“If everybody always lies to you the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer…. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”  --Hannah Arendt

"The predominant world view shared by the majority of American Indian nations is that of the circularity of existence. It is a universe in which, as Black Elk put it, 'the Power of the world always works in a circle and everything tries to be round.' The cycle of the seasons, the circling of the sun and moon, even the round shapes of the nests of birds, are evidence of this. Just as every point on a circle is equal to every other point, no place being closer to the center than any other, all created things are regarded as being of equal importance. All things — not only humans and animals and plants, but even the winds, the waters, fire, and the stones — are living and sentient. Further, just as the strands of a spider web are so interconnected that touching one makes all the others tremble, in that circular universe everything is connected to everything else."  --Joseph Bruchac

"Trickster was eating. Only one piece of meat remained on his plate. He reached for it with both hands. His right hand grabbed one side of that piece of meat and his left hand grabbed the other.

" 'This meat is mine,' said his right hand.

" 'No, it is mine,' said his left hand.

"Trickster tried to stop them, but his hands would not listen. They began to struggle over that piece of meat. They tugged back and forth. Finally his hands got so angry that they attacked each other with knives. The scars from that fight can be seen as the lines on every person's palms."  --Joseph Bruchac

"There is no death. Only a change of worlds."  --Chief Si'ahl [Seattle], Suquamish Chief

“Just be yourself. People will see it eventually. Just be yourself.”  --Pedro Pascal

“It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.”  --Eleanor Roosevelt, US delegate to the UN 

“There are different kinds of knowledge, all equally necessary to the perfection of human life: knowledge of what is true, knowledge of what is good, and knowledge of what is beautiful.”  --Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (1912)

"A great composer's music will always last and last, perhaps forever, because people keep on feeling emotion whenever they hear it. And that lasting quality is perhaps the most important meaning of the word 'classical'. A classic is something that lasts forever."  --Leonard Bernstein

“It’s important to protect people, especially those simply asking for the right to exist in bodies that belong to them and in the world that they never asked to be brought into.

“It’s a very, very small, vulnerable, inspiring, courageous and brave community that fills me with a lot of inspiration. Therefore, it’s very important to protect that. They would do that for us.”  --Pedro Pascal

“The nature of moral judgments depends on our capacity for paying attention.”  --Susan Sontag

On Turning the Other Cheek

The fact that the world today is what it is suggests, to say the least, that this concept is far from being cherished universally. The reasons for its unpopularity are twofold. First, what is required for this concept to be put into effect is a margin of democracy. This is precisely what 86 percent of the globe lacks. Second, the common sense that tells a victim that his only gain in turning the other cheek and not responding in kind yields, at best, a moral victory, i.e., quite immaterial. The natural reluctance to expose yet another part of your body to a blow is justified by a suspicion that this sort of conduct only agitates and enhances Evil; that moral victory can be mistaken by the adversary for his impunity.

[...]

But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

The meaning of these lines is anything but passive for it suggests that evil can be made absurd through excess; it suggests rendering evil absurd through dwarfing its demands with the volume of your compliance, which devalues the harm. This sort of thing puts a victim into a very active position, into the position of a mental aggressor. The victory that is possible here is not a moral but an existential one.

[...]

I must admit that I feel somewhat uneasy talking about these things: because turning or not turning that other cheek is, after all, an extremely intimate affair. The encounter always occurs on a one-to-one basis. It’s always your skin, your coat and cloak, and it is your limbs that will have to do the walking. To advise, let alone to urge, anyone about the use of these properties is, if not entirely wrong, indecent. All I aspire to do here is to erase from your minds a cliché that harmed so many and yielded so little. I also would like to instill in you the idea that as long as you have your skin, coat, cloak, and limbs, you are not yet defeated, whatever the odds are."

--Joseph Brodsky

"The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can’t be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned impostor couldn’t be happy with. Something, in other words, that can’t be shared, like your own skin — not even by a minority."  --Joseph Brodsky

 "... I changed my mind and do no longer speak of “radical evil.” … It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither death nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth that can be radical." --Hannah Arendt

“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die.”  --John Steinbeck

"The holes of oblivion [alternative facts] do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story.

[…]

"The lesson of such stories is simple and within everybody’s grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that “it could happen” in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation."  --Hannah Arendt

“Throughout our nervous history, we have constructed pyramidic towers of evil, ofttimes in the name of good.”  --Maya Angelou

"What we regard as Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good.”  --Joseph Brodsky

“Never react to an evil in such a way as to augment it.”  --Simone Weil

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."  --Philip K. Dick

 

"The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered, nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not."  --Philip K. Dick

 “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”  --Philip K. Dick

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.”  --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry  

"Charlie Kirk himself understood that politics today is performed through provocation, memes, and culture war — what Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox calls “algorithmically incentivized ghoulishness.” Kirk thrived in that world, mixing the habits of a democratic debater with the instincts of a pugilist. His method was to provoke, to needle, to troll — often in the name of debate and free speech. That mix — democratic in aspiration, combative in style — made him both a powerful voice in America’s fractured public square and a symbol of its degradation. His murder, so young, at the hands of a young man undone by the same meme-saturated culture is a tragic irony. It shows just how thin the line has become between pluralist debate and weaponized alienation."  --Roger Berkowitz, The Fine Line Between Pluralist Debate and Weaponized Alienation

"We can take this moment in history and continue to delude ourselves about our violent past and present condition, relying on our most primitive instincts, or we can decide to come together and demand a humanitarian path forward. A path that sees respect for the human condition, one that ensures we take care of each other, one that does not determine a person's value based on who they voted for but instead recognizes the cardinal virtue of every human being–here and abroad."  --Nina Turner

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

“This world, as we all know, can be so full of criticism and discrimination and negativity. So, to get to be part of something… that can bring you light, make you smile, make you dance… I’m so grateful. So grateful to do that.”  --Sabrina Carpenter 

"While isolation concerns only the political realm of life, loneliness concerns human life as a whole. Totalitarian government, like all tyrannies, certainly could not exist without destroying the public realm of life, that is, without destroying, by isolating men, their political capacities. But totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in that it is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. It bases itself on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among the most radical and desperate experiences of man."  --Hannah Arendt

"Just as terror, even in its pre-total, merely tyrannical form ruins all relationships between men, so the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationships with reality. The preparation has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow men* as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist."  --Hannah Arendt

 “Love, but be careful what you love.”  --Saint Augustine 

“Hell is empty, the devils are all here.”  --Shakespeare     

“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with the bone.”  --Shakespeare  

“Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage. It is a tale told by an idiot. Full of Sound and Fury, signifying nothing.”  --Shakespeare   

"With awe and wonder you look around, recognizing the preciousness of the earth, the sanctity of every human being on the planet, the ultimate unity and interdependence of all beings - somos todos un pais. Love swells in your chest and shoots out of your heart chakra, linking you to everyone/everything. ... You share a category of identity wider than any social position or racial label. This conocimiento motivates you to work actively to see that no harm comes to people, animals, ocean - to take up spiritual activism and

the work of healing.  --Gloria E. Anzaldua, _now let us shift ... the path of conocimiento ... inner work, public acts_ (2008)

"[Alexander von] Humboldt revolutionized the way we see the natural world. He found connections everywhere. Nothing, not even the tiniest organism, was looked at on its own. “In this great chain of causes and effects,” Humboldt said, “no single fact can be considered in isolation.” With this insight, he invented the web of life, the concept of nature as we know it today.

"When nature is perceived as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious. Everything hangs together. If one thread is pulled, the whole tapestry may unravel."  --Andrea Wulf

"In the autocracy that is taking shape from the executive branch in 2025, there is no perceptible ideological logic. There are whiffs of nativism, manifest destiny, and isolationism borrowed from pre-1945 American history. But greed, an addictive desire for fame, and a wide enthusiasm for the theatrical capacity to dominate the public arena with nostalgic myths — a talent Donald Trump undeniably possesses — are at the center of Trumpism. Fame and wealth are Trump’s only currencies, aside from a perverse pleasure in humiliating individuals and celebrating cruelty, primarily in the acts of detention and deportation, and threats of legal prosecution without just cause. There is no idealism except some extreme version of Ayn Rand’s glorification of individualism, selfishness, and self-interest. Whatever Trump may stand for, it is a far cry from the traditional ideals of American democracy and a pluralist society — a “melting pot” of sorts — based in part on a long history of immigration from many different continents and cultures.”  --Leon Botstein

 “Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being,”  --Rumi

"It’s written in the things the Hansens don’t say to one another, and by the time anyone notices that, yeah, something is seriously off, it’s already too late. Rowan has already made himself at home.

"That’s the kind of horror that gets under my skin. Not the thing outside, knocking—but the thing already inside, listening."  --Ania Ahlborn about her book _The Unseen_.

"If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”  -- Audre Lorde

"Whether individual or collective, willful blindness doesn’t have a single driver, but many. It is a human phenomenon to which we all succumb in matters little and large. We can’t notice and know everything: the cognitive limits of our brain simply won’t let us. That means we have to filter or edit what we take in. So what we choose to let through and to leave out is crucial. We mostly admit the information that makes us feel great about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles our fragile egos and most vital beliefs. It’s a truism that love is blind; what’s less obvious is just how much evidence it can ignore. Ideology powerfully masks what, to the uncaptivated mind, is obvious, dangerous, or absurd and there’s much about how, and even where, we live that leaves us in the dark. Fear of conflict, fear of change keeps us that way. An unconscious (and much denied) impulse to obey and conform shields us from confrontation and crowds provide friendly alibis for our inertia. And money has the power to blind us, even to our better selves.

[...]

"Our blindness grows out of the small, daily decisions that we make, which embed us more snugly inside our affirming thoughts and values. And what’s most frightening about this process is that as we see less and less, we feel more comfort and greater certainty. We think we see more — even as the landscape shrinks.

[...]

"The most crucial learning that has emerged from this science is the recognition that we continue to change right up to the moment we die. Every experience and encounter, each piece of new learning, each relationship or reassessment alters how our minds work. And no two experiences are the same. In his work on the human genome, the Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner reminds us that even identical twins will have different experiences in different environments and that that makes them fundamentally different beings. Identical twins develop different immune systems. Mental practice alone can change how our brains operate. The plasticity and responsiveness of our minds is what makes each of us most remarkable… We aren’t automata serving the master computer in our heads, and our capacity for change can never be underestimated.

[…]

"We make ourselves powerless when we choose not to know. But we give ourselves hope when we insist on looking. The very fact that willful blindness is willed, that it is a product of a rich mix of experience, knowledge, thinking, neurons, and neuroses, is what gives us the capacity to change it. Like Lear, we can learn to see better, not just because our brain changes but because we do. As all wisdom does, seeing starts with simple questions: What could I know, should I know, that I don’t know? Just what am I missing here?"  --Margaret Heffernan

"Illusions are the most valuable and necessary of all things ...

"Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth. Roll up that tender air and the plant dies, the colour fades. The earth we walk on is a parched cinder. It is marl we tread and fiery cobbles scorch our feet. By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. ‘Tis waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life."  --Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography

"Humans share much with other animals — the basic needs of food and drink or sleep, for example — but there are additional mental and emotional needs and desires which are perhaps unique to us. To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or at least the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology or in states of mind which allow us to travel to other worlds, to transcend our immediate surroundings. We need detachment of this sort as much as we need engagement in our lives… transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in."  --Oliver Sacks

"We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun."  -- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself."  --Herman Hesse

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why they call it the present."  --My friend John in San Felipe quoting Anon*

*https://quoteinvestigator.com/2023/07/26/past-history/

Top 15 Past, Present, & Future Quotes of all time (by Matshona Dhliwayo)

1. If the past could be changed, it would not exist. If the future could be stopped, it would not survive. If the present could be avoided, it would not prevail.

2. The past is filled with pain, the present with opportunity, and the future with uncertainty.

3. The past is a closed door, the present is an open one, and the future is an approaching one.

4. Don’t mourn over the past; it has no pity for you. Don’t cry over the present; it has no sympathy for you, and don’t weep over the future; it has no mercy on you.

5. The past is kind enough to give you lessons. The present is kind enough to give you opportunities. The future is kind enough to give you both.

6. Forgive those who hurt you yesterday. Reward those who help you today. Remember those who help you tomorrow.

7. When your past tries to haunt you tell it you don’t believe in ghosts.

8. You cannot marry your past without divorcing your future.

9. Yesterday says, “Forget me, but learn from me.” Today says, “Embrace me, yet utilize me.” Tomorrow says, “Anticipate me, then prepare for me.”

10. Live for your dreams, not your memories.

11. Marry your future, court your present, and divorce your past.

12. Dream of the future. Act for the future. Be wise in the present.

13. Thank the past for all the lessons it taught you; anticipate the future for all the blessings it has in store for you.

14. Be wise enough to learn from the past, shrewd enough to capitalize on the present, and clever enough to prepare for the future.

15. Live each day as if it were your last; love each day as if you will live forever.

“Dear past, I survived you. Dear present, I’m ready for you. Dear future, I’m coming for you.” ~Matshona Dhliwayo

"The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."  --Albert Einstein

“I can’t think of anything more vile and small and pathetic than terrorizing the smallest, most vulnerable community of people who want nothing from you, except the right to exist.”  --Pedro Pascal

"It is almost banal to say so, yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis."  --Henry Miller 

Hitler for Trump

“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.”  --Adolf Hitler

“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.

In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.”  --Adolf Hitler

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility. In the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.“  --Adolf Hitler

“The frailest woman will become a heroine when the life of her own child is at stake.

And only the will to save the race and native land, which offers protection to the race, has in all ages been the urge which has forced men to face the weapons of their enemies.”  --Adolf Hitler

"One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

"Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reason falls on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.

"In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

"For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reason, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison 

"Cherry blossoms, pretty and frothy as schoolgirls’ giggles, are the face the country likes to present to the world, all pink and white eroticism; but it’s the reddening of the maple leaves under a blaze of ceramic-blue skies that is the place’s secret heart.

"We cherish things, Japan has always known, precisely because they cannot last; it’s their frailty that adds sweetness to their beauty. In the central literary text of the land, The Tale of Genji, the word for “impermanence” is used more than a thousand times, and bright, amorous Prince Genji is said to be “a handsomer man in sorrow than in happiness.” Beauty, the foremost Jungian in Japan has observed, “is completed only if we accept the fact of death.” Autumn poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying. How to see the world as it is, yet find light within that truth."

--Pico Iyer

"The paradoxical effect of losing a loved one is that their sudden absence can become a feverish comment on that which remains. That which remains rises in time from the dark with a burning physicality — a luminous super-presence — as we acquaint ourselves with this new and different world. In loss things — both animate and inanimate — take on an added intensity and meaning ...

"This feeling… of alertness to the inner-spirit of things — this humming — comes from a hard-earned understanding of the impermanence of things and, indeed, our own impermanence. This lesson ultimately animates and illuminates our lives. We become witnesses to the thrilling emergency of the present — a series of exquisite and burning moments, each extinguished as the next arises. These magical moments are the bright jewels of loss to which we cling.

"There is, of course, another side where we lose our resolve — we drop our guard, or just grow tired and descend into that other, darker, less-lovely world, as we disconnect and retreat deep into ourselves… These revolving feelings of connection and disconnection… are the opposing forces of loss that define our lived experience… Many of us inhabit this uncanny realm of loss — and all of us will find our way there in time."

--Nick Cage

“My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.”  --William James

"It’s very easy to be cynical these days, and it’s especially easy to be cynical about our country. It’s understandable. Every sunrise in America right now brings fresh anxieties about our future. There’s a lot to keep us afraid and tempted into fatalism.

"I’m not about to tell y’all that everything is gonna be fine. That would be a lie. We’re in for a lot of pain for the foreseeable future.

"But the only way we’re going to get through this painful era is remembering that the best moments in our country are when we look out for each other. It’s when we build community. It’s when we don’t leave others behind."

--Charlotte Clymer

"The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.”  -- Teilhard de Chardin

"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide."  --Abraham Lincoln

"History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends."  --Mark Twain

“The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose.”  --J.B.S. Haldane

“What is above is like what is below, and what is below is like that which is above. To make the miracle of the one thing.”  --Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus

“There are no dangerous thoughts for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.”  --Hannah Arendt

“We are free to change the world and to start something new in it.  --Hannah Arendt

"War is the greatest failure of humanity. There is no future in destruction, but in fraternity. Peace is not only the absence of war; it is the construction of justice."  --Pope Francis

“Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."  --Ursula K. Le Guin

“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope.”  --James Baldwin

“Does a flower blooming in an uninhabited wood have no value?”  --Lyle L. Simpson (2011)

"We should always be willing to compromise with the rational. The rational isn’t what we are dealing with today. And if we don’t understand that, we are lost."  --Chris Tackett

“You can’t compromise with people who view opposition as evil and believe they are on a mission from God. White Christian Nationalism has to be defeated. There is no middle ground.”

 “There is no compromising with a lion when it is literally about to eat you.”

“[S]truggle does not always lead to victory, but without struggle not only can there be no victory, but there cannot even be elementary self-respect.”  --Boris Kagarlitsky

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”  --Margaret Mead

“I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools.”   --Thomas Paine

“If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.”  --Edward Abbey

“Surely the true path is to dive deep into nature.”-- Vincent Van Gogh

 

“I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large out of focus monster “  --Mitch Hedberg

“I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools.”  --Thomas Paine

“The great political criminals must be exposed and exposed especially to laughter. They are not great political criminals, but people who permitted great political crimes, which is something entirely different ... If the ruling classes permit a small crook to become a great crook, he is not entitled to a privileged position in our view of history. That is, the fact that he became a great crook and that what he does has great consequences does not add to his stature.”  --Hannah Arendt 

“Everybody’s supposed to have sympathy for the white male, but when you show empathy to anyone else, suddenly empathy is a sin.”  --Karen Swallow Prior, Christian scholar

"Monumental history deceives with analogies: with tempting similarities the courageous are enticed to rashness, the enthusiastic to fanaticism; and if one thinks of this history as being in the hands and heads of talented egoists and enraptured rascals then empires are destroyed, princes murdered, wars and revolutions instigated and the number of historical “effects in themselves,” that is, of effects without sufficient causes, is further increased."  --Friedrich Nietzsche

"To take pity on people in distress is a human quality which every man and woman should possess, but it is especially requisite in those who have once needed comfort, and found it in others."  --Boccacio, The Decameron 

“If St. Francis of Assisi could meet the Sultan during the Crusades, then surely today’s leaders can sit down and talk.”  --Jeffrey Sachs

"In our ancient Russian land every Orthodox knows that whoever has read the Bible all the way through and has “even got to Christ,” can no longer be held strictly responsible for his actions, [for] such people are like the well known fools of God."  --Nikolai Leskov

"The  saints  confute  the  logicians,  but  they  do  not  confute  them  by  logic  but  by  sanctity.    They  do  not  prove  the  real  connection  between  the  religious  symbols  and  the  everyday  realities  by  logical  demonstration,  but  by  life.    Solvitur  ambulando,  said  someone  about  Zeno’s  paradox,  which  proves  the  impossibility  of  physical  motion.    It  is  solved  by  walking.    Solvitur immolando, says the saint, about the paradox of the logicians.  It is solved by sacrifice."  --Austin Farrer 

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day."  --Edith Wharton

[The Mexican-American War was] "one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory."  --Ulysses S. Grant.

"Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult."  --George Eliot 

"Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant."  --William A. Ward

"Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it."  --Lucy Maud Montgomery

"Love... is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy."  --Anne Truitt 

"Joy is not in things, it is in us."  --Charles Wagner

"Art is about finding creativity in the gutter next to you."  --Olafur Eliasson

"Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s sculptures often draw on natural elements, inspired by the unique Scandinavian landscapes of his childhood. In one of his most famous installations (2014-2018), Eliasson teamed up with geologist Minik Rosing to display fragments of an Arctic iceberg in European cities in order to highlight the climate crisis. His art is very much a product of his surroundings — the ordinary turned extraordinary. Here, Eliasson advises us that our next idea may come from somewhere unexpected; all we have to do is pay attention."  --inspiringquotes.com

"In all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other."  --Carl Sagan

"These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.”  --FDR's First Inaugural Address

"I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."  --  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

"The world is like a mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place."  --Chinua Achebe

"In the tradition of the Igbo people, an ethnic group in southern Nigeria, the mask, or masquerade, is a sacred ritual involving theater, dance, and costumes, representing spiritual and tribal elements of the culture. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe references this Igbo tradition in his 1988 book “Arrow of God,” emphasizing that if we want to experience all of the beautiful dynamics the world has to offer, we have to dance along with it."  --inspiringquotes.com

“Submit to love faithfully and it gives a person joy. It intoxicates, it envelops, it isolates. It creates fragrance in the air, ardour from coldness, it beautifies everything around it.”  --Leoš Janáček

"There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”  --Mark Twain

"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."  --Stephen Jay Gould

"When the rich, rob the poor, it’s called business. When the poor fight back it’s called violence."  --Anon

(misattributed to Mark Twain)

"A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness."  --Albert Einstein

"The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it."  --Chief Joseph

“Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”  --Reinhold Niebuhr 

Colbert asks Keanu Reeves what happens when we die:

“I know that the ones who love us will miss us.”  --Keanu Reeves

"The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way."  --Keanu Reeves 

"Van Gogh defies every setback; he does the impossible; he does not give up.--  Anselm Kiefer

 "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."  --Franz Kafka

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy."  --Ludwig van Beethoven

"To build up a library is to create a life. It’s never just a random collection of books."  --Carlos María Domínguez

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."  --Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"You mustn't confuse a single failure with a final defeat."  --F. Scott Fitzgerald

"When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love."  --Franz Schubert

“Hitler did not kill millions of people, millions were complacent enough to allow it to happen.”  -- Rwandan genocide memorial in essence

"These white people think this country belongs to them - they don't realize that they are only in charge right now because there's more of them than there are of us. The whole country changed with only a handful of raggedly-ass pilgrims that came over here in the 1500s. And it can take a handful of raggedy-ass Indians to do the same, and I intend to be one of those raggedy-ass Indians."  --Anna Mae Pictou

“I promised myself that when I was strong, I would fight everyone who was mean to the poor, whether they were kings or not.”  --Josephine Baker

"I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, "Devil, yesterday I broke wind to. Have you written it down on your list?"  --Martin Luther

"In the imagination of the simple patriot the nation is not a society but Society. Though its values are relative they appear, from his naïve perspective, to be absolute . . . . The nation is always endowed with an aura of the sacred, which is one reason why religions, which claim universality, are so easily captured and tamed by national sentiment, religion and patriotism merging in the process."  --Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1936:96–97

"Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow."  --River Phoenix 

"Not all of us get to live out our dreams or reach the goals we've worked so hard for, but every day life is going to give you the chance to BE the person you've always dreamed of being - brave, kind, noble, just, empathetic, heroic. That's something neither life nor circumstance can ever deny you."  -- C. Robert Cargill

“We are all born with a certain package. We are who we are. Where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We are kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people, find out what makes them tick, what they care about. For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.”  --Roger Ebert 

“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the (Nuremberg) defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”  --G. M. Gilbert, the psychologist who studied the Nazi defendants on trial at Nuremberg

"I still believe that love is the most durable power in the world. Over the centuries men have sought to discover the highest good. This has been the chief quest of ethical philosophy. This was one of the big questions of Greek philosophy. The Epicureans and the Stoics sought to answer it; Plato and Aristotle sought to answer it. What is the summum bonum* of life? I think I have discovered the highest good. It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos. As John says, “God is love.^” He who loves is a participant in the being of God. He who hates does not know God."  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

*highest good

^1 John 4:8, 16

"[C]owardice asks the questions, is it safe; expediency asks the question, is it politic; vanity asks the question, is it popular, but conscious asks the question, is it right. And on some positions, it is necessary for the moral individual to take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic nor popular; but he must do it because it is right."  --Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love - whether we call it friendship or family or romance - is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light.”  --James Baldwin, Nothing Personal

"Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."  --Eleanor Roosevelt 

"In writing her autobiography, Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to show “that one can, even without any particular gifts, overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable if one is willing to face the fact that they must be overcome.” Born into the wealthy Roosevelt and Livingston families, she married her distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and became the longest-serving and arguably most influential First Lady of the United States in history. Despite facing profound loss and tragedy in her life, Roosevelt continued to confront heartache and adversity with unwavering determination. She utilized her influential platform to champion various humanitarian causes throughout her life, thereby establishing her legacy as “First Lady of the World.” Though she humbly believed she had no extraordinary talents, Roosevelt’s words reflect her philosophy that, in the face of life’s greatest challenges, the key is to persevere and keep moving forward."  --inspiringquotes.com

“When a phenomenon is inexplicable, if it really exists, then there’s no reason to deny it.”  --Dr. Luc Montagnier 

When the conversation turns to the inexplicable healings in Lourdes and Brother Michel asks the doctor his opinion as a non-believer, Montagnier responds: “When a phenomenon is inexplicable, if it really exists, then there’s no reason to deny it.”

If the phenomenon exists, what’s the point in denying it? It should be studied, not denied. Montaigner affirms that “in the miracles of Lourdes, there is something inexplicable,” and he rejects the position held by some scientists, who “commit the error of rejecting what they don’t understand. I don’t like this attitude. I frequently quote the astrophysicist Carl Sagan, ‘The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’”

Montagnier continues, “As far as the miracles of Lourdes that I’ve studied, I believe it really is something inexplicable.”

“I don’t have an explanation for these miracles,” he adds, “and I recognize that there are healings that are not included within the current limits of science.”

https://aleteia.org 02/18/2017

"Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."  --Henry David Thoreau

"In these words from an 1848 letter to his friend Harrison Blake, the writer implores us to endeavor to find a reason to be good people beyond just knowing that we should be. Having some sort of solid motivation to back us up increases our chances of becoming the kind of people we’d be proud of."  --inspiringquotes.com

"I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."  --Anne Frank

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."  --David Foster Wallace

"It’s a fact of life that the truth can hurt, as David Foster Wallace expresses in this line from his epic 1996 novel "Infinite Jest." In this philosophical comic novel, Wallace explores our relationship with entertainment, which can serve as a distraction from the hard realities of life. Finding out the truth — about ourselves, others, or our relationships — can be devastating at first, but it also provides a kind of hopeful freedom. When we face and accept the truth, we're able to see more clearly, and can move forward stronger than before."  --inspiringquotes.com

“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.”  --Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, Dune: House Harkonnen

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."  --

Jane Goodall

"The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake."  -Aristotle

"Aristotle's influential treatise "Nicomachean Ethics" is considered one of the most important philosophical works ever written. In it, the ancient Greek philosopher examines what is good in life and how people should live honorably and ethically. The topic given the most time in the entire treatise is friendship, of which Aristotle saw three kinds. The lowest friendships are those of utility, in which there is no great regard for the other person beyond what they can provide. Then there are friendships of pleasure, in which two people like to be together, but the relationship is often temporary and can end easily. The highest form of friendship exists between good people who are alike in their virtuousness. In this most noble of friendships, both people truly care for each other without seeking anything in return."  --inspiringquotes.com

"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."  --Joseph Campbell