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Age, Attitude, Beliefs, Challenge, Compassion, Computers, Creativity, Dreams, Experience, Faith, Freedom, Genius, Happiness, Future, Human Rights, Joy, Knowledge, Man, Marriage, Money, Nature, Opportunity, Peace, Risk, Success, Time, Vision, Wisdom, Woman, Wonder and our personal favourites

Abraham Lincoln:

    And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Agatha Christie:

    I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about...It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.

Albert Einstein:

    People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. letter to Otto Juliusburger

Alfred Adler:

    It is easy to believe that life is long and one's gifts are vast -- easy at the beginning, that is. But the limits of life grow more evident; it becomes clear that great work can be done rarely, if at all.

Alice James:

    It is so comic to hear oneself called old, even at ninety I suppose!

Anais Nin:

    We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Ashley Montagu:

    I want to die young at a ripe old age.

Benjamin Franklin:

    All would live long, but none would be old.

Billie Burke:

    Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese.

Carl Jung:

    Among all my patients in the second half of life ... there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.

Cicero:

    As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age: first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.

Clarence Darrow:

    The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.

Coco Chanel:

    A woman has the age she deserves.

Carlos Castaneda:

    The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

Colleen C. Barrett:

    Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.

Confucius:

    To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.

Demosthenes:

    Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.

Demosthenes:

    Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Ella Williams:

    Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.

Eric Hoffer:

    The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

Frank Lloyd Wright:

    The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

H.H. the Dalai Lama:

    The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy.

Helen Keller:

    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 which has been opened for us.

Henry David Thoreau:

    Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Henry Ford:

    If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right. also attributed to Mary Kay Ash

James A. Froude:

    You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

James Yorke:

    The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.

Anatole France:

    To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Andre Gide:

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

Anne Frank:

    In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

    Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine.

Demosthenes:

    Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Edith Hamilton:

    Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

Frank Lloyd Wright:

    The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

G. K. Chesterton:

    It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

George Orwell:

    Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

Hannah Senesh:

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

Isaiah Berlin:

    Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.

Johann Goethe:

    If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of douts of my own.

Andrew Kuntz:

    I find working with glass meditative, almost therapeutic. I can leave the world behind, and focus... The simplicity of form, the drama of rich, intense colour, the joy of challenge, and the challenge of endurance... The piece, when it is over, is not what is made, but how it is made.

Edwin H. Friedman:

    The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.

Margaret Chase Smith:

    When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it.

Mary Pettibone Poole:

    To repeat what others have said, requires education, to challenge it, requires brains.

May Sarton:

    ... without darkness
    Nothing comes to birth,
    As without light
    Nothing flowers.

Mitsugi Saotome:

    If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

Steven Foster:

    You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river. [The Book of the Vision Quest]

Walter Linn:

    It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don't have to.

Arnold Schopenhauer:

    Compassion is the basis of morality.

Benjamin Disraeli:

    Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton:

    A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.

Eugene V. Debs:

    Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Felix Adler:

    To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.

HH the Dalai Lama:

    Compassion is the radicalism of our time.

HH the Dalai Lama:

    If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

Keshavan Nair:

    With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.

Molleen Matsumura:

    Reason guides our attempt to understand the world about us. Both reason and compassion guide our efforts to apply that knowledge ethically, to understand other people, and have ethical relationships with other people.

Peter Singer:

    All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.

Frederick Brooks, Jr.:

    All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found the last bug." (The Mythical Man Month)

Gerald Weinberg:

    If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

Jack Lynch:

    Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

Joseph Campbell:

   Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

Pablo Picasso:

    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

Paul Valery:

    The ultimate "computer," our own brain, uses only ten watts of power -- one-tenth the energy consumed by a hundred-watt bulb.

Robert Wilensky:

    We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

A. A. Milne:

    One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

Albert Einstein:

    You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.

Albert Einstein:

    Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

Albert Einstein:

    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.

Arthur Koestler:

    Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Buckminster Fuller:

    When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

Carl Sagan:

    If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

Edward de Bono:

    It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

Edwin Land:

    Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.

Erich Fromm:

    Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

Erich Fromm:

    Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

    Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

Georg C. Lichtenberg:

    Eveyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.

Henry David Thoreau:

    The world is but a canvas to the imagination.

Lillian Hellman:

    Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.

Linus Pauling:

    The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

Linus Pauling:

    The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.

Margaret J. Wheatley:

    The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity.

Marie Antoinette:

    There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.

Martin Luther King Jr.:

    Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Monica Baldwin:

    The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there.

Niels Bohr:

    Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

Nietzsche:

    You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Anais Nin:

    Dreams are necessary to life.

Anatole France:

    To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Carl Jung:

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

George Bernard Shaw:

    Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?"

        frequently attributed to Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, who used it in a speech which his brother, Edward F. (Teddy) Kennedy quoted at RFK's funeral.

George Bernard Shaw:

    You see things; and you say, "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

Gloria Steinem:

    Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

Goethe:

    Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

H. L. Mencken:

    Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

Henry David Thoreau:

    I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau:

    Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

James A. Froude:

    You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

Jean-Paul Sartre:

    Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

Jesse Jackson:

    No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.

John Lennon:

    You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope someday you will join us, and the world will live as one.

John Lennon:

    Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.

Kahlil Gibran:

    The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

Marcel Proust:

    If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

Margaret Mead:

    The liberals have not softened their view of actuality to make themselves live closer to the dream, but instead sharpen their perceptions and fight to make the dream actuality or give up the battle in despair.

Marian Wright Edelman:

    No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

Mark Twain:

    Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Martin Luther King, jr.:

    If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

Barbara Tuchman:

    Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced.

Benjamin Franklin:

    Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Bureau of Social Hygiene study, 1928:

    It is very difficult and expensive to undo after you are married the things that your mother and father did to you while you were putting your first six birthdays behind you.

Douglas Adams:

    Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Edith Wharton:

    Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

Edward Abbey:

    There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

Edward Gibbon:

    I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Ethel Barrymore:

    You must learn day by day, year by year, to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens.

Felix Adler:

    Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was at its inception a statement in terms of the intellect of a certain inner experience.

Francis Bacon:

    The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy (science); for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and disgested. Therefore, from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never been made), much may be hoped.

Iris Murdock:

    We can only learn to love by loving.

John Dewey:

    Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

Oscar Wilde:

    Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Pearl S. Buck:

    One faces the future with one's past.

Pete Seeger:

    Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.

Rita Mae Brown:

    Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.

Robert Fulghum:

    I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Vernon Cooper:

    These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

Albert Einstein:

    Scientists were rated as great heretics by the church, but they were truly religious men because of their faith in the orderliness of the universe.

Anais Nin:

    When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

Blaise Pascal:

    Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

Dorothy Thompson:

    Disillusion comes only to the illusioned. One cannot be disillusioned of what one never put faith in.

Dorothy Thompson:

    The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.

E. B. White:

    Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

Edith Hamilton:

    Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

Elizabeth Barret Browning:

    Whoso loves, believes the impossible.

George Bernard Shaw:

    We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

George Santayana:

    The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

        Scepticism and Animal Faith, 1923

Gladys Taber:

    A garden is evidence of faith. It links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting.

Harriet Martineau:

    We do not believe in immortality because we can prove it, but we try to prove it because we cannot help believing it.

John A. Hutchinson:

    Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.

Marian Wright Edelman:

    My faith has been the driving thing of my life. I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

Marian Wright Edelman:

    We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

Mary McLeod Bethune:

    Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

Oliver Wendell Holmes:

    It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

Pearl S. Buck:

    I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.

Pearl S. Buck:

    When men destroy their old gods they will find new ones to take their place.

Peter F. Drucker:

    There are no creeds in mathematics.

Aldous Huxley:

    Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

    Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me.

Barbara Ehrenreich:

    That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.

Benjamin Franklin:

    They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security

Carl Shurz:

    If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.

Clarence Darrow:

    You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.

Dorothy Thompson:

    When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.

Dorothy Thompson:

    It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:

    We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

Edward R. Murrow:

    We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Eleanor Holmes Norton:

    The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Erich Fromm:

    Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason.

Florynce Kennedy:

    Freedom is like taking a bath -- you have to keep doing it every day!

Goethe:

    None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

H. L. Mencken:

    The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel:

    Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness.

Henry David Thoreau:

    Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

Hodding Carter:

    There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One is roots; the other, wings.

Hubert Humphrey:

    The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

James Baldwin:

    Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

Jean-Paul Sartre:

    Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Albert Einstein:

    Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Albert Einstein:

    Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

Albert Einstein:

    Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.

Alexander Hamilton:

    Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.

Anna Garlin Spencer:

    The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement in a manner that would be amusingly absurd were it not so monstrously unjust and socially harmful.

        Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912

Bruce Feirstein:

    The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

Carl Sagan:

    But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Dorothy Thompson:

    The kind of intelligence a genius has is a different sort of intelligence. The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically. It leaps with great ellipses. It pulls knowledge from God knows where.

Elbert Hubbard:

    Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning:

    Since when was genius found respectable?

Fulton J. Sheen:

    Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.

Georg C. Lichtenberg:

    Eveyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.

Jean Baptiste Henry Lacordaire:

    We are the leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden.

Joe Theisman:

    The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.

        NFL football quarterback and sports analyst

Oscar Levant:

    There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

Robert G. Ingersoll:

    In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.

Seneca:

    There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Thomas Alva Edison:

    Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

William James:

    Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

FUTURE back to top

Albert Camus:

    You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Albert Camus:

    But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Albert Schweitzer:

    Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Albert Schweitzer:

    I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

Albert Schweitzer:

    Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

Allan K. Chalmers:

    The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Anne Frank:

    We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

Anne Frank:

    The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.

Aristotle:

    Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient

Benjamin Disraeli:

    Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

Bertrand Russell:

    The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.

Buddha:

    Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.

Carl Jung:

    There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Claude Monet:

    The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.

Denis Waitley:

    Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.

Edith Wharton:

    If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.

Edward de Bono:

    Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

    The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind.

Eric Hoffer:

    You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

Felix Adler:

    The truth which has made us free will in the end make us glad also.

Fran Leibowitz:

    Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you.

Francoise de Motteville:

    The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

    Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

George Burns:

    Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

George Sand:

    There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

Abraham Lincoln:

    The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.

Albert Einstein:

    I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.

Alex Haley:

    In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

Anais Nin:

    We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

C. S. Lewis:

    The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Charlie Daniels:

    A brief candle; both ends burning
    An endless mile; a bus wheel turning
    A friend to share the lonesome times
    A handshake and a sip of wine
    So say it loud and let it ring
    We are all a part of everything
    The future, present and the past
    Fly on proud bird
    You're free at last.

        written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

    Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!

Dorothy Thompson:

    Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

Edward Gibbon:

    I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Elaine Maxwell:

    My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.

Eric Hoffer:

    In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

George Will:

    The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

John Dewey:

    Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

John F. Kennedy:

    Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy:

    The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

John L. Lewis:

    Let the workers organize. Let the toilers assemble. Let their crystallized voice proclaim their injustices and demand their privileges. Let all thoughtful citizens sustain them, for the future of Labor is the future of America.

Niels Bohr:

    Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.

Patricia Hampl:

    The future is here, now, and the past is full of actual deeds, real history. Utopias hardly have the meat on their bones to sustain a people in grave times.

Pearl S. Buck:

    One faces the future with one's past.

Percy Bysshe Shelley:

    Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.

Simone Weil:

    The future is made of the same stuff as the present.

Thich Nhat Hanh:

    Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.

Vernon Cooper:

    These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

Abigail Adams:

    If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Albert Einstein:

    I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force.

Albert Schweitzer:

    The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education.

Audre Lorde :

    The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.

Aung San Suu Kyi:

    Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.

Dom Helder Camara:

    When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Eleanor Holmes Norton:

    The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

Noam Chomsky:

    States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

Noam Chomsky:

    The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

Paulo Freire:

    Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

Pearl S. Buck:

    You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

    Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.

Robert F. Kennedy:

    Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.

Saul Alinsky:

    Last guys don't finish nice.

Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago (Philippines):

    I shall be honored to go to jail. Under a dictatorship, the detention cell is a place of honor.

Thomas Jefferson:

    The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Aeschylus:

    There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

Audre Lorde:

    The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Helen Keller:

    We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.

Henry David Thoreau:

    You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand-heap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain.

John D. Rockefeller:

    I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

John Keats:

    A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Kahlil Gibran:

    The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

Kahlil Gibran:

    ... joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Kahlil Gibran:

    We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Marcel Proust:

    In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual, delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted, atrocious.

Mitsugi Saotome:

    If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

Pearl S. Buck:

    The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

    There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.

Thich Nhat Hanh:

    Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

KNOWLEDGE back to top

MAN back to top

Albert Einstein:

    It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.

Albert Einstein:

    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.

Bertrand Russell:

    The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Blaise Pascal:

    We must learn our limits. We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Buckminster Fuller:

    Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

Carl Jung:

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

Eden Phillpotts:

    The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Epictetus:

    It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.

Goethe:

    Knowing is not enough; we must apply!

Henri Bergson:

    The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Henry David Thoreau:

    It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau:

    I was determined to know beans. Walden

Henry David Thoreau:

    True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

Immanuel Kant:

    Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

James Madison:

    Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

John Adams:

    The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country.

Betty Friedan:

    Men weren't really the enemy -- they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.

Gloria Steinem:

    I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

Helen Rowland:

    Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.

Katharine Hepburn:

    Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Katharine Hepburn:

    If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

Margaret Mead:

    Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.

Margaret Thatcher:

    If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.

Rita Mae Brown:

    If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle.

Robert A. Heinlein:

    Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Robert Frost:

    A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Simone de Beauvoir:

    No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Susan B. Anthony:

    Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

Virginia Woolf:

    Why are women ... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

Virginia Woolf:

    The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Walt Whitman:

    In the faces of men and women I see God.

Ambrose Bierce:

    Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.

Anne Bradstreet:

    If ever two were one, then surely we.
    If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

Bill Cosby:

    For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.

Danny DeVito:

    There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull: How do you hang on to someone who won't stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won't go

Francis Bacon:

    He that hath a wife and children hath given hostages to fortune.

Friedrich Nietzsche:

    It is not a lack of lov