of Truth gives freedom and therefore happiness. only when you would understand the whole significance of not naming feelings in relation to title, property and relationship with others, and when you do not name such feelings in your daily life, there will be a rich transformation within yourself whereby you will bring about a creative society.

To sum up, in your search for Truth regarding power, you have realised that conditioning of any kind is a hindrance to discovery of Truth. You have to emphasise not the conditioning but the search. Then, in examining this, you found that the seeking of power is because of your desire for gratification and for filling up your emptiness. Therefore, you must lay the emphasis not on the seeking of power but on understanding the emptiness in you. When the mind thus emphasises the primary issue and not the secondary, and when it follows each thought connected with the primary issue to its conclusion, there is understanding of the problem.

You should all of you live a personal life of inner awareness which is possible only through love and understanding. You will find Truth only through awareness of your own thoughts, feelings and actions. Such an awareness will free you from your shortcomings and will enable you to solve your problems without your striving to force any solution. Life will then become rich and you will find joy in every one of life’s moments, and you will not be interested in any habitual or mechanical pursuits. Then, to you, Reality will come into being.

How can you meet everything anew? How can you meet life, existence, anew, in the sense of `without time’? It is a new question, is it not? That is the question arising out of this question. When I put that new question to you, what is your response? If your response is also new, then you are passively aware, alert, watching. That state is timeless. In that state, when you meet everything with passive alertness, awareness, there is no time; there is a direct experience, the challenge is directly understood; therefore there is freedom from thinking. And that freedom is eternal; it is now, not tomorrow.

When the thinker is aware of his own movements, when the mind is aware of itself in action — which is not the thinker altering thoughts, but the thinker being aware of himself — , then you will find there comes a period when the mind is absolutely still, when it is meditative, when it is not attracted, not agitated. Then, in that moment, when the thinker is silent, there comes creative being which, if you will experiment, you will find is the foundation of all radical transformation.

In awareness, there is no becoming, but merely observation, a silent observation — as when you visit the cinema and see the film. Now, if you can observe, if you can be aware of yourself in action, in movement, without identification, then you will find that there is an extensional awareness. It begins, as I said, with superficial things. Then, as you go deeper and deeper, there is wide, extensional awareness. That awareness is necessary, because in that awareness all the hidden layers, all the hidden intimations, come into being. As there is deeper and wider, more extensional awareness, the intimations, the conflicts of the hidden, are dissolved; and then you will find there comes creative emptiness. This is all a total process, not a step-by-step process; because, in awareness, there is neither beginning nor ending. It is one whole process. The moment you observe a problem without condemnation, there is bound to be passive awareness; and when there is passive awareness, there is dissolution of the problem. That is, in passive awareness there is creative stillness, creative emptiness. Then, in that creative emptiness, reality comes into being, which dissolves the problem.

Attention is not exclusive. If I exclude, there is effort and effort leads to distortion. Awareness is not effort. That they lose their health to make money… and then lose their money to restore their health. That they live as if they will never die and die as if they had never lived. That they get bored with childhood, they rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. You can never find mind through the mind. Go beyond it, and find it non-existent

“Realization is to get rid of the delusion that you have not realized.”
by Ramana Maharshi

There is no “how to be transformed”. If you go after it now, it is done. That is the beauty of it. After experiencing, you are aware of the experiencer having had an experience. As long as you are escaping from ‘what is’, there is always the experiencer frightened with what he is going to experience. Here is the key to the problem of sorrow. It is only in the state of experiencing when there is neither the experiencer nor the experience, that there is instantaneous transformation.

You know, wherever one goes in the world, human beings are more or less the same. Their manners, behaviour and outward pattern of action may differ, but psychologically, inwardly, their problems are the same. Man throughout the world is confused, that is the first thing one observes. Uncertain, insecure, he is groping, searching, asking, looking for a way out of this chaos. So he goes to teachers, to yogis, to gurus, to philosophers; he is looking everywhere for an answer and probably that is why most of you are here, because we want to find a way out of this trap in which we are caught, without realizing that we, as human beings, have made this trap — it is of our own making and nobody else’s. The society in which we live is the result of our psychological state. The society is ourselves, the world is ourselves, the world is not different from us. What we are we have made the world because we are confused, we are ambitious, we are greedy, seeking power, position, prestige. We are aggressive, brutal, competitive, and we build a society which is equally competitive, brutal and violent. It seems to me that our responsibility is to understand ourselves first, because we are the world. This is not an egotistic, limited point of view, as you will see when you begin to go into these problems.

It is a peculiar thing, that when the mind is searching, it will find what it is searching for. But what; it searches for and finds is already known, because what it finds must be recognizable — mustn’t it? Recognition is part of this search, and experience and recognition come from the past. So in the experience which comes through search in which recognition is involved, there is nothing new, it has already been known. the mind that seeks experience as a means of giving significance and meaning to life, is, in reality, projecting its own background, whereas the mind that is not seeking because it is free, has quite a different quality.

Is there an observation of silence by silence in silence?

Krishnamurti: The whole brain, the mind, the feelings, the body, everything is quiet. Can this quietness, stillness, look at itself, not as an observer who is still? Can the totality of this silence watch its. own totality? The silence becomes aware of itself — in this there is no division between an observer and an observed. That is the main point. The silence does not use itself to discover something beyond itself. There is only that silence. Now see what happens.

So we disregard the cause and occupy ourselves with the effect. If you see all this with complete clarity it is like the flight of the eagle that leaves no mark in the air. every map is a map of an old road
Robert Heinlein

Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it.
Robert Heinlein

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
Robert Heinlein

Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.
Robert Heinlein

Of course the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you — if you don’t play, you can’t win.
Robert Heinlein

One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns he must die and accepts his sentence undismayed.
Robert Heinlein

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Robert Heinlein

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
Robert Heinlein, “Job”, 1984

People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.
Robert Heinlein, Excerpt from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, “Time Enough for Love”

A motion to adjourn is always in order.
Robert Heinlein, Lazarus Long: Time Enough For Love

Thou art God, and I am God and all that groks is God.
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

There is no such thing as luck. There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1978

-

what people want to do is start to understand that they are not the plaything for what’s going on around them, and what goes on around them has got nothing to do with what’s going on inside of them, unless they let it. There are people afraid, you know, “If I quit my job, I’ll lose my income.” Their income doesn’t come from their company. It comes through the company. The income comes according to their consciousness. And if it’s not coming from one source, it’ll come from another. There’s only one source of supply. It doesn’t come from a company. It comes through the company. And if you want to change your income, it’s not by doing this or doing that. It’s by altering your conscious awareness. Alter the paradigm.

Napoleon Hill said, “There’s a difference between wishing for something and being ready to receive it. No one is ready for something until they believe that they can acquire it. The state of mind must be belief and not mere hope or wish.”

You see, working happens to be the worst way to earn money. Now, most people look at you kind of strange. We should work for satisfaction, not to earn money. We should spend our days doing what we love. Do not boast or brag of your success or talk about it unnecessarily; true faith is never boastful. Wherever you find a boastful person, you find one who is secretly doubtful and afraid. Simply feel the faith, and let it work out in every transaction. Let every act and tone and look express the quiet assurance that you are getting rich — that you are already rich. Words will not be necessary to communicate this feeling to others. They will feel the sense of increase when in your presence, and will be attracted to you again.

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
Johannes Kepler

Since we have had a history, men have pursued an ideal of immortality.
George Wald

We have fallen in love with the body. That’s that thing that looks back at us from the mirror. That’s the repository of that lovely identity that you keep chasing all your life.
George Wald

For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
Isaac Asimov

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.
Isaac Asimov

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.
Isaac Asimov

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what’s right.
Isaac Asimov

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn’t look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Thomas Huxley

It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.
Thomas Huxley

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
Thomas Huxley

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
Thomas Huxley

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact.

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every conceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.
Thomas Huxley

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.
Thomas Huxley

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
Richard Dawkins

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
Richard Dawkins

An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it.
James Lovelock

Try hard to find out what you’re good at and what your passions are, and where the two converge, and build your life around that.
Joshua Lederberg

If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
Edith Wharton

Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
Emma Goldman

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Erica Jong

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Erica Jong

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.
Franklin P. Jones

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
George Bernard Shaw

Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
George Burns

You know you’re getting old when you stop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.
George Burns

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
George Burns

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.
Georges Duhamel

If the phone doesn’t ring, it’s me.
Jimmy Buffet

If it weren’t for my lawyer, I’d still be in prison. It went a lot faster with two people digging.
Joe Martin

If everything’s under control, you’re going too slow.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Napoleon Bonaparte

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
Noel Coward

True friends stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Oscar Wilde

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Oscar Wilde

An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
Robert A. Humphrey

If there’s only one answer, then this must not be a very interesting topic.
Ron Jeffries

It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it.
Sam Levenson

Learn from the mistakes of others, because you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
Unknown Author

Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.
Unknown Author

Work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching
Unknown Author

It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are.
Unknown Author

Tell a man there are 300 Billion stars in the universe and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he’ll have to touch to be sure.
Unknown Author

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.
Wendell Johnson

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.
William Gibson

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say I want to see the manager.
William S. Burroughs

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
William Wrigley Jr

Expectancy is the atmosphere for miracles.
Edwin Louis Cole

Fear attracts attack.
Edwin Louis Cole

The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.
Susan Sontag

Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening.
Gertrude Stein

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.
Gertrude Stein

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers’ granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.
Gertrude Stein

If you can do it then why do it?
Gertrude Stein

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
Gertrude Stein

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.
Gertrude Stein

There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.
Gertrude Stein

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
Scott Fitzgerald

No decent career was ever founded on a public.
Scott Fitzgerald

Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.
Scott Fitzgerald

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
Henry Miller

We do not talk — we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
Henry Miller

People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves.
Ivan Turgenev

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”

“The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.”

Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, once asked an audience, “What is the average number of times that a person tries to achieve a new goal before they give up?” After several guesses from the audience, he gave the answer. “Less than one.”

Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.
Ram Dass

A coward turns away, but a brave man’s choice is danger.
Euripides

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard

Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. Like any other impossible solution the ego attempts, it will not work. ICIM

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.

Make your thinking orderly and free from emotional overtones, and you will see people and things as they are, with clarity and charity

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other

Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one’s own person is its ultimate reward

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired but by controlling the desire.

“All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed, Second it is violently opposed, Third it is accepted as being self-evident.”

“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.” Albert Einstein </wiki/Albert_Einstein>

Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one’s courage.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time

I would rather be ashes than dust; I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brillant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot; I would rather be in a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow than in a sleepy and permanent planet; the proper function of man is to live, not to exist; I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them; I shall USE my time. — -Jack London

Theodore Roosevelt

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure…than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.

The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.
— Albert Einstein

I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it any time.
Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say.
it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered.
before. Lastly they say they always believed it.
— Louis Agassiz (Swiss naturalist, 1807–1873, attributed)

“Every truth goes through three steps
It is called ridiculous
It is attacked seriously
It is accepted as self-evident.”

When in doubt, cause as much confusion as you can, and, with luck, there’ll always be a loophole.
— Richard Mueller

The way to capture a student’s undivided attention is with a demonstration where there is a possibility the teacher may die.”

Jeff’s scientific method:
play with it until —
1) you break it
2) it breaks you
3) you figure it out
4) your mom/boss/Hooker/Prof catches you
5) you discover something more interesting to play with.

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less. [Chief of Staff, U. S. Army]

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.

Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work — on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself — it must be organized for constant change.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.

Fulton J. Sheen: Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

Lily Tomlin: Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Reality is a sliding door.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others
Friedrich Nietzsche

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness
Friedrich Nietzsche,

Out of life’s school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche

. He said, “You do not need to do anything, just remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, just wait. Do not even wait, just be quiet, still and solitary, and the universe will expose itself to you. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

“You know that feeling… you’re not completely embarrassed yet, but you look forward to tomorrow’s embarrassment? — Jerry Maguire”,

“You know you’ve reached middle age when you have two temptations, and you pick the one that will get you home earliest. — Lee Tully”,

We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten.

You can never get enough of what you really donʼt need.
Eric Hoffer

Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will.

The first lesson of philosophy is that we may all be mistaken.
Will Durant

He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.
Marcus Tullius Cicero : Roman orator, statesman, philosopher & writer

He used to raise a storm in a teapot.

Torture numbers, and theyʼll confess to anything.
Gregg Easterbrook

An era can be said to have ended when its basic illusions are exhausted.
Arthur Miller

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
Tacitus

No sane man will dance.
Marcus Tullius Cicero : Roman orator, statesman, philosopher & writer

The injuries that befall us unexpectedly are less severe than those which are deliberately anticipated.
Marcus Tullius Cicero : Roman orator, statesman, philosopher & writer

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.
Oscar Wilde

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Oscar Wilde

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Oscar Wilde

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Oscar Wilde

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
Oscar Wilde

My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Oscar Wilde

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
Oscar Wilde

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
Oscar Wilde

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Oscar Wilde

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.
Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
Oscar Wilde

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar Wilde

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde

I have nothing to declare except my genuis.
Oscar Wilde

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Oscar Wilde

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Oscar Wilde