"A smile is the shortest distance between two people."
--- Victor Borge

"Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man."
--- Thomas Jefferson

"I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child.
What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered
and balanced by knowledge and common-sense..."
--- Beatrix Potter’s Journal, 17 November 1896, from the National Trust collection.

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself."
--- Galileo Galilei

"Contempt is the emotion we feel for an opponent whose arguments are too formidable to refute."
-- from "1984"

"It's disgraceful how these humans blame the gods.
They say their tribulations come from us,
when they themselves, through their own foolishness,
bring hardships which are not decreed by Fate."
--- Zeus - from "The Odyssey", by Homer

"Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth." and
If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants."
--- Sir Isaac Newton

"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is,
but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word,
each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by
answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."
--- Viktor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning, p.172)

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also
that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
--- U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater (paraphrasing Cicero)

"Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.
Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart."
--- Marcel Morin

"True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess."
--- Louis Nizer

"If you gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox."
--- Christopher Hitchens, 2007

"In hindsight, I realized I could see into the future. Which is kind of like having
premonitions of flashbacks." --- Steven Wright

"I'm not going to put lipstick on a caterpillar and call it a butterfly."
--- Bolton, on the weak attempts to revamp the United Nations, March 15, 2006. Right on!

"The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression.
Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights to freedom of the mind are concealed under
the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism." --- Adlai Stevenson, 1952. Today it's the cloak
of anti-terrorism. Stevenson also said, "It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."

"I think prayer is asking for what you think you don't already have and admitting that you
don't trust your own soul and the soul of another. And ultimately you don't trust in the Source
that whatever happens IS the right thing - no matter how it might look on the surface."
--- E. Nora H. Amrani

"A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities,
and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties."
--- Harry S. Truman

"One who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
--- Chinese proverb

"This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."
--- Bette Davis

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
--- John Keats

"Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always."
--- Albert Schweitzer

"At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet."
--- Plato

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."
--- Peter F. Drucker

"Treat a child as though he already is the person he's capable of becoming."
--- Haim Ginott

"I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at
the end I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least
have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me."
--- Abraham Lincoln

"It's magic. All of a sudden, the idea just pops up. Who knows how?"
--- James A. Westphal (on where he drew inspiration for his innovations).

"From the glow of enthusiasm I let the melody escape. I pursue it.
Breathless I catch up with it. It flies again, it disappears, it
plunges into a chaos of diverse emotions. I catch it again, I seize
it, I embrace it with delight... I multiply it by modulations, and at
last I triumph in the first theme. There is the whole symphony."
--- Ludwig Van Beethoven

"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 of them for reality
and never allow the world within to assert itself."
--- Herman Hesse

"There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem,
the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity."
--- Nathaniel Branden

"Be advised that I, being free, do not have to pay tribute to anyone,
nor do I believe there is a king greater than I. ..."
(From Inca Atahuallpa's answer to Fray Wicente Valverde,
taken from Spanish documents of the Indian Archives in Seville. M.37.)

"My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity
could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again.
They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary
process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't
snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape.
The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts."
--- Lily Tomlin (from "The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe")

"First, never go against the best light you have; second,
take care that your light be not darkness."
--- Bishop Wilson (approx. 1869)

"Progress in every age results only from the fact that there are
some men and women who refuse to believe that what they
know to be right cannot be done."
--- Russell W. Davenport

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks,
breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."
--- Mary Lou Cook

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
--- Albert Einstein

"You are the people who are shaping a better world. One of the secrets of
inner peace is the practice of compassion."
---Dalai Lama

"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way."
--- A. J. Muste (1885-1967)

"Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying -
but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?"
--- Lily Tomlin

"For those of us who believe in physics this separation
between past, present and future is only an illusion,
however, tenacious."
--- Albert Einstein

"The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be
no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking
-- not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
--- George Orwell, 1948

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude more
than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask
not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were
our countrymen."
---Samuel Adams, American Revolutionary, Leader and Patriot, 1776

"...all knowledge exists in the Mind universe of Light -
which is God - that all Mind is One Mind, that men do
not have separate minds, and that all knowledge can be
obtained from the Universal Source of All-Knowledge by
becoming One with that Source."
---Walter Russell

"The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness,
and 'consciousness' cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution
of man is the evolution of his will, and 'will' cannot evolve involuntarily."
--- Gurdjieff (1873-1949)

"It seems that I have spent my entire life trying to
make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort."
--- A. J. Ayer (1910-1989)

"There is this difference between happiness and wisdom,
that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so;
but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool."
--- Colton (1780-1832)

"Human beings have an unalienable right to invent themselves;
when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing."
--- Germaine Greer

"A marraige based on divided loyalties is doomed."
--- Dr. Phil McGraw (2002)

"God is subtle but he is not malicious."
--- Albert Einstein

"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently."
--- Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)

"The self-controlled soul, who moves amongst sense objects,
free from either attachment or repulsion, he wins eternal Peace."
--- Bhagavad Gita (c. B.C. 400)

"When the mind is silent, beyond weakness or non concentration, then
it can enter into a world which is far beyond the mind: the highest End."
--- Upanishads (c. B.C. 800)

"Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to
accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most
interesting game in the world -- making the most of one's best."
--- Harry Emerson Fosdick

"All things are already complete in us. There is no greater delight than to
be conscious of right within us. If one strives to treat others as he would
be treated by them, he shall not fail to come near the perfect life."
--- Mencius (B.C. 371-288)

"The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save
our modes of thinking and we are thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
--- Albert Einstein

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came
for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then
they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
---- attributed to Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
(from Bartlett's 16th Edition, Justin Kaplan, General Editor, page 684,
1992.

"One has to be careful (care-full) they don't become what they criticize or condemn in others."
--- E. Nora H. Amrani (2005)

"There are no atheists in the foxholes."
--- William Thomas Cummings (1903-1945)

"I am an absolute pacifist...It is an instinctive feeling.
It is a feeling that possesses me, because the murder
of men is disgusting."
--- Albert Einstein

"No moral system can rest solely on authority."
--- A. J. Ayer (1910-1989)

"If a elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is
possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is
impossible he is very probably wrong."
--- Arthur C. Clarke

"Suddenly I burst into song: 'Awe, sweet mystery of life, at last I found thee...'
And I felt so good inside and my heart felt so full, I decided I would set time
aside each day to do awe-robics. Because at the moment you are most
in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer
to understanding it all than at any other time."
--- Lily Tomin (From "The Search For Intelligent Life In The Universe")

"Yes, that's right... love should come before logic ...
Only then will man come to understand the meaning of life."
--- Fyodor Dostoevsky

"As someone pointed out recently, if you can keep your head when
all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped
the situation."
--- Jean Kerr ("Please Don't Eat the Daisies", Introduction,
Cf. Rudyard Kipling 126:13)

"Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed."
---Walter Russell

"The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the
world is to be in reality what we would appear to be."
--- Socrates

WORDS OF WISDOM ABOUT LIFE:

1. No one can ruin your day without YOUR permission.
2. Most people will be about as happy, as they decide to be.
3. Others can stop you temporarily, but only you can do it permanently.
4. Whatever you are willing to put up with, is exactly what you will have.
5. Success stops when you do.
6. When your ship comes in make sure you are willing to unload it.
7. You will never "have it all together".
8. Life is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the trip!
9. The biggest lie on the planet: "When I get what I want I will be happy".
10. The best way to escape your problem is to solve it.
11. I've learned that ultimately , 'takers' lose and 'givers' win.
12. Life's precious moments don't have value, unless they are shared.
13. If you don't start, it's certain you won't arrive.
14. We often fear the thing we want the most.
15. He or she who laughs......lasts.
16. Yesterday was the deadline for all complaints.
17. Look for opportunities, not guarantees.
18. Life is what's coming, not what was.
19. Success is getting up one more time.
20. Now is the most interesting time of all.
21. When things go wrong, don't go with them.