Quotes For You

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead. -Louisa May Alcott, Author of "Little Women"

I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. -Martha Washington, First Lady

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road, the one "less traveled by", offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. - Rachel Carson, Environmentalist

Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. -Susan B. Anthony, Abolitionist, Suffragist

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place. -Margaret Mead, Anthropologist

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear. -Dan Millman

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings. -Dorothy Thompson

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. -Henry James

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -Marianne Williamson

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. -Eleanor Roosevelt

People living deeply have no fear of death. -Anais Nin

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive -- the risk to be alive and express what we really are. -Don Miguel Ruiz

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Profundity of thought belongs to youth, clarity of thought to old age. - Friedrich Nietzsche

The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have. -John Locke

To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages: and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers or both. -Elizabeth Charles, poet

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. . . No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. -James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load that is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So, if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life. - Victor Frankl, Psychoanalyst & Concentration Camp Survivor

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. -Abraham Lincoln

Teach our children to have faith in humanity and to know the dignity of all human beings. Reaffirm America's basic belief that all people are created equal - that we all are children of the Universe. There is no nonsense about that – it is universally obvious and fundamentally American. -Everett Woodman's short speech at Dartmouth July 4th

It is the rare person who, looking back over his life and seeing what he has done to it, hasn't sighed for a chance to redeem what he has cheaply used or carelessly ruined. If only somehow, somewhere, there was a way to live again the days we have darkened with our blind haste - the innumerable occasions when our indifference trod on all the pearls of God’s graciousness; the times when our pride, or our fear, or our meanness poured the acid of contempt over the fair countenance of another's soul! If this grace were ours, how we would leap to the chance! -Samuel Howard Miller, "The Life of the Soul"

Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognizes justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with... the other nations of the world. The first step to this end is to develop peace and goodwill within our borders, by training our youth of both sexes to its practice as their habit of life, so that the jealousies of town against town, class against class and sect against sect no longer exist; and then to extend this good feeling beyond our frontiers towards our neighbors. -Lord Robert Baden-Powell

If you can dream it, you can do it. - Walt Disney

Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived. - Captain Jean Luc Picard

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity. -Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist & philosopher

One needs something to believe in, something for which one can have whole-hearted enthusiasm. One needs to feel that one's life has meaning, that one is needed in this world. -Hannah Senesh

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how." -Victor Frankl, Psychoanalyst & Concentration Camp Survivor

Many are they who are touched at the heart by these things. Those they sent forth they knew; now in place of the young men urns and ashes are carried home to the houses of the fighters.... The citizens speak: their voice is dull with hatred. The curse of the people must be paid for. -Agamemnon (432-436, 456-7, Grene and Lattimore)

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take? -Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of our life. -Paul Tillich

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. -Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese monk, activist and writer

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. - Victor Frankl, Psychoanalyst & Concentration Camp Survivor

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. - Thomas Paine

.. we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. -Paul Bowles

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things. -Jesse Jackson

Time hasn't stopped for any troubles, heartaches, or any other malfunctions of this world, so please don't tell me it will stop for you. - C.S. Lewis

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. - Carl Sandburg

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time for that's the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. - Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844-1900)

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it. -Madame De Stael, writer (1766-1817)

The reason the world today is becoming increasingly besmirched is that the evil that resides in all of us is winning. Our inherent goodness is losing the race. Wickedness has tied its shoelaces together. Let us vow today, right now, to scrape off these hateful scales and try to be as good as we can be. Let's not harbor any ill will for anyone. Let us be the first of a new order to be charitable and caring. Let's break away from the flock of black sheep and graze the clean grass, show them how good it tastes. Not the bitter thistle that most are content to chew through. - - Andrew Holt

We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace. -George W. Bush UN Speech Sept 2004

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. -Thomas Jefferson

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. -Plato

Great is the road I climb, but the garland offered by an easier effort is not worth the gathering. -Sextus Propertius (50BC-16AD) Roman Poet

If you are truly humble, you will always be ready to seek (and accept!) help from others. The present genteel, self- loving brand of piety assumes, "I don't need anybody; I can set things right with God myself." But as long as you quietly try to work out your own salvation, you won't get anywhere. Only when you recognize your need for others and reach out and open up to them will things move forward. -Friedrich Zuendel, "The Awakening"

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems. - Mahatma Gandhi

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion, sacrifice and endurance." William Faulkner, accepting the Nobel Prize in 1950

Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. -Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder "censorship," we call it concern for commercial viability. -David Mamet, playwright

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don't like their rules, whose would you use? -Dale Carnegie

There are men - now in power in this country - who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit. -John Lindsay, former Mayor of New York City

How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others...But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness. -M. Scott Peck, A Different Drum

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. -Archibald Macleish

I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different. - Jean Jacques Rousseau

From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can survive. -Pope John Paul II

It's great to work with somebody who wants to do things differently. -Keith Bellows

As we grow as unique persons, we learn to respect the uniqueness of others. -Rober Schuller, Minister

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion? -Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you affirm your own rightness in the universe, then you co-operate with others easily and automatically as part of your own nature. You, being yourself, helps others be themselves. Because you recognize your own uniqueness you will not need to dominate others, nor cringe before them. -Jane Roberts

God does not work by only one method, paint in only one color, play in only one key, nor does He make only one star shine onto the earth. God's mystery is the rich spectrum of color that is gathered together in the purity of the sun's white light. The symphonic harmony of all the stars is built up on precisely their manifold variety. But all this is gathered together and will be gathered together at the end of time in the unity of the Kingdom of God. - Arnold Eberhard

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. -Friedrich Nietzsche

My heart is transformed by the smile of trust given by some people who are terribly fragile and weak. They call forth new energies from me. They seem to break down barriers and ring me a new freedom. It is the same with the smile of a child: even the hardest heart can't resist. Contact with people who are weak and who are crying out...is one of the most important nourishments in our lives. When we let ourselves be really touched by the gift of their presence, they leave something precious in our hearts. -Jean Vanier, founder of Faith and Light

A wonderful realization will be the day you realize that you are unique in all the world. There is nothing that is an accident. You are a special combination for a purpose and don't let them tell you otherwise, even if they tell you that purpose is an illusion. You are that combination so that you can do what is essential for you to do. Don't ever believe that you have nothing to contribute. The world is an incredible unfulfilled tapestry. And only you can fulfill that tiny space that is yours. -Leo Buscaglia, Psychologist, author

Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honor, on the plausible pretense that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. - Charles Dickens

Simplicity is my hallmark, so keep life simple. Keep in constant contact with Me and watch yourself unfold in My love. -Eileen Caddy, Spiritual guide and author

The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service. -Albert Einstein

It is not the function of our government to keep the citizens from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. -Justice Robert H. Jackson (Spoken at the Nuremberg trials)

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves. -Edwin Way Teale

The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting. -Justice William J. Brennan, 1982

When the Neo-Conservatives came into power, they disenfranchised a large number of American citizens of their vote, but I was neither black nor from Florida, so I said nothing... Then, they invaded a sovereign nation in a war of aggression based on lies and deception, but I wasn't Iraqi. I did nothing... Then, they tortured, humiliated and photographed detainees and passed the images around like baseball cards, but I wasn't an Abu Ghraib inmate. I did nothing... Then they sodomized a teen-aged boy in sight of his distraught mother, but I wasn't an Iraqi youth. I did nothing. Then, they cut off a small city's water and power before bombing it to smithereens, but I didn't live in Fallujah. I did nothing... -Daithí Mac Lochlainn, The Gaelic Starover

Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. -Lao Tzu

Our dark cabal of Neocon leaders, several of whom have held positions of great power under Reagan, Bush I, and now Bush II, are perpetuating unrestrained expansion of the American Empire while utilizing Orwellian propaganda to convince its subjects that they are still living in the "land of the free". -Jason Miller, Essayist

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. -E.F. Schumacker

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded. -Pope John Paul II

It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them. -Adolf Hitler