Quotes – A Pondering Mind

Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.

~ Josh Billings

Wisdom And Learning

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

~ Sandra Carey

Learn By Doing

“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

~ Richard Branson

Sublime Natural Beauty

To experience sublime natural beauty is to confront the total inadequacy of language to describe what you see. Words cannot convey the scale of a view that is so stunning it is felt.

~ Eleanor Catton

“Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.” ~ Winston Churchill

Vain And Inspiring Men

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

~ Samuel Adams

Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments. ~ Rose Kennedy

What Is

“The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.”

~ Lenny Bruce

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. ~Salvador Dali

Voting

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

~Charles Bukowski

Reading Is The Key

“Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.”

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them. ~Mark Twain

“The majority of men…

“The majority of men… are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and… are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.”

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

You Were Meant To Be

“Sometimes, you have to step outside of the person you’ve been and remember the person you were meant to be. The person you want to be. The person you are.”

~ H. G. Wells

Elections Belong To The People

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

~ Abraham Lincoln

Your life story would not make a good book. Don’t even try. ~Fran Lebowitz

Octopus On Roller Skates

Talent without discipline, is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.

~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ~Anais Nin

Talk about a dream, try to make it real. ~Bruce Springsteen

“Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong.” ~ Agatha Christie

“The path to paradise begins in hell.” ~ Dante Alighieri

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.

~ David Icke

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.” ~ Harper Lee

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. ~Potter Stewart

Ethics must begin at the top of an organization. It is a leadership issue and the chief executive must set the example. ~ Edward Hennessy

“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

He is happiest, be it king or peasant, who finds peace in is home. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Only ignorance excuses stupidity. ~ Nalini Singh

3 3 3. Only half evil. ~ Cheyenne McCray

Self-Control

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

~ Franz Kafka

Theatre is life. Cinema is art. Television is furniture. ~Anonymous

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” ~ Che Guevara

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” ~ James A. Baldwin

“Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intuitive And Rational Mind

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

~ Albert Einstein

“The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.” ~Aldous Huxley

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know. ~ Bertrand Russell

Don’t you hate people who say they’re not complaining and then complain? ~Edna Ferber

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government. ~Bertrand Russell

Remembering A Civil Rights Icon – John Lewis, May you Rest In Peace

“You cannot be afraid to speak up and speak out for what you believe. You have to have courage, raw courage.”

~ John Lewis

Population Growth

It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world it for us right now.

~ David Attenborough

I love being an introvert…

“I’m an introvert… I love being by myself, love being outdoors, love taking a long walk with my dogs and looking at the trees, flowers, the sky.”

~ Audrey Hepburn

Only one man ever understood me, and he didn’t understand me. ~ G. W. F. Hegel

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. ~ Bertrand Russell

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others. ~John F. Kennedy

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable. ~William James

Mankind is composed of two sorts of men – those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy. ~Jose Marti

“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.” ~ Steve Jobs

Instant coffee: is just old beans that have been cremated. ~ Jennifer Saunders

Do you know how helpless you feel if you have a full cup of coffee in your hand and you start to sneeze? ~Jean Kerr

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice. ~Anton Chekhov

The sands of time are quicksands … so much can sink into them without a trace. ~Margaret Atwood

Men Marry Women …..

“Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.”

~ Albert Einstein

“Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy.” -Soren Kierkegaard

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s lnability to sit quietly in a room alone.” -Blaise Pascal

“I’ll tell you what freedom means to me: no fear.” ~Nina Simone

“The use of the internet, the use of Twitter, the way protest movements developed…This is a different world.” ~ Gus O’Donnell, Baron O’Donnell

Decisions made quickly were almost always regretted quickly. ~ Nora Roberts

A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work. ~ John Lubbock

We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain. ~ Stephen Hawking

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~ Albert Einstein

“There is no vaccine against stupidity.” ~Albert Einstein

Half of being smart is knowing how dumb you are. ~Solomon Short

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist. ~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver. ~William James

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like. ~ Bertrand Russell

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday. ~ Marcus Aurelius

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” ~Abraham Lincoln

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. ~ Oscar Wilde

“How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?” ~ John Stuart Mill

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” ~ Mark Twain

If pornography releases sexual tension, why don’t we send recipe books to the starving? ~ Andrea Dworkin

Noble And Beautiful

“When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.”

~ John Lennon

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t. ~ Albert Camus

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. ~ Bertrand Russell

The Human Spirit

“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”

~ William Ellery Channing

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The general laws of Nature are not, for the most part, immediate objects of perception. ~ George Boole

Two Kinds Of Truth

There are two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible.

~ Gottfried Leibniz

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know. ~ Bertrand Russell

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few. ~George Berkeley

Common Sense

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.

Rene Descartes

Life Is The Fire …..

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternty.

~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change. ~Albert Einstein

Look For 3 Things In A Person

“Look for 3 things in a person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity.
If they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two.”

~ Warren Buffett

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future. ~ Voltaire

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green. ~ Francis Bacon

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” ~ Xunzi

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

The Truth Is Simple

People expect Byzantine, Machiavellian logic from politicians. But the truth is simple. Trial lawyers learn a good rule: ‘Don’t decide what you have to decide.’ That’s not evasion, it’s wisdom.

Mario Cuomo

He who is firm in will molds the world to himself. ~Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces. ~Thomas Aquinas

Cosmic Ordering

I’m into the law of attraction and quantum physics. Like cosmic ordering. It’s all about thinking lovely things that you would like in life, and feeling good about them before the manifest, so that by the time they do, you don’t want them because you’re on to your next desire.

Julia Sawalha

Life Is Hard

When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’

Sydney J. Harris