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Quotes

Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.

Thich Nhat Hanh

To know and not to do, is in fact not to know.

STEPHEN R. COVEY

A ship in harbour is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.

WILLIAM A. SHEDD

 

If you can do it, then why do it.

GERTRUDE STEIN

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERYAirman’s Odyssey

 

Minds are like parachutes — they work best when they’re open.

UNKNOWN

 

Some people don’t have much to say, but you have to listen a long time to find out.

MARK TWAIN

The earth laughs in flowers.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

After the ship has sunk, everyone knows how it might have been saved.

ITALIAN PROVERB

 

Our faults irritate us most when we see them in others.

PENNSYLVANIAN DUTCH PROVERB

Nice thing about mistakes they don’t have to be permanent.

THOMAS EDISON

When we stop learning and merely act from the knowledge we have accumulated, disorder comes.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

 

War is wrong, why fight it?

UNKNOWN

 

Don’t tell me this is a difficult problem. If it weren’t difficult, it wouldn’t be a problem.

ED KOCH

 

The past is history, the future a mystery, and this moment a gift. That’s why this moment is called ‘the present’.

NUMEROUS CLAIMANTS

A mind once stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimension.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

 

Success has many parents, failure is an orphan.

UNKNOWN

 

If there was only one way of doing something, there’d only be one person in the world.

UNKNOWN

 

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The anatomy of hate is possible to understand, but indifference . . .

ELIE WIESEL, Holocaust survivor

To put the bounty and the health of our land, our only commonwealth, into the hands of people who do not live on it and share its fate will always be an error. For whatever determines the fortune of the land determines also the fortune of the people. If history teaches anything, it teaches that.

WENDELL BERRY

Travellers are people who never know where they are going, whereas tourists are those who never know where they’ve been.

PAUL THEROUX

 

If we do not know what port we are steering for, no wind is favourable.

SENECA

 

It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

If you put your head in the sand, it’ll turn to dust.

UNKNOWN

 

If you love what you do, you’ll never work another day in your life.

CONFUCIUS

United we bargain, divided we beg.

UNKNOWN

If a person becomes too rich without sharing, like an over-ripe fruit, he or she will fall.

UNKNOWN

 

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published anywhere around the world — even if what’s published isn’t true.

RICHARD BACH

We are confronted by insurmountable opportunities.

POGO

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

GEORGE ORWELL

 

Those who see all beings in themselves, and their own selves in all beings, lose all fear. 

STARHAWK, The Fifth Sacred Thing

 

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

 

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

MOHAMMED ALI

 

You cannot say you are sorry you stole my pen if you continue to retain possession of it.

DESMOND TUTU, on reconciliation and forgiveness

A good example has twice the value of good advice.

UNKNOWN

 

Improvement begins with I.

ARNOLD GLASOW

An eye for an eye will make the world go blind.

MAHATMA GANDHI

 

For those who know, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation will suffice.

UNKNOWN

When spiders unite, they can tie down a lion.

ETHIOPIAN PROVERB

 

If you get too close to people, you can catch their dreams, er I mean, germs.

PRESTON TUCKER

 

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.

EDWARD R. MURROW

 

Real generosity is doing something for someone who’ll never find out who it was.

FRANK A. CLARK

 

The true meaning of generosity is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

NELSON HENDERSON

 

You can’t be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.

MARY TYLER MOORE

 

The cheapest facelift? A smile.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die, any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

 

A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

OLD ENGLISH PROVERB

 

You don’t feel the bullet you’ve just dodged.

UNKNOWN

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.

JESSE JACKSON

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

 

The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.

BLAISE PASCAL

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

 

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

JONATHAN SWIFT

 

Politicians are the same everywhere: they promise to build a bridge even when there’s no river.

NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV

 

Money can’t buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.

SPIKE MILLIGAN

 

Bless you for your jealousy; it is a sign of empathy.

YOKO ONO

 

Your reputation is none of your business.

WAYNE DYER

 

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.

JIMI HENDRIX

 

Don’t ever take down a fence until you know why it was put up.

ROBERT FROST

 

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault. If they do it twice, it’s your fault.

UNKNOWN

 

Principles only mean something when we stick by them when they are inconvenient.

The Contender (movie)

 

To be great is to be misunderstood.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

(We are) Waiting for the moment when the moment has been waiting all the time.

JON ANDERSON

Magic is the art of changing consciousness at will.

STARHAWK

 

Cogs in the machine go round in circles, wear out and get replaced.

WAKING THE DEAD

 

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

ANDRE GIDE

Art that doesn’t attempt the impossible, isn’t performing its function.

WILLIAM BUTLER KEATS

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

We make more money selling the advice than following it.

STEVE FORBES

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

 

Expect the unexpected or you won’t find it.

HERACLITUS

Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

P J O’ROURKE

Poor people have access to the courts in the same sense that Christians had access to the lions.

JUDGE EARL JOHNSON JNR

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JNR

The problem with success is you become what you detest.

JESUS JONES

 

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you have always got.

ANTHONY ROBBINS

 

No one knows enough to be a pessimist.

WAYNE DYER

Be yourself: there’s nobody better qualified.

UNKNOWN

 

If you follow the herd, you’ll end up stepping in shit.

WAYNE DYER

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

UNKNOWN

 

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.

ANDRE GIDE

 

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

GEORGE ELIOT

 

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

AGNES REPPLIER

People need to know what you stand for, and what you won’t stand for.

UNKNOWN

 

The ends don’t justify the means. The means shape the ends. You become what you do.

STARHAWK

We who have no time for our health today, may have no health for a time tomorrow.

UNKNOWN

Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the Atomic Age — as in being able to remake ourselves.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Gambling is the only business where dissatisfied customers keep coming back for more.

UNKNOWN

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

LILLA WATSON, Aboriginal educator/activist

Possess yourself — somebody else will.

THE FIXX

 

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

HERMAN MELVILLE

 

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.

THEODORE H. WHITE

 

Live as if to die tomorrow. Learn as if to live forever.

MAHATMA GANDHI

If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

GENERAL GEORGE S. HUTTON JR

 

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

 

Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

 

All the flowers on a tree do not produce fruit.

WOLOF PEOPLE SAYING

 

When the monkey cannot reach the ripe banana, he says it’s sour.

BAMBARA PEOPLE SAYING

 

He who is unable to dance says the yard is stony.

KENYAN PROVERB

 

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

ELLEN GOODMAN

 

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

MAHATMA GANDHI

 

Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more.

MARVIN BELL, poet

 

The safest nuclear reactor in the world is the one that hasn’t been built.

UNKNOWN

 

You’ve got to declare yourself openly, otherwise, you’ll stay right where you are.

Carry On Cruising (movie)

 

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

H. G. WELLS

 

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.

JOHN CAGE

 

[Why be] always on the move, but going nowhere fast?

BILLIE, character, Boardwalk Empire (TV show)

 

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you said.

MARK TWAIN

 

After the chess match, the King and the pawn go into the same box.

ITALIAN PROVERB

 

Fame is the mask that eats away the face.

JOHN UPDIKE

I think it would be a good idea. 

MAHATMA GANDHI, when asked by a British reporter what he thought about western civilisation

 

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

THOMAS EDISON

 

We didn’t all come over on the same ship, but we’re all in the same boat.

BERNHARD M. BARUCH

 

Acting is the easiest thing in the world, just don't get caught doing it.

SPENCER TRACY, on the challenge of acting

 

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

MARCEL PROUST

 

Don’t go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

 

I imagine God is weary being called down on both sides of an argument.

Cold Mountain (movie)

 

The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.

MARK TWAIN

 

The moment you realise you are in the moment takes you out of the moment.

UNKNOWN

 

Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different.

C.S. LEWIS

 

Don’t criticise what you can’t understand. You have never walked in that man's shoes.

ELVIS PRESLEY

 

Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?

KANYE WEST

 

A sense of humour is common sense dancing.

CLIVE JAMES

 

Comparison is the thief of joy.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

 

Abilities wither under faultfinding, blossom under encouragement.

DONALD A LAIRD

 

The brightest colour crayon isn’t always the sharpest in the box. Many things are bright but that doesn’t mean they’re sharp.

TTM

 

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

AFRICAN PROVERB

 

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.

STEPHEN McCRANIE

 

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

PLATO

 

Forgive others, not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.

JONATHAN LOCKWOOD HUIE

 

Some people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until seventy-five.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

The sun dries without prejudice the clothes of the rich and poor alike.

MAHATMA GANDHI

 

Life becomes easier when you accept the apology you never got. 

ROBERT BAULT

 

A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour.

UNKNOWN

 

Pay attention to the cracks, because that’s where the light gets in.

LEONARD COHEN

 

Intelligence is not what one knows . . . but what one does when one does not know.

JEAN PIAGET

 

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to Truth: not going all the way and not starting.

BUDDHA

 

Appeasement is the hope that the alligator will eat you last.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

 

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

 

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

 

Character is simply habit long continued.

PLUTARCH

Where words fail, music speaks.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

 

War happens when politicians fail.

JESSE VENTURA

 

To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.

CHINESE PROVERB

 

Those who never change their minds, never change anything.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

CHINESE PROVERB

 

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. 

MARK TWAIN

 

Society is like a stew. If you don’t keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.

EDWARD ABBEY

 

The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

FINLEY PETER DUNNE

 

LEGAL PARTNER to ADMIN ASSISTANT, caught talking to another staff member about relationships in the toilets: “Haven’t you got work to do?’’

ADMIN ASSISTANT: “Oh yes, but this is what I do best.’’ from The Ally McBeal Show (TV show)

 

Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don’t want (or need) to impress people they don’t like (or really know).

Adapted from WILL ROGERS

 

If you think you are too small to make a difference, then you have never been in bed with a mosquito.

BETTY REESE

 

Go the extra mile. It’s never crowded.

UNKNOWN

 

Gambling is the only business where dissatisfied customers keep coming back for more.

UNKNOWN

 

Here’s a test to see if your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.

RICHARD BACH

 

Death can’t stop love. All it can do is delay it for a while.

WESTLEY, character, The Princess Bride (movie)

 

People who have nothing to worry about are usually on their way to the cemetery.

DAVID, character, Moonlighting (TV show)

 

Always love your enemies. Nothing annoys them as much.

OSCAR WILDE

 

Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.

GRACE HENSEN

 

If your horse dies, get off.

UNKNOWN
 

W. C. FIELDS: “I wonder what kind of woman you are?’’

MAE WEST: “I’m sorry I don’t give out free samples.’’

My Little Chickadees (movie)

 

I never forget a face, but in your case, I’ll make an exception.

GROUCHO MARX

 

Look, you can’t keep on blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once, then move on.

HOMER SIMPSON

 

You can do anything when you’re famous. That’s why famous people are so dumb.

JARVIS COCKER, Pulp (musician)

 

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

UNKNOWN

The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell. 

SIMONE WEIL

If you have one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you’ll shit all over the present.

DEBBIE NOVOTNY, character, Queer As Folk (TV show, US version)

 

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you hear what is sounding outside of you. 

DAG HAMMARSKJOLD

Do what you know is right, but try not to get caught.

ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT

 

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

UNKNOWN

 

A committee is a cul-de-sac to which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.

JOHN A. LINCOLN

 

Always remember you’re unique . . . just like everyone else.

UNKNOWN

 

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you’re playing by somebody else’s rules, while quietly playing by your own.

MICHAEL KONDA

 

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

DON MARQUIS

 

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

OSCAR WILDE

 

If people don’t know what you're doing, they won't know what you’re doing wrong.

SIR HUMPHREY APPLEBY, character, episode Open Government, Yes, Minister (TV show)

 

Trying is the first step toward failure.

HOMER SIMPSON

 

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, and to have the two as close together as possible.

GEORGE BURNS

 

The best thing about always being honest is you never have to remember what you’ve said.

UNKNOWN

 

When ‘i’ is replaced by ‘we’, ‘illness’ becomes ‘wellness’.

UNKNOWN

 

People know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

OSCAR WILDE

 

Kill one man and you’re a murderer, kill a million and you're a conqueror.

JEAN ROSTAND

 

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind: Every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.

JOHN GLENN, astronaut

 

A true friend is one who stabs you in the front.

OSCAR WILDE

 

Life isn’t fair, it’s just fairer than death.

The Princess Bride (movie)

 

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

 

Some people die at twenty-five, and aren't buried until they're seventy-five.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

 

POLICE OFFICER to MOTORIST: “This is a one-way street.’’

MOTORIST: “Well, I'm only going one way.’’

 

That’s the thing with doctors: the only time the public's safe is when they're on the golf course.

UNKNOWN

 

Why size does matter: You can sit on top of a mountain, but you can’t sit on pinhead.

UNKNOWN

 

It’s better to keep your mouth shut and give the impression you’re stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

RAMI BELSON

 

There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.

MARY KAY ASH

 

Don’t do something permanently stupid just because you are temporarily upset.

UNKNOWN

 

A man who can smile when things go wrong has found someone to blame it on.

YECK BROTHERS

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.

CARL JUNG

 

Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

The Princess Bride (movie)

You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.

WILL ROGERS

 

Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go.

OSCAR WILDE

 

Live every day like it’s your last and someday you’ll be right.

WOODY ALLEN, Café Society (movie)

 

Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

MARK TWAIN

These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.

GROUCHO MARX

 

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute. GEORGE BERNHARD SHAW

 

Enlightenment is understanding that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody you have to be except exactly who you’re being right now.

NEALE DONALD WALSCH

Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie.

RUSSIAN PROVERB

 

If you’re going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

HENRY YOUNGMAN

 

Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

 

A free society is a place where it’s safe to be unpopular.

ADLAI E. STEVENSON, JR

 

There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle.

ROBERT ALDEN

You can’t fake listening. It shows.

RAQUEL WELCH

 

It started off badly, tapered off in the middle, and the less said about the end the better. Other than that it was excellent.

BLACKADDER, character, Blackadder (TV series), reviewing something or other!

 

Seduction is the art of selling something the other party isn't even sure they want.

Pocket Listing (movie)

Seduction is manipulation disguised as romance.

RETORT, same movie

I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy; my reality is just different from yours.

LEWIS CARROLL

 

The root of all evil will die if not watered.

UNKNOWN

 

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

MARK TWAIN

 

A collection from Regina Brett

When you don’t get what you want, you get something better — experience.

 

What they call you is up to them. What you answer to is up to you.

 

Give others a second chance to make a first impression.

 

There’s a time for everything but not always at the same time.

 

Only you can determine your worth.

 

When things fall apart, they could actually be falling into place.

 

Not everything that counts can be counted. Don’t confuse your work with your worth.

 

Just because someone isn’t on your path doesn’t mean they’re lost.

 

No one can drain you without your permission.

 

Power is an inside job.

 

Don’t die with your music in you.

 

Nothing you want is upstream, so stop struggling.

 

You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.

To go after what you want in life, you have to silence the critics, starting with the biggest one: you.

 

If you don’t have a strategy, you’re part of someone else’s strategy. 

ALVIN TOFFLER

 

The future hurts. But only once. Denying it stings forever.

Billions (TV series, S03E04)

 

Take care of your memories, because you can’t relive them.

BOB DYLAN

 

Billionaires paying millionaires to tell the middle class to blame the poor.

a line from THE GRINNING BARRETTS’ song Plutocrass, on the mainstream media 

 

Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most underrated agent of human change.

BOB KERREY

 

Want to know what God thinks of money? Look at the people he gave it to.

DOROTHY PARKER

 

I have noticed that even people who claim everything is predetermined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

STEPHEN HAWKING

 

Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow Internet to see who they really are.

WILL FERRELL

 

Never follow someone else’s path; unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path, then by all means, you should follow that.

ELLEN DEGENERES

 

The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing, and then they marry him.

CHER

 

Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.

JOHN LENNON

 

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

WALLACE NOTESTEIN

When a thief kisses you, count your teeth.

YIDDISH PROVERB

You cannot waken someone who pretends to be asleep.

EDWARD SNOWDEN

Failure is the line of least persistence.

STEPHANIE MARTINO

When you listen to a political speech, it is like shooting at a target, you must allow for the wind.

HUGH ALLEN

A gift shop is a place where you can see all the things you hope your friends won’t send you for Christmas.

JACK WOOLSEY

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

ALICE WALKER

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

GEORGE ELIOT

The media won’t connect the dots. The dots give them a job.

MAJOR DANNY SJURZEN (RET.)

Leadership is not a title. Leadership is seeing something that needs doing, and doing it.

RACHAEL ROBERTSON

The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about.

OSCAR WILDE

Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

GARY SNYDER

 

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

PABLO PICASSO

The plural of anecdote is not data.

MARC BEKOFF

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

If con is the opposite of pro, then isn’t Congress the opposite of progress? J

ON STEWART

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

MARK TWAIN

 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

GREEK PROVERB

A wonderful fact to reflect upon is that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

CHARLES DICKENS

 

You may not think about politics but politics thinks about you.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI

 

When I was a child, my mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll end up as the pope.” Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

PABLO PICASSO

 

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase their memory. Destroy their books, their culture, their history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was . . . The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

MILAN KUNDERA

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

 

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.

THOMAS EDISON

If I never came back it wouldn’t be a tragedy, because a tragedy would be someone who dies at 80 and had spent 80 years not being satisfied. I was out there doing what I wanted.

JESSE MARTIN, aged 18, modern-day adventurer, after sailing solo around the world, when asked what if he had died out at sea

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

PLATO

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

HERMAN GOERING

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

HENRY FORD

The one who pursues revenge should dig two graves.

CHINESE PROVERB

 

It’s better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies.

ARTHUR CALDWELL

 

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

WINSTON CHURCHILL

 

It takes a constant effort of mind to avoid the abundance that life offers naturally.

STUART WILDE

Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

 

Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.

WILLIAM BRUCE CAMERON

 

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.

MICHELANGELO

 

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

The truth is that enlightenment is neither remote nor unattainable. It is closer than your skin and more immediate than your next breath. If we wonder why so few seem able to find that which can never be lost, we might recall the child who was looking in the light for a coin he dropped in the dark because “the light is better over there”. Humanity has spent ages looking in the light for a coin that awaits for us not in the light nor in the dark, but beyond all opposites.

JED McKENNA

What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

 

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up 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

If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.

EDWARD BERNAYS, Propaganda, 1924

It is a particularly gruesome characteristic of politicians the world over that, in order to legitimise their own prejudices and self-interest, they place them in the mouth of some shadowy collective constituent. Thus, they lobby the cause of those who pay them in the guise of voicing the fears of those who vote for them.

BEN ELTON, This Other Eden

For those who know, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not, no explanation will suffice.

UNKNOWN

 

You never do anything that works out the first time, unless you're doing something that's already been done.

AMY DEAN

When the uncertain experiencing of reality is dawning upon me here, with the every thought of fear and terror or awe for all set aside, may I recognise whatever appears as the reflection of my own consciousness . . . may I not fear the bands of wrathful deities my own thought forms.

THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong — because someday in life you will have been all of these.

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER

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

ROBERT KENNEDY, from his speech at the University of Capetown, South Africa on June 6, 1966

Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.

WILLIAM RALPH INGE

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door, that we do not see the one that has opened for us.

HELEN KELLER

 

One of the biggest challenges to a relationship is learning how to say, 'I disagree with you' while still holding hands.

ALEXANDRA PENNEY

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

First attributed to AL-ANON/12-STEP PROGRAM, October 1981

Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.

TAGORE, Stray Birds CCLXVII

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

MARK TWAIN

Apologies are a bore. What we want is an explanation.​

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS 

An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. 

EDWARD GIBBON

What we learn from history is that no one learns from history.

OTTO VON BISMARK

You don’t have to attend every argument to which you’re invited.

UNKNOWN

If you don’t pick a day to relax, your body will pick one for you.

UNKNOWN

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

Bigfoot is sometimes confused with Sasquatch. Yeti never complains.

UNKNOWN

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can evolve.

OSCAR WILDE

If I am to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.

UNKNOWN

Rather fail with honour than succeed by fraud.

SOPHOCLES

What do you call someone who knows it’s all going to shit, but still thinks things will turn out okay? An apocaloptimist.

UNKNOWN

When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need.

AYURVEDIC PROVERB

If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise, we do not believe in it at all.

NOAM CHOMSKY

I have learned that every mortal will taste death, but only some will taste life.

RUMI

There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally. ​

DON MIGUEL RUIZ

You can tell a lot about a person by the things they run from and the person they run to.

CHLOE FRAYNE

Those who dare not offend cannot be honest.

THOMAS PAINE

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software.

EDWARD TUFTE

A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn’t become right and evil doesn’t become good, just because it's accepted by the majority.

RICK WARREN

Those who tell the stories rule the world.

HOPI PROVERB

Thinking is difficult. That's why most people judge.

CARL JUNG

Those who do not know the torment of the unknown cannot have the joy of discovery. 

CLAUDE BERNARD

Clutter is nothing more than postposed decisions.

UNKNOWN

Our entire universe is probably in a tiny glass jar somewhere placed on a shelf in an alien child's room as a science project that scored a C-.

UNKNOWN

Crisis doesn’t create character. It reveals it.

UNKNOWN

A good friend is like a four-leaf clover: Hard to find and lucky to have.

IRISH PROVERB

A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.

ANOTHER IRSIH PROVERB

If you name me, you negate me. By giving me a name, a label, you negate all the other things I could possibly be.

SOREN KIKEGAARD

Never argue with someone whose TV is bigger than their bookshelf.

EMILIA CLARKE

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.

ALEKSANDER SOLZHENITSYN

In politics, not happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

If it’s important enough to you, you will find a way. If it’s not, you will find a excuse.

UNKNOWN

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

WILLIAM MORRIS, The Beauty of Life 1880

It takes nothing to join the crowd. It takes everything to stand alone.

HANS F. HANSEN

For the seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out, and everything changes. To someone who don’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.

CYNTHIA OCCELLI

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

 

There is no happiness if the things we believe in are different to the things we do.

ALBERT CAMUS

I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.

JOHN WAYNE

The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because its handle was made of wood, it was one of them.

TURKISH PROVERB

I AM. Two of the most powerful words. Because what you put after them, shapes your reality.

UNKNOWN

In the very end, civilisations perish because they listen to their politicians and not their poets.

JONAS MEKAS

It all seems impossible until it's done.

NELSON MANDELA

Once a country is conditioned to liars, it takes generations to get the truth back.

GORE VIDAL

I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero.

GEORGE CARLIN

If you wish to understand the Universe, think in terms of frequency and vibration.

NIKOLA TESLA

The only difference between an ordeal and an adventure is your attitude.

UNKNOWN

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

JAMES BALDWIN

The most powerful form is civil disobedience is to resist the temptation to hate.

UNKNOWN

There are some people who could hear you speak a thousand words and still not understand you. And there are others who will understand without you even speaking a word.

UNKNOWN

Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.

BOB MARLEY

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.

H.L. MENCKEN

Normality is a paved road: it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow there.

VINCENT VAN GOGH

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.

JOSPEH CAMPBELL

When I react, I become a reflection of their perception instead of a projection of my truth.

SAMQURASHI

You don’t need to return to older versions of yourself to satisfy people who aren’t ready to see how you've grown. UNKNOWN

There will always be shit going on. You will likely always have too many grownup things to get done. I don’t care. Don’t you dare let a single day go by without doing something you love. Life is too damn short to live days without magic.

BROOE HAMPTON

The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get 22.

DASHIELL HAMMETT

Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.

UNKNOWN

As soon as we free ourselves from the mirage of hurrying time, we are alive again, as in childhood, to the ecstasies of ordinary life.

ALAN WATTS

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

EDWARD R MURROW

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.

OSCAR WILDE

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important lesson of history.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Be like a tree, and let the dead leaves drop . . .

RUMI

The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.

TIBETAN PROVERB

The nature of ignorance is to separate, to isolate, to create discrimination and differences, so that finally we cannot communicate as a harmonious whole. These differences we create appear as fighting, anger, hatred, and war.

KATAGIRI ROSHI

Characterise people by their actions and you will never be fooled by the words.

UNKNOWN

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

MARGARET THATCHER

Never forget you have every right to question any individual, system, movement, or group that only tolerates you when you think and behave exactly as they do.

AFRICA BROOKE

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

RALPH WALSO EMERSON

The technique of infamy is start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.

EZRA POUND

Information is just bits of data. Knowledge is putting them together. Wisdom is transcending them.

RAM DASS

You can be a good person with a kind heart and still say no.

LORI DESCHENE

It is very easy to conform to what your society or parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing, but that is not living. To live is to find out for yourself what is true.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

Do not speak badly of yourself, for the warrior within hears your words and is lessened by them.

DAVID GEMMELL

Open up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.

TERRENCE McKENNA

The ‘belonging’ gained from following the crowd is not belonging. It is performative self-abandonment.

EMMA ZECK

Sometimes the greatest test is how you quietly handle those who so boldly mishandled you.

MORGAN RICHARD OLIVIER

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude.

EMILY DICKINSON

Be patient with yourself . . . Nothing in nature blooms all year round.

UNKNOWN

I wish people came with a thirty-second trailer, so I could see what I’m getting myself into.

UNKNOWN

Our common folly is to believe everything in creation is destined for our service.

UNKNOWN

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health. And are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

WENDELL BERRY

Drop all illusion there has ever been anything outside of you that can save you.

LORIE LADD

Trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair.

UNKNOWN

I used to care what people thought about me, until one day I tried to pay my bills with their opinions.

UNKNOWN

Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly and most underrated agent of human change.

BOB KERREY

The more real you get the more unreal the world gets.

JOHN LENNON

The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.

GEORGE CARLIN

Don’t let anyone else ruin your day. It’s your day. Ruin it yourself.

UNKNOWN

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. DESMOND TUTU

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

GEORGE BERNHARD SHAW

And the strongest trust is built by the smallest actions, the keeping of the little promises. It is the constant truthfulness, the continued dependability, the remembrance of minor things that most inspire confidence and faith. WALTER WANGERIN JR

It’s okay to fall apart sometimes. Tacos do and we still love them.

A sign posted outside a café

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

UPTON SINCLAIR

The best predictors of the future aren’t smarter. They’re just willing to take one more look, one more time, than the other folks.

ADAM GRANT, Think Again (paraphrased)

Don’t compare yourself to others. There’s no comparison between the sun and the moon. They shine when it’s their time.

UNKNOWN

Those who love peace must learn to organise as effectively as those who love war.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR

A physician once said, “The best medicine for humans is love.” Someone then asked, “What if it doesn’t work?” The physician smiled and replied, "Increase the dose."

UNKNOWN

We are all leaves of one tree, all waves of one sea.

THICH NHAT HANH

If we were to erase all the ‘mistakes’ from our pasts, we would be erasing all the wisdom we now have from having learnt from those ‘mistakes’. Remember the lesson, not the disappointment.

UNKNOWN

The truth has no defence against a fool determined to believe a lie.

MARK TWAIN

We meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it.

CARL JUNG

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

SOCRATES

The final stage of healing is using what happened to you to help other people.

GLORIA STEINEM

Rock bottom will teach you lessons mountain tops never will.

UNKNOWN

All healing is reinterpreting what you believe has happened to you.

BARBARA MARCHINIAK

Open your mind. Your brain won't fall out, but years of conditioning will.

UNKNOWN

A true master is not a master if he is a slave to his own knowledge.

UNKNOWN

Live by your code, stand by your work.

UNKNOWN

Live not in your past tense, live not in your future tense, rather live in your pleasant tense.

ST GERMAINE

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

We, the unwilling, led by the unqualified, have been doing so much with so little for so long, that we are now expected to do everything, with nothing, forever.

KONSTANTIN JOSEF JIRECEK

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

GEORGE BERNHARD SHAW

 

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

 

The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

WILLIAM STEKEL

 

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

SOCRATES

 

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

MAYA ANGELOU

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.

US PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, five-star general who led Allied forces in World War II, in a 1953 speech

 

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

LOUIS D. BRANDEIS

 

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

 

I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

ISAAC NEWTON

Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it politic? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR

Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.

GEORGE ORWELL

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Summer friends melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.

GEORGE R R MARTIN’s grandmother

The story has been told. If it was bad, it was my fault, because I am the storyteller. But if it was good, it belongs to everybody.

THE SWAHILI STORYTELLERS

 

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch

The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.

JOHN SCHAAR

When we walk to the edge of the all the light we have and then step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe one of two thing will happen: there will be something solid for us to stand on, or we will be taught to fly.

PATRICK OVERTON, The Leaning Tree

The carbon inside you could have existed in any number of creatures or natural disasters before finding you. That particular atom residing somewhere above your left eyebrow? It could well have been a sooth riverbed pebble before deciding to call you home. You are rock and wave and the peeling bark of trees, you are ladybirds and the smell of a garden after the rain.

ELLA FRANCES SANDERS
 

I didn’t climb the tree because I was angry at corporations and government; I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world. My feelings of connection drive me, not my anger and feelings of being disconnected.

JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL, who once spent two years living in a redwood tree, her goal being to save it from being cut down by a logging company

I do not know what I am to the world, but to myself, I am but a small boy, playing on the seashore, searching for an ever more perfect pebble or seashell, while before me lies the great ocean of truth.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal, from which it follows that irregularity — that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment — is an essential part and characteristic of beauty.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

TEAM = Together Everyone Achieves More

FEAR = Fantasised Expectation Appearing Real

or Face Everything And Recover

Politicians are a lot like diapers [nappies]. They should be changed frequently and for the same reason.

JOHN WALLNER

Privacy is the foundation of all other rights. Arguing that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide, is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

EDWARD SNOWDEN

The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.

ALEXANDRA K. TRENFOR

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

CARL JUNG

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.

UNKNOWN

Looking at life from a different perspective makes you realise that it's not the deer that's crossing the road, it's the road that is crossing the forest.

UNKNOWN

He who works with his hands is a labourer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI

No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworm.

WENDELL BERRY

You should sit in nature for twenty minutes a day . . . unless you're busy, in which case you should sit for an hour.

ZEN SAYING

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe.

MOHAMMED ALI

Keep you face always towards the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind you.

WALT WHITMAN

The more you give up who you are to be liked by other people, the more you become a product of what everyone else wants, and not who you’re supposed to be.

UNKNOWN

I don’t care that they stole my idea. I care that they don’t have any of their own.

NIKOLA TESLA

The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

Feeling the need to be busy all the time is a trauma response and fear-based distraction from what you'd be forced to acknowledge and feel if you slowed down.

UNKNOWN

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

THOMAS JEFFERSON

Adventure may hurt you but monotony will kill you.

UNKNOWN

We are all one. Only egos, beliefs and fears separate us.

NIKOLA TESLA

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders who drop bombs and massacre villages.

BANKSY

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

HENRY FORD

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about his own life but that it bothers him less and less.

VACLAV HAVEL, Letters to Olga 1988

 

Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated on hope.

CORNEL WEST, The Moral Obligations of Living in a Democratic Society, in The Good Citizen 1999

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet to be determined to make them better.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.

M. C. ESCHER 

Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I will meet you there.

RUMI, Sufi poet, 1207-1273

If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.

LAO TZU

Live as if to die tomorrow; learn as if to live forever.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement, to get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal, everything is incredible. Never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL

It is only with the greatest care that memory can be kept from becoming a prison or a gallows.

The Orville (TV series) S03E02

You think you know stress? When I grew up, if you missed a TV show, you just missed it. Forever.

As seen on a t-shirt. UNKNOWN, but most likely someone living in the 1950s or the 1960s!

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country.

EDWARD BERNAYS 

The difficulty is that we do not know how to listen, how to see, and how to hear because when a new things is said, we put it into old bottles, fit it into old terminologies, and therefore we spoil it.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

THREE FROM HIPPOCRATES

If you are in a bad mood go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk. 

Before you heal someone, ask them if they’re willing to give up the things that make them sick.

It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has. 

I would rather have questions that can’t be answered, than answers that can’t be questioned. 

RICHARD FEYNMAN, theoretical physicist

If you pay attention to the patterns of your life, you will realise everything always works out. Everything always takes you to a greater destination. You still grow, and the things you think you can’t survive, you somehow divinely make it through. That’s life. Always remember that.

IDIL AHMED

There is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

ALAN WATTS

Today’s truth is frequently tomorrow’s error. If truth is to emerge and in the long run be triumphant, the process of free debate — the untrammelled clash of opinion — must go on.

ROBERT MENZIES 

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

CARL SAGAN

Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear the path.

PAULO COELHO

One generation of deeply loving parents would change the brain of the next generation, and with that, the world. 

CHARLES RAISON

The way you alchemise a soulless world into a sacred world is by treating everyone as if they are sacred, until the sacred in them remembers.

SARAH DURHAM WILSON

When we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.

WENDELL BERRY

Ships don’t sink because of the water around them. Ships sink because of the water that gets in them. Don’t let what’s happening around you get inside you and weigh you down.

UNKNOWN

In the end, only three things matter: How much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

BUDDHA

People aren’t yelling at you. They're yelling at their projected fear and unresolved trauma. You're simply the mirror they don’t know they're looking at.

DANIELLE PAIGE

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

JOHN F KENNEDY JR

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

SENECA

The fearful seek to serve themselves by mastering the world, while the fearless seek to serve the world by mastering themselves.

UNKNOWN

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

A friend is someone who does things that count but doesn’t stop to count them.

UNKNOWN

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

AGATHA CHRISTIE

Confidence isn't walking into a room and thinking you’re better than everyone; it’s walking in and not having to compare yourself to anyone at all.

UNKNOWN

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

JOHN F KENNEDY

If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future, if you are at peace, you are living in the present.

LAO TZU

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

SAM EWING

Experience is a hard teacher because it gives the test first, the lesson afterward.

VERNON LAW

The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.

UNKNOWN

Overscheduled children lose the space to simply be with themselves and learn the art of being alone. In our noisy, busy world, the importance of developing the life skill of solitude, meditation, and quietly being with oneself can not be overstated.

JOSHUA BECKER, Clutterfree With Kids: Change Your Thinking, Discover New Habits. Free Your Home

 

It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.

JOHN LUKE GODDARD​

The amount of strength it takes to choose to be alone instead of poorly surrounded, is extremely underrated. If you are strong enough to choose yourself, I honour you.

XAVIER DAGBA

Sometimes, the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardised tests because they do not have standardised minds.

DIANE RAVITCH

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Human genius has its limits, but stupidity does not.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

MARCEL PROUST

Some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first.

SEAN MAGUIRE

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

ALAN WATTS

I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.

JIMMY DEAN

Innocent and infinite are the pleasures of observation.

HENRY JAMES

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything.

THICH NHAT HANH

To the brave, good and bad luck are like the left and right hands. They use both.

SAINT CATHERINE of SIENA

If you want to awaken all of humanity then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.

LAO TZU

All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

GEORGE ORWELL, Homage to Catalonia

The various modes of worship that prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

EDWARD GIBBON, 18th-century historian, writing of Antonines Rome

Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives.

Author and activist HOWARD ZINN

Destroying a tropical rainforest for profit is like burning all the paintings in the Louvre to cook dinner.

Author, biologist, and naturalist E. O. WILSON

The glory that is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance . . . How easy is it to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!

MARK TWAIN

Love keeps no record of wrong.

ST PAUL

You’re only old when you forget you’re young.

CARY GRANT, in Monkey Business (movie)

We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a

diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.

THICH NHAT HANH

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

CARL JUNG

It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty but so few by deceit.

NOEL COWARD

Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.

VLADIMIR NABAKOV

The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.

FRANK ZAPPA

if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.

KEN ROBINSON

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

We have more chemistry than the periodic table.

UNKNOWN

The purpose of propaganda is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are human.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Some things/people break your heart but fix your vision.

UNKNOWN

Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it.

UNKNOWN

The best of all medicines are resting and fasting.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Confidence isnt walking into a room and thinking you’re better than everyone. it’s walking in and not having to compare yourself to anyone at all.

UNKNOWN

Sometimes you dont get what you want, because you deserve better.

UNKNOWN

You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.

UNKNOWN

You let one ant stand up to us, and they all might stand up! Those “puny little ants” outnumber us a hundred to one. And if we ever let them figure that out . . . there goes our way of life! Its not about food. Its about keeping those ants in line.

A Bugs Life (movie)

Nature is alive and talking to us. This is not a metaphor.

TERRENCE McKENNA

The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.

UNKNOWN

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

You are not responsible for the programming you received in childhood. As an adult, you are 100% responsible for fixing it.

UNKNOWN

Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

MARSHALL McLUHAN

In order to love who you are, you cannot hate the experiences that have shaped you.

UNKNOWN

Its up to us to break generational curses. When they say, “It runs in the family,” you tell them, “Well, this is where it runs out.”

UNKNOWN

Think of yourself as a human magnet, constantly attracting what you speak, think and feel.
UNKNOWN

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Whenever Congress members say something is “bipartisan”, that means a larger than usual deception is being carried out.

GEORGE CARLIN

People can only meet you at the depth in which they have already met themselves.

UNKNOWN

Once upon a time, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joyThe birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS

When you forgive others, they may not notice, but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.

DAVID WHYTE

The best revenge is none. Heal, move on, and do not become like those who hurt you.

UNKNOWN

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

REINHOLD NIEBUHR

For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature’s finest balm.

EDWIN WAY TEALE

One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time.

BOBBY KENNEDY

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

The most damaging phrase in the language is: ‘It’s always been done that way.’ 

GRACE HOPPER

Listening well is a superpower. Keep asking someone you love ‘Is there more?‘ until there is no more.

KEVIN KELLY

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

FRANK HERBERT, Dune

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

MARILYN MONROE

The ability to observe without judgement is the highest form of intelligence.
UNKNOWN

Never be depressed or pessimistic about the future. You have no power in the future. You don't yet exist. You exist in the present. Your power is in the present. What you do in the present will define the future.

CAPTAIN PAUL WATSON, Greenpeace vessel captain

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.

STEPHEN R. COVEY

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