We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -- Viktor Frankl An author's first duty is to let down his country. --Brendan Behan Behind every great fortune, there is a crime. --Honore de Balzac It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us. --Peter De Vries He is a wise man who invented God. --Plato It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. --James Thurber Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. --Samuel Butler There is more to life than incresing its speed. --Mahatma Gandhi There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money, either. --Robert Graves Every gun that is fired, 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. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. --Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?" --Rabbi Zuzya The perfection of
wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see. -- Thomas Carlyle Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. --Albert Einstein The youth gets together
his materials to build a bridge to the moon, Besides the noble
art of getting things done, there is the noble art You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind. -- Irish Proverb If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. --George Bernard Shaw Each
had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart;
and his friends could only read the title. -- Virginia Woolf Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. -- Thomas Carlyle If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with any how. -- Friedrich Neitzsche There is no such crime as a crime of thought. There are only crimes of action. -- Clarence Darrow Of what use is a philosopher who does not hurt anyone's feelings? -- Diogenes Knowledge is not intelligence. -- Heraclitus Either belief in God is unconditional or it is no belief at all. -- Viktor Frankl Count no man happy until he is dead. -- Solon I am confident of nothing
but the holiness of the heart's affections and A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her. -- Oscar Wilde The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray. -- Oscar Wilde Worship is transcendent wonder. -- Thomas Carlyle Skepticism is the beginning of faith. -- Oscar Wilde Children begin by loving
their parents. After a time they judge them. He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom. -- Schopenhauer No one worth possessing can quite be possessed. -- Sara Teasdale Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. -- Nietzsche Many hours I waste today
, Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed. -- Henry Miller Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. -- George Orwell Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. -- Oscar Wilde Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. -- Thomas Jefferson Help a man against his will and you do the same as murder him. -- Horace No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good. -- Mandell Creighton Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice. -- Dr. Samuel Johnson The sun shineth upon the dunghill and is not corrupted. -- John Lyly A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important. -- Eugene McCarthy I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education. -- Wilson Mizner No man who worships education has got the best out of education...without a gentle contempt for education, no man's education is complete. -- G.K. Chesterton Russian Communism is the illegitimate child of Karl Marx and Catherine the Great. -- Clement Atlee City life: millions of people being lonely together. -- Henry David Thoreau If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing. -- Ben Franklin Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. -- Oscar Wilde A gun gives you the body, not the bird. -- Henry David Thoreau Many men go fishing all
of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
-- Henry David Thoreau Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be. -- Bertrand Russell The true office of any faith is to give life a meaning which death cannot destroy. -- Tolstoy The only true education is growing up into a worthwhile world. -- ? We loved the earth but could not stay. -- Loren Eiseley's tombstone Children have more need of models than of critics. -- Joubert The result of the educative process is the capacity for further education. -- John Dewey We can have facts without thinking, but we cannot have thinking without facts. -- John Dewey Although the logos is common to all, the many live as though they had a private understanding. -- Herakleitos (frag 2) Hero worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom. -- Herbert Spencer When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their victory but new masters. -- George Saville There is nothing so unpardonable as to consent to a senseless, aimless, purposeless life. -- R. Browning An honest God's the noblest work of man. -- Samuel Butler The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. -- H. Walpole Death is a name for beauty not in use. -- I. Layton There is no sin except stupidity. -- O. Wilde The man who does not wish to be one of the mass only needs to cease to be easy on himself. -- Neitzsche The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. -- V. Woolf 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 No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -- E. Roosevelt Any life, no matter how long and complex it may be, is made up of a single moment – the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is. -- Jorge Luis Borges Much learning does not teach a man to have intelligence. -- Herakleitos A man with his belly full of the classics is an enemy of the human race. -- Henry Miller The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. -- Neitzsche Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be. -- Thomas Jefferson The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France I am waiting for the world to be made safe for anarchy. -- L. Ferlinghetti Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. -- G. M. Trevelyan What you do speaks so loud that I can't hear what you say. -- R. W. Emerson It is easier to rob by setting up a bank than by robbing a bank clerk. -- B. Brecht A man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for. -- R. Browning There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. -- Thoreau Do you not know that a child badly taught is farther from being wise than one not taught at all? -- Rousseau Hero worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom. -- H. Spencer All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing. -- E. Burke You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge one for yourself. -- Froude Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. -- Virginia Woolf We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the sermon on the mount. -- Omar Bradley The true university of these days is a collection of books. -- T. Carlyle What is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity. -- Oscar Wilde If you can't bring about the best, at least keep the worst from happening. -- T. More No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good. -- Bishop Mandell Creighton I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. -- Thomas Jefferson Spare me therefore, your good intentions, your inner sensitivities, your unarticulated and unexpressed love. And spare me also these tedious psycho-historians which, by exposing the goodness inside the bad man, and the evil in the good--invariably establish a vulgar and perverse egalitarianism, as if the arrangement of what is outside and what inside makes no moral difference. -- Willard Gaylin I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. -- W. Whitman A day will come when man will discover an alphabet in the eyes of the chalcedonies, in the marking of the moth, and will learn in astonishment that every spotted snail has always been a poem. -- Alejo Carpentier The Lost Steps Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. -- G.M. Trevelyan I loathe people who keep dogs. They haven't got the guts to bite people themselves. -- Strindberg in A Madman's Diary Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches. -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons. -- Dr. Samuel Johnson What is a man, when you
come to think upon him, but a minutely set, I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education -- Wilson Mizner Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz |
A partial list of recent contributors to this page include Amber Fillmore, Frank Nelson, Luise Oberth and Karl Gheewalla.