Quotations

Last updated 2004-06-28 by Roedy Green not copyrighted.
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This refers both to income tax and to a poem by T.S. Eliot, The Burial Of the Dead from the Wasteland

" April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

~ Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Burial Of the Dead from The WasteLand

"I thank [my Higher Powers] for [Vlad The Impaler]. I know he is a man who wants to do right in the world. I know he struggles with the same problem I do: closing my heart to those who disagree with me. There are no feelings that he has that I haven't had, and vice versa.

[Vlad] is doing a perfect job of focusing the energy of his constituency. May both of us learn compassion for people in our country and far away, for rich and poor alike. May [Vlad] and I become less frightened of each other. May my focus become more to encourage his steps in the right direction, and less to criticize his mistakes.

Help me to remember that sharing love with the world is the highest contribution I can make, and will lead to children being fed and the planet surviving.

May I let go of my righteousness and anger, and open my heart and mind to find the next way to assist [Vlad] in expressing his own love for the planet."

~ R.E.S.U.L.T.S. Prayer for recalcitrant world leaders, in this case Vlad the Impaler.

"Is it possible that a few rich men — a small class of men — have persuaded a million poor men to attack and attempt to destroy another million men as poor as they, so that the rich may be richer still?

They told them that this brutal war was the destiny of the race. It was for the glory of the emperor; it was for the honour of the state; it was for their king and country. False - false as hell! They make war to capture markets by murder, raw materials by rape. They find it cheaper to steal than to exchange, easier to butcher than to buy. This is the secret of war. It is the secret of all wars: profit.

Business. Profit. Blood money.

Threaten a reduction on the profit of their money, and the beast in them awakens with a snarl. They become as ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners."

~ Dr. Norman Bethune

"You are not responsible for what your friends do, but you will be judged by the company you keep."

~ Leonard Cole

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

~ Robert F. Kennedy

"God is all that is. Since everything that exists is God, in one form or another, the only way that God can make a tree is by becoming the tree. Likewise, the way God made you was by becoming you."

~ Tolly Burkan

"Imagine this butterfly, exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful."

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

"I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. Lately, I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock, but it would not hold. Gravel gave way, I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realised that my fall was relative; that there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realised that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness."

~ Heinz Pagels, physicist and quantum mechanics researcher before his death in 1988 in a climbing accident.

"For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century. ...We are now heaving more than a thousand different species of animals and plants off the planet every year."

~ Douglas Adams

	Last Chance to See
	0-345-37198-4
	Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
Poingant, funny description of an odyssey to visit with various animals on the verge of extinction.

"It isn't necessary to want to or to decide to or to get it together in order to or to motivate oneself, or to make the effort or otherwise insert some step before the doing. It is the doing that counts."

~ David K. Reynolds

"Lord, forgive us for viewing the world with dry eyes."

~ A man at a R.E.S.U.L.T.S. conference.

"The secret of success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

~ Winston Churchill

"The fluttering of a butterfly's wing in Rio de Janeiro, amplified by atmospheric currents, could cause a tornado in Texas two weeks later."

~ Edward Lorenz

"The rule in our society is that while those who kill once make wretched a single person are severely punished, those (heads of state, inventors, manufacturers) who are responsible for the death, mutilation or general wretchedness of thousands or millions are rewarded with fame, riches and prizes... If you are going to rob, rob big; if you're going to kill, kill big."

~ Philip Slater

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I am sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in."

~ George McGovern

"I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at."

~ Wilson Mizner

"The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones."

~ Shakespear: Julius Caesar Act II scene ii

"As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests."

~ Gore Vidal

"One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous."

~ Aldous Huxley

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

~ Benjamin Franklin

"Try something; if it does not work, try something else; repeat until you obtain the desired result. If you can't think of something new to try, repeat the thing that had any effect at all, no matter how small."

~ Roedy

"We must abolish war, or sooner or later it will abolish us."

~ Gywnne Dyer

"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day."

~ Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

~ Oscar Wilde

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

~ William H. Murray, "Notes on the Scottish Himalayan Expedition". The last three sentences beginning with "Whatever you can do..." is a quote from Goethe.

"here is no end to what can be accomplished if you don't care who gets the credit."

"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."

"Despite how it looks, it is always the female who chooses her mate."

"It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region through which they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality."

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

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

"I would not be jealous if I heard that they sweetened your night."

"The Java sandbox is the cyberspace equivalent of the condom."

"A thing hasn't been said until its been said a thousand times."

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has."

"Think globally; act locally. "

"Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value."

"The desire for gold is the desire to make others do what they do not want to do."

"Attack the idea, not the person."

"Take the year a country first reaches 50% literacy, and add one or two generations to allow the idea to sink in, and, democracy, more or less automatically, appears."

"Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence."

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have."

~ Emilé Chartier

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

"Wipe out the mind of pride and arrogance."

"In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person."

"Almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching."

"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection."

"The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges."

"We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish."

"When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers."

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

"Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most."

~ Thucydides
Colin Powell has this quotation under the glass of his desk.

"Make something beautiful for God."

~ Mother Theresa

"We can do no great things; only small things with great love."

"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered
... Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
... Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
... Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
... Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
... Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
... Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
... Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
... Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway."

~ Mother Theresa

"Face your fears."

~ Barbara Green (my Mom)

"Do what you fear most and you control fear."

~ Tom Hopkins

"You can't meet people half way. You have to meet them three-quarters way."

~ Barbara Green (my Mom)

"Don't worry about where you are. Watch the first derivative."

translation: "Don't worry about how things are. Watch where they are headed."

~ Fred Green (my Dad)

"The earth does not belong to us."
We belong to the earth.

~ Chief Seattle 1834

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

~ The Golden Rule, a paraphrase of
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
~ Matthew 7:12

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."

~ Seneca

"Love your enemies. Do good to them that persecute you."

~ Jesus
Matthew 5:44

"I open myself genuinely to all people by being willing to fully communicate my deepest feelings since hiding in any degree keeps me stuck in my illusion of separateness from other people."

~ Ken Keyes
The Seventh Pathway from Handbook to Higher Consciousness

"I am discovering how my consciousness-dominating addictions create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me."

~ Ken Keyes
The Second Pathway from Handbook to Higher Consciousness

"I am perceiving everyone, including myself as an awakening being who is here to claim his or her birthright to the higher consciousness planes of unconditional love and oneness."

~ Ken Keyes
The Twelfth Pathway from Handbook to Higher Consciousness

"That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!"

~ Duke Orsino, Act I, Scene I, The Twelfth Night by William Shakespear

"Golden vials full of odours, which are prayers of the saints."

~ Revelation 5:8

"'Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams might mingle with those of the lotus."

~ Okakura Kakuzo, The Book Of Tea

"The pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Escape at Bedtime

"You are the people. You are this season's people -- There are no other people this season. If you blow it, it's blown."

~ Stephen Gaskin

"Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that's got some dignity to it! Risk your souls! Risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!"

~ Mark Twain, Was it Heaven? or Hell?

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

~ Edmund Burke

"A coincidence is a trend we have decided not to take seriously."

~ Philip Slater, the Wayward Gate: Science and the Supernatural

"Motors make noise, and that tells you about the feelings and attitudes that went into it. Something was more important than sensory pleasure -- nobody would invent a chair or dish that smelled bad or that made horrible noises -- why were motors invented noisy? How could they possibly be considered complete or successful inventions with this glaring defect? Unless, of course, the aggressive, hostile, assaultive sound actually served to express some impulse of the owner."

~ Philip Slater, the Wayward Gate: Science and the Supernatural

"He who struggles with monsters should ensure that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares back into you."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Beyond Good and Evil

"Admiration in the highest form of apathy."

~ Phil Laut

"Mother said, "Don't take money from strangers!"
"Don't take money from your friends!"
Who does that leave? Known enemies!"

~ I. Forget

"Enlightenment is getting off your tail and doing something."

Stephen Gaskin

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."

~ Abraham Lincoln

"You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'"

~ George Bernard Shaw

"The public doesn't want new music: the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead."

~ Arthur Honegger

"Heaven is the very last place to come to rest, and don't you be afraid to bet on that!"

~ Mark Twain, Captian Stormfield's Visit To Heaven

"Pride is sinful because it is not simple happiness about having done something well or having something nice. It is happiness associated with having done something better than someone else or having something nicer than someone else. In other words, pride is associated with placing oneself above another person, not simply enjoying whatever it is that we have attained."

~ John O'Conner

"One should strive not to lie in the negative sense by remaining silent."

~ Leo Tolstoy

"A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for those candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's greatest democratic nations has been 200 years.
Each has been through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith.
From faith to great courage.
From courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to complacency.
From complacency to selfishness.
From selfishness to apathy.
From apathy to dependency.
And from dependency back again into bondage."

~ Lord Thomas MacCauley

"The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself."

~ Joseph Sobran

"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know."

~ John Keats

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

"Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them."

"Anything too stupid to be said is sung."

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

~ François Marie d'Arouet Voltaire (1694-1778).

"If we plant an idea in the minds of children, it may bear fruit in 20, 40 or 50 years."

~ Sting

"First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me."

~ Pastor Martin Niemöller

"Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."

~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"I seem to be a verb --
an evolutionary process --
an integral function of the universe,
and so are you."

~ Buckminster Fuller

"He who controls vocabulary controls thought."

~ Luigi Wittgenstein
There is no Luigi Wittgenstein. I made up this bogus quotation which has generated a pile of mail ernestly telling me that Ludwig Wittgenstein said this, not Luigi. I enjoy it that I was able to come up with something that sounded plausibly Wittgensteinian to fool so many people. The serious reason for doing this was to point out that people are more impressed by names than content. If I signed my own name to it, who would take it seriously?

"The trust of others is a sacred thing, not to be exploited for petty gain or mere amusement."

~ Mahatma Gonzi

The Sayings of Mohammed, Peace Be Upon Him

"God has no mercy on one who has no mercy for others."

"None of you truly believes (in God) until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself."

"He who eats his fill while his neighbour goes without food is not a believer (in God)."

"The truthful and trustworthy businessman is associated with the prophets, the saints and the martyrs."

"Powerful is not he who knocks the other down, indeed powerful is he who controls himself in a fit of anger."

"God does not judge according to your bodies and appearances but He scans your hearts and looks into your deeds."

"A man walking along a path felt very thirsty. Reaching a well he descended into it, drank his fill, and came up. Then he saw a dog with its tongue hanging out, trying to lick up mud to quench its thirst. The man saw that the dog was feeling the same thirst that he had felt so he went down to the well again and filled his shoe with water and gave the dog a drink. God forgave his sins for this action." The prophet was asked: "Messenger of God, are we rewarded for kindness towards animals?" He said, "There is a reward for kindness to every living thing".

"If you've opened your loving to God's love, you're helping people you don't know and have never seen."

Jalal Al-Din Rumi

After the Meditation

"Now I see something in my listeners
that won't let me continue this way.
The ocean flows back in
and puts up a foam barrier,

After a while,
it will come in again.

This audience wants to hear more
about the visiting sufi and his friends
in meditation. But be discerning.

Don't think of this as a normal character
in an ordinary story.

The ecstatic meditation ended.
Dishes of food were brought out.

The sufi remembered his donkey
that had carried him all day.

He called to the servant there, "Please,
go to the stable and mix the barley generously
with the straw for the animal. Please."

"Don't worry yourself with such matters.
All things have been attended to."

"But I want to make sure that you wet the barley first.
He's an old donkey, and his teeth are shaky."
"Why are you telling me this?
I have given the appropriate orders."

"But did you remove the saddle gently,
and put salve on the sore he has?"

"I have served thousands of guests
with these difficulties, and all have gone away
satisfied. Here, you are treated as family.
Do not worry. Enjoy yourself."

"But did you warm his water
just a little, and then add only a bit of straw
to the barley?"
"Sir, I'm ashamed for you."

"And please,
sweep the stall clean of stones and dung,
and scatter a little dry earth in it."

"For God's sake, sir,
leave my business to me!"

"And did you currycomb his back?
He loves that."

"Sir! I am personally
responsible for all these chores!"

The servant turned and left at a brisk pace ...
to join his friends in the street.

The sufi then lay down to sleep
and had terrible dreams about his donkey,
how it was being torn to pieces by a wolf,
or falling helplessly into a ditch.

And his dreaming was right!
His donkey was being totally neglected, weak and gasping
without food or water all the night long.
The servant had done nothing he said he would.

There are such vicious and empty flatterers
in your life. Do the careful,
donkey-tending work.

Don't trust that to anyone else.
There are hypocrites who will praise you,
but who do not care about the health
of your heart-donkey.

Be concentrated and leonine
in the hunt for what is your true nourishment.
Don't be distracted by blandishment-noises,
of any sort."

Jalal Al-Din Rumi
Mathnawi II: 194-223; 260-63

	The Essential Rumi
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"The inner being of a human being
is a jungle. Sometimes wolves dominate,
sometimes wild hogs. Be wary when you breathe!

At one moment gentle, generous qualities,
like Joseph's, pass from one nature to another.
The next moment vicious qualities
move in hidden ways.

Wisdom slips for a while into an ox!
A restless, recalcitrant horse suddenly
becomes obedient and smooth-gaited.

A bear begins to dance.
A goat kneels!

Human consciousness goes into a dog,
and that dog becomes a shepherd,
or a hunter.

In the Cave of the Seven Sleepers
even the dogs were seekers.
At every moment a new species rises in the chest -
now a demon, now an angel, now a wild animal.

There are also those in this amazing jungle
who can absorb you into their own surrender.

If you have to stalk and steal something,
steal from them!"

Jalal Al-Din Rumi
~ Mathnawi II: 1416-1429

Islam requires you to wash your hands before reading the Qur'an.
The following two entries are quoted from it.

"O ye who believe! Stand out firmly For Allah, as witnesses To fair dealing, and let not The hatred of others To you make you swerve To wrong and depart From justice. Be Just: that is Next to Piety: and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted With all that ye do."

~ Qur'an : Surah al-Maidah (2:8)

"If He so pleased, He Could blot you out And bring in A New Creation. Nor is that (at all) Difficult for Allah."

~ Qur'an : Surah Fatir (3:16-17)

"When abroad, behave to everyone as if you were receiving an important guest; treat people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice; do not do to others as you would not wish done to yourself. Thereby you will let no murmuring rise against you in the country, and none in the family. . . ."

~ K'ung Fu Tzu (Confucius)

Links

• BrainyQuote: a very large collection of quotations arranged both by author and subject.
• PCdom.net quotation collection.
• Musings
• Things I wish I had learned when I was younger
• Raincoast Proverbs
• Enlightenment
• Living Love Proverbs
• Andrew G. Mulcahy's sayings: He is webmaster of The Victoria Humanists Association.

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