Quotes For You

Don't follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise. - Joan Rivers

It's never too late to be what you might have been. - TS Elliott

An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine of Hippo, "On Free Choice Of The Will"

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Wherever you go, go with all your heart. - Confucius

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. - Mark Twain

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go. - Dr. Seuss

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -  Edward R. Murrow

Courage is the most valuable of all the virtues, because without it you cannot practice any of the others. - Maya Angelou

Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength. - Henry Ward Beecher

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

Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. - George Orwell

You can tell more about a person from their kindness to strangers than you can from any words they might say. - Gail Lynne Goodwin

It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds. - Victor Frankl, Psychoanalyst

If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. - Teton Sioux 

Always seek wisdom of the ages over knowledge of the moment. - Jeff Einstein

It's only when you have the courage to step off the ledge that you'll realize you've had wings all along. - Gail Lynne Goodwin

When your burning desire for success is greater than your deepest fear of failure, you can create anything in your life! - Gail Lynne Goodwin

When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends. - Japanese Proverb

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. - Abraham Lincoln

I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. - Harriet Tubman

Modernity; we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur. - Nassim Taleb

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution. - Aldous Huxley, California Medical School, 1961

Think of yourself and say, I wish I were a candle in the darkness. - Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet

Do not hold the delusion that your advancement is accomplished by crushing others. - Marcus Tullius Cicero,106-43 B.C .

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness. - Mary Wollstonecraft

At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right. - Miguel de Unamuno, 12th October 1936

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. - Marshall McLuhan

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. - Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian author

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what ou...truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. - Steve Jobs

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost. - Malcolm X

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

What experience and history teach is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. - Georg Hegel 

True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.  - Napoleon Bonaparte

Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand. - Emily Kimbrough

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. - Clarence Darrow

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.  - Michael Bakunin

What is a rebel? A man who says no.        - Albert Camus

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. - Khalil Gibran

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.  - Ralph  Waldo  Emerson

Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That is why good ideas are initially resisted. - Hugh MacLeod

The difference between love and happiness is that those who talk about love tend to be in love, but those who talk about happiness tend to be unhappy. - Nicolas Taleb

The opposite of manliness isn't cowardice; it's technology. - Nicolas Taleb

Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river. - Jalaluddin Rumi

Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. - Jalaluddin Rumi

It is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. - George Orwell

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. - Benjamin Franklin 

It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive. - Earl Warren

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice. - Herocles

Only great minds can afford a simple style.  - Stendhal

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.  - Adolf Hitler

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace. - John Lennon

Though negotiations are a rough game, you should never allow them to become a dirty game. Once you've agreed to a deal, don't back out of it unless the other party fails to deliver as promised. Your handshake is your bond. As far as I'm concerned, a handshake is worth more than a signed contract. - Victor Kiam

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to learn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a little bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - Ralph  Waldo  Emerson

Our hearts must know the world of reason, and reason must be guided by an informed heart.    - Bruno Bettelheim

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. - Marcel Proust

History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless. - Chalmers Johnson

Perhaps the most obvious political effect of controlled news is the advantage it gives powerful people in getting their issues on the political agenda and defining those issues in ways likely to influence their resolution. - W. Lance Bennett

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought. - Simon Cameron, General and American patriot

Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong for Cape Town Opera to perform in Israel. - Archbishop Tutu

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. - Neil Postman

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness. - James Thurber

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. - Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... - Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. - Alden Nowlan

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. - Pablo Picasso

Once upon a time, at home or in school, you realized that a difficult choice was before you. You discovered to your soul's horror that you were being asked to conform to narrow, insane, artificial molds, and to relinquish self-will. - Michael Tsarion

World events do not occur by accident. They are made to happen, whether it is to do with national issues or commerce; and most of them are staged and managed by those who hold the purse strings. - Denis Healy (British Politician)

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. - Chinese proverb

Study the past if you would define the future. - Confucius

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. - Henry Ward Beecher

If a fellow isn't thankful for what he's got, he isn't likely to be thankful for what he's going to get. - Frank A. Clark

What we fear comes to pass more speedily than what we hope. - Publilius Syrus

Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth. - Richard Whately

To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it. - Bunker Hunt

If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily. - Gerald Good

We know what we are, but know not what we may be. - William Shakespeare

Our aspirations are our possibilities. - Robert Browning

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another. - John Burroughs

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. - Epictetus

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all. - William Faulkner

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! - Henry Ward Beecher

Gratitude is the memory of the heart. - Jean Baptiste Massieu

It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Keep your dreams closer to the fire of your heart than to the brilliance of the mind. - Ahmed Habib, Iraqi journalist

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? - Gandhi

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it. - John Lennon

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies …The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. - Thomas Jefferson

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship. - William Blum

The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles. - Ayn Rand

Sustainability is a condition of existence which enables the present generation of humans and other species to enjoy social well-being, a vibrant economy, and a healthy environment, and to experience fulfillment, beauty and joy, without compromising the ability of future generations of humans and other species to enjoy the same. - Guy Dauncey

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear. - Daniel Defoe

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience. - Emily Dickinson

The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live. - Victor Hugo

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. - Henry Ward Beecher

To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. - Sun Tzu

Many of my colleagues on various Western newspapers would ultimately risk their jobs if they were constantly to challenge the false reality of news journalism, the nexus of media-government power. - Robert Fisk

How do we break with the language of power? It is certainly killing us. That, I suspect, is one reason why readers have turned away from the "mainstream" press to the internet. Not because the net is free, but because readers know they have been lied to and conned - Robert Fisk

Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts. - John Wooden

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. - John Wooden

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there. - John Wooden

You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one. - John Wooden

If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes. - John Wooden

Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. - John Wooden

You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it. - John Updike

Four little words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals over the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more. - A. Lou Vickery

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live life as you've always imagined. - Brittany Crawford

It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak and another to hear. - Henry David Thoreau

The mob leader will count on emotional contagion... Emotions are far more contagious than the measles. This fact of emotional contagion was very important to Hitler. - George Estabrooks, Psychologist

To fight fear, act. To increase fear–wait, put off postpone. - David Joseph Schwartz

He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own. - Henry Ward Beecher

Yesterday is a canceled check, and tomorrow is little more than a promissory note. Today is cash. It is real, it is tangible, and you and I have to spend it wisely. - Jim Stovall

It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat. - John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 12

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it. - John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. - Henry Van Dyke

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer