We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation. ~Francois De La Rochefoucauld
 
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure. ~Lee Segall

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. ~Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~Andre Gide

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. ~Aesop

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying. ~Baba Ram Dass

I am a part of all that I have met. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

There's more to the truth than just the facts. ~Author Unknown

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. ~Edward R. Murrow

Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day. ~Polish Proverb

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~Ludwig Börne

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky? ~Stanislaw J. Lec

We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it. ~Albert Szent-Györgyi

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly. ~Edward Albee

When the student is ready, the master appears. ~Buddhist Proverb

A gun gives you the body, not the bird. ~Henry David Thoreau

Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. ~Zen Buddhist Proverb

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~Henry David Thoreau

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying. ~Charles C. Finn

Oh, Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry a future Ghost within us; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! ~Thomas Carlyle

Knock on the sky and listen to the sound. ~Zen Saying

The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him? ~Chuang Tzu

By daily dying I have come to be. ~Theodore Roethke

There are some remedies worse than the disease. ~Publilius Syrus

You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough. ~William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos. ~John L. McClenahan

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book II, chapter 1

Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us. ~Soren Kierkegaard

Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science. ~Henry David Thoreau

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. ~Henri Louis Bergson

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible. ~Ram Dass

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter. ~G.C. Lichtenberg

Don't miss the donut by looking through the hole. ~Author Unknown

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. ~Navajo Proverb

Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death. ~Heraclitus, Eustathius ad Iliad

To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday. ~John Burroughs

Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind. ~John Lancaster Spalding

The map is not the territory. ~Alfred Korzybski

No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head. ~Terry Josephson

Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed? ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose. ~Robert Brault,

He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form. ~Marcus Aurelius

If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. ~Russian Proverb

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. ~Bertrand Russell

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. ~Roger Miller

The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. ~James Thurber

It is easy to stand a pain, but difficult to stand an itch. ~Chang Ch'ao

You cannot step into the same river twice. ~Heraclitus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives

You are fastened to them and cannot understand how, because they are not fastened to you. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Only in the early morning light of day, and of life, can we see the world without its shadows. Truth requires new beginnings. ~Jeb Dickerson,

One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, "Is it half full or half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem. ~Alexander Jodorowsky

Among creatures born into chaos, a majority will imagine an order, a minority will question the order, and the rest will be pronounced insane. ~Robert Brault

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Child Harold's Pilgrimage

Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases. ~Hippocrates, Aphorisms

Seeking is not always the way to find. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place. ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1872

We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. ~Author Unknown

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning. ~Aleister Crowley, Book of Lies

Tomorrow always comes, and today is never yesterday. ~S.A. Sachs


Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects. ~Thomas Carlyle

You can see a lot by just looking. ~Yogi Berra, also often quoted as "You can observe a lot by just looking." (original wording as yet unverified)

Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. ~Leo Rosten

The unreal is more powerful than the real.... Because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

Reason and faith are both banks of the same river. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada

Man is the only animal who enjoys the consolation of believing in a next life; all other animals enjoy the consolation of not worrying about it. ~Robert Brault

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. ~Dr Seuss

Who depends on another man's table often dines late. ~John Ray

[T]hings are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing. ~Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French by Richard Howard

When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

A thousand men can't undress a naked man. ~Greek Proverb

May your passion be the kernel of corn stuck between your molars, always reminding you there's something to tend to. ~Jeb Dickerson

I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

There's no fun in playing safe or by the rules, but it's not fun being hit by a semi-truck either. ~Daniel, @blindedpoet

We often repent the good we have done as well as the ill. ~William Hazlitt, Characteristics, 1823

When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish. ~Evelyn Waugh

It's very strange when the life you never had flashes before your eyes. ~Terri Minsky, Sex and the City, "The Baby Shower

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground. ~Buddha

We become aware of the void as we fill it. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
~W.B. Yeats

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. ~Santayana, Essays

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~Niels Bohr

How often one sees people looking far and wide for what they are holding in their hands? Why! I am doing it myself at this very moment. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. ~Eric Hoffer, Passionate State of Mind, 1955

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? ~Maurice Freehill

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden, 1854

Because they know the name of what I am looking for, they think they know what I am looking for! ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

There are things I have wanted so long that I would only consent to have them if I could keep wanting them. ~Robert Brault

Eggs cannot be unscrambled. ~American Proverb

Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt. ~Norman Cousins

A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

The road was new to me, as roads always are going back. ~Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country Road of Pointed Firs, 1896

Admiration and familiarity are strangers. ~George Sand

I am not certain of the hereafter. Frankly, I'm not all that certain of the here. ~Robert Brault,

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about "and." ~Arthur Stanley Eddington

To know the hight [sic] of a mountain, one must climb it. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. ~Zen

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. ~Eric Berne

Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Jean Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different. ~Aldous Huxley

Will localizes us; thought universalizes us. ~Henri Frederic Amiel

I've observed that there are more lines formed than things worth waiting for. ~Robert Brault

Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. ~Georg Hegel

When I break any of the chains that bind me I feel that I make myself smaller. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

We are spirits clad in veils. ~Christopher P. Cranch

If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am? ~John Lancaster Spalding

Before I travelled my road I was my road. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. ~Francis Bacon

To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting. ~Stanislaus I of Poland

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. ~H.L. Mencken

The future influences the present just as much as the past. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

When a watch goes ill, it is not enough to move the hands; you must set the regulator. When a man does ill, it is not enough to alter his handiwork, you must regulate his heart. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. ~John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911

One does what one is; one becomes what one does. ~Robert von Musil, Kleine Prosa

In this, the late afternoon of my life, I wonder: am I casting a longer shadow or is my shadow casting a shorter me? ~Robert Brault

You can't fall off the floor. ~Author Unknown

A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. ~Author Unknown

In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it - the present, that is to say, must have become the past - before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future. ~Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. ~Robert M. Pirsig

A stumble may prevent a fall. ~English Proverb

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. ~Friedrich Nietzche

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. ~Matsuo Basho 


"The capacity to learn is a gift;
The ability to learn is a skill;
The WILLINGNESS to learn is a choice." -Unknown

"All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke

"The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it." -John Ruskin 1819-1900

"As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's llife will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad." -Henry David Thoreau

"How like philosophers! Preening themselves for teaching black-and-white thinkers to see shades of gray and forgetting all about the reds and greens and blues and yellows and " -Susan Sparks

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." -George Orwell ...on the importance of police

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger" -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"History is written by the victors." -Machiavelli

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana (1863-1952), U.S. philosopher, poet. Life of Reason, "Reason in Common Sense," ch. 12 (1905-6)

"The only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history." -Hegel (1770-1831)

"A thought which is not independent is a thought only half understood." -Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

"We have to live today by what truth we can get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood." -William James

"We are always the same age inside." -Gertrude Stein

"Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt - particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms." -Will Durant

"Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I exist!) -Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

"I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority." -Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

"I have had my solutions for a long time, but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them." -Karl Friedrich Gauss

"The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do." -Benjamin Disraeli

"Knowledge is power." -Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

"When all else fails, follow the directions." -American Proverb

"To myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself and now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." -Sir Isaac Newton

"Common sense is not so common." -Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life." -Unknown

"What is the first business of one who studies... To part with self conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows." -Epictetus (55-135) Greek Philosopher

"A philosophy is the expression of a man's inner character." -William James

"The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool." -Confucius

"I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire

"For me as emperor, my city and fatherland is Rome; but as a man, I belong to the world." -Marcus Aurelius (180 A.D.) Emperor of Rome

"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one.... cities will never have rest from their evils-no, nor the human race." -Plato

"For man, the unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates

"Know thyself." -Socrates

"One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing." -Socrates

"Keep me from the wisdom that does not weep, and the philosophy that does not laugh." -Kahlil Gibran

"The idea that so much suffering can be in vain is intolerable to me, it kept me awake all night: I'm awake now." -Andre Gide

"Philosophy subverts man's satisfaction with himself, exposes custom as a questionable dream, and offers not so much solutions as a different life." -Walter Kaufmann

"If I told you, you would not know; you simply would have been told. Study it thoroughly and I will ask you. You will answer and then you will know." -"Dr. Hartley Baldwin" in Robert Heinlein's novel 'Friday'

"Those who teach, learn." -ASLET motto

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail." -Abraham Maslow

"Philosophy is man's quest for the unity of knowledge: it consists in a perpetual struggle to create the concepts in which the universe can be conceived as a universe and not a multiverse . This attempt stands without rival as the most audacious enterprise in which the mind of man has ever engaged: Here is man, surrounded by the vastness of a universe in which he is only a tiny and perhaps insignificant part - and he wants to understand it" -William Halverson

"One can tell for oneself whether the water is warm or cold." - I Ching

"It's not the bullet that's got my name on it that concerns me; it's all them other ones flyin' around marked 'To Whom It May Concern.'" -Unknown

"He who fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Nietzche

"It's easy to curb the freedoms of others when you see no immediate impact on your own." -Malcolm Forbes

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious Things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them." -Mark Twain (1835-1910), U.S. author. Following the Equator, ch. 20, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

"The graveyards are full of irreplaceable people." - Unknown

"If space is, it will be in something; for everything that is is in something; and to be in something is to be in space, and so on (ad infinitum). Therefore space does not exist." -Zeno of Elea

"Life is not a problem, so why are you asking for a solution?" -Unkown

"A hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts 'Native' before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance." --Theodore Roosevelt, October 12, 1915

"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus."
False in one, false in all. -Unknown

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Old Indian Saying

HUMOR

"Dulce est desipere in loco. Woe to philosophers who cannot laugh away their wrinkles. I look upon solemnity as a disease." -Voltaire

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -Rich Cook

"Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together...." -Carl Zwanzig

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." -Douglas Adams

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -Albert Einstein

"Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things." -Unknown

"My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed." -Christopher Morley

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to
contact us." -(Calvin and Hobbes) Bill Watterson

ON ARMS AND FREEDOM

"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one." -Thomas Jefferson

"It is better to have a government in fear of its people than to have a people in fear of their government." -Unknown

"What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Thomas Jefferson 1787 President of the United States and drafter of the US Constitution

" A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For...no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death" -Thomas Hobbes, 17th Century English Political Philosopher

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which... historically has proved to be always possible." -Hubert Humphrey, United States Senator

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed." -Noah Webster, Author, An American Dictionary of the English Language

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -Cesare Beccaria, 18th Century Italian Criminologist

"Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years." -Niccolo Machiavelli, 16th Century Italian Political Theorist

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." -Mahatman Ghandi, Indian Political Leader

"To disarm the people [is] the best and most efficient way to enslave them." -George Mason, American Statesman and Author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

"If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and method of protecting ourselves is morally right." -Cicero, Roman Orator, 1st Century B.C.

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms..." Adolph Hitler, German Dictator

"This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future." -Adolf Hitler, German Dictator 1935

"Better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned." Increase Mather in a widely cirulated sermon in 1692 that lead to the end of the Salem Witch Trials

"To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic." --Ted Nugent, Rock Star

"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is two wolves attempting to have a sheep for dinner and finding a well-informed, well-armed sheep." -Unknown

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." -Plato

ON RELIGION

"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." -Bertrand Russell

"Here we are in this wholly fantastic Universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this security is illusory. But I do not like the situation any better than they do. The difference is that I cannot see how the smallest advantage is to be gained from deceiving myself." -Fred Hoyle

"As knowledge grew, fear decreased; men thought less of worshiping the unknown, and more of overcoming it." -Will Durant

"What is the ultimate truth about ourselves? Various answers suggest themselves. We are a bit of stellar matter gone wrong. We are physical machinery - puppets that strut and talk and laugh and die as the hand of time pull the strings beneath. But here is one elementary inescapable answer. We are that which asks the question. Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility towards truth is one of its attributes." -Sir Arthur Eddington

"The Academy, founded by Plato in 388 BC was the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. It endured for more than 900 years, until in the year 529 AD, when it was closed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian because, in his eyes, it was a stronghold of paganism." -James Christian, 1986:48

"Most of man's religions and many of his philosophies have concluded that, in the final analysis, life-in-this-world is not worth living. At best it's but a time of troubles to be endured until we can reach something better. Today, that's a conclusion we find difficult to live with." -James Christian

ZORBA: Why do the young die? Why does anybody die, tell me?
SCHOLAR: I don't know.
ZORBA: What's the use of all your damn books? If they don't tell you that, what the hell do they tell you?
SCHOLAR: They tell me about the agony of men who can't answer questions like yours.
-Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." -Voltaire (1694-1778)

"If there were not a Devil, we would have to invent him." -Oscar Wilde

"One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason-but one cannot have both." -"Dr. Hartley Baldwin" in Robert Heinlein's Friday

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing. -William Shakespeare in his play: Macbeth

"I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galielo

"The insight that we have a wider duty toward human beings has never attained the dominance to which it is entitled. Down to our own times it has been undermined by differences of race, religion, and nationality. Man belongs to man." -Albert Schweitzer

"Neglect of an effective birth control policy is a never-failing source of poverty which, in turn, is the parent of revolution and crime." -Aristotle

"Man is the only creature that spends its entire life trying to become what it already is." -Anonymous

"Personal belief is often a poor substitute for the truth." -Unknown

"Religion is fundamentally a set of ceremonial actions, assembling the group, heightening its emotions, and focusing its members on symbols of their common belongingness." -Emile Durkheim (1895)

"The definition of religion is: the shelter from fear. It is a shelter built upon a foundation of wards and text against the fears of the unknown, of death or ceasing to exist, and of perceived hopelessness. Its roof is the very antitheses of the acquisition of knowledge or the limited scientific truths that would rain in. Its walls have been, and remain, a prison of cruelty, injustice, death and suffering to the entire human race." -Mitch Snider

LEADERSHIP

King Henry V, just before the Battle of Agincourt, speaking to his badly outnumbered assembeled host:
"If we are mark'd to die, we are enow.
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
-Shakespeare's Henry V 1599 (and so then followed that day some 6,000 English defeated 30,000 French, loosing only 300 men and killing 8,000)