T.S. Elliot, "The Cocktail Party"

If we all were judged according to the consequences of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention and beyond our limited understanding of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.

Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Erich Fromm

The courage to trust reason requires risking isolation or aloneness, and this threat is to many even harder to bear than the threat to life.

Rene Des Cartes

Cogito ergo sum.

(I think, therefore I am.)

Thomas Jefferson

To annul this privilege, and instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger, than benefit, to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society, & scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well ordered republic.

Van Potter

Wouldn't it be better to admit God may not exist than to call all catastrophes acts of God?

P.M.S. Blackett

If we only discussed those things about which we are knowledgeable, a deathly silence would descend upon the earth.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"

Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerers of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late) by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Bernard de Fontenelle

A great obstacle to happiness is to expect too much.

James Branch Cabell, 1926

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "The First Circle"

What is the most precious thing in the world? Not to participate in injustices. They are stronger than you. They have existed in the past and they will exist in the future. But let them not come about through you.

Loren Eiseley, "The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature"

The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.

John Steinbeck, "East of Eden"

Timshel! [Hebrew]

(Thou mayest!)

Julio Iglesias, "La vida sigue igual"

Unos que nacen otros moriran
unos que rien otros lloraran
aguas sin cauces, rios y mar
penas y glorias, guerras y paz.

Siempre hay por que vivir por que luchar
siempre hay por quien sufrir y a quien amar.
Al final las obras quedan las gentes se van
otros que vienen las continuaran
la vida sigue igual.

Pocos amigos que son de verdad
cuantos te halagan si triunfando estas
y si fracasas bien comprenderas
los buenos quedan los demás se van.

Siempre hay por que vivir por que luchar
siempre hay por quien sufrir y a quien amar.
Al final las obras quedan las gentes se van
otras que vienen las continuaran
la vida sigue igual.

(Some are born others will die
some laugh others will cry
water without channels, rivers and sea
hardships and glory, wars and peace.

There is always a reason to live a reason to fight
there is always someone to suffer for and someone to love.
In the end the works remain the people go away
others that come will continue them
life goes on the same way.

Only a few friends are true
how they praise you when you are successful
and if you fail you will understand well
that the good remain the rest go away.

There is always a reason to live a reason to fight
there is always someone to suffer for and someone to love.
In the end the works remain the people go away
others that come will continue them
life goes on the same way.)

Loren Eiseley

Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit - some ability to have a perceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his fellow creatures.

Václav Havel (then President of Czechoslovakia, addressing the US Congress), 1990

As long as people are people, democracy in the full sense of the word will always be no more than an ideal. One may approach it as one would a horizon, in ways that may be better or worse, but it can never be fully attained.

In this sense you, too, are merely approaching democracy. You have thousands of problems of all kinds, as other countries do. But you have one great advantage: You have been approaching democracy uninterrupted for more than 200 years.

John Lennon, "Imagine"

Imagine there's no heaven
it's easy if you try
no hell below us
above us only sky.
Imagine all the people
living in the world.
You may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one.
Some day I hope you will join us
and the world will live as one.
Imagine there's no country
it isn't hard to do
nothing to kill or die for
and no religion too.
Imagine all the people
living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer
but I'm not the only one.
Some day I hope you will join us
and the world will live as one.

Albert Einstein

The difference between what the most and the least learned people know is inexpressibly trivial in relation to that which is unknown.

Augustus De Morgan, "A Budget of Paradoxes"

Maseres was such an honest lawyer that he was not able to bear seeing his client victorious if he thought him guilty. As a result Maseres's business gradually fell off.

Plato

Those who have torches will pass them to others.

Chief Dan George

The white man is like the coyote, he wanders, finds a hunting ground and calls it his own. We are like our brother the bear ... we have only one home.

Ernest Becker

A protest without a program is little more than sentimentalism - this is the epitaph of many of the great idealisms.

Julius Nyerere, 1977

[Victory for] the forces of nationalism [is inevitable because] men will never willingly accept deliberate and organized humiliation as the price of existence.