"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