Inspirational Quotes

"Live so that you could look any man
in the eye and tell him to go to hell."

"There are two kinds of people in this world:
those who play hopscotch and sing in the shower
and others who lie alone at night w/ tears in their eyes."

"Without the bad things in life,
the good things wouldnt mean anything."

"If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it,
it's much easier to apologize
than it is to get permission."

"I've learned that...
it takes years to build up trust,
and it only takes suspicion,
not proof, to destroy it."

"Time flies...spend it with people
who mean the most to you."

"The two hardest things to say in life are
hello for the first time and goodbye for the last."

"Sometimes you've got to laugh
through the tears and smile
through the pain so that you can live
through the sorrow."

"Sometimes there is no next time,
no second chance, no time out.
Sometimes its just now or never..."

"A smile happens quickly,
but its memory can last a lifetime."

"Never ruin an apology with an excuse."
~Kimberly Johnson~

"He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for."
~Moroccan Proverb~

"Through fumbling nights that find no day,
I move and try to find my way."
~Dr. Seuss~

"Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts."
~Charles-Maurice de Tallyrand~

"Just because you're lonely,
that doesnt mean you're not loved."

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again,
but expecting different results."
~Rita Mae Brown~

"Kind words can be short and easy to speak
but their echoes are truly endless."
~Mother Teresa~

"Tomorrow is just a fiction of today."
~Rex Harrison~

"Music, I feel I must be emotional first
and intellectual second."
~Maurice Ravel~

"Once you think that your own mind
is not your friend anymore...
you are on your way to insanity."
~Bobby Fischer~

"It is a man's mission to learn to understand."
~Vannevar Bush~

"The questions don't do the damage.
Only the answers do."
~Sam Donaldson~

"Reality is something you rise above."
~Liza Minnelli~

"Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself,
for he shall never cease to be entertained."

"Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness."
~Georges Simenon~

"You cannot teach a man anything,
you can only help him to find it within himself."
~Galileo Galilei~

"What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art."
~Augustus Saint-Gaudens~

"Trouble is a part of your life,
and if you don't share it,
you don't give the person who loves you
a chance to love you enough."
~Dinah Shore~

"Art is much less important than life,
but what a poor life without it."
~Robert Motherwell~

"It is bad enough to know the past;
it would be intolerable to know the future."
~W. Somerset Maugham~

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself
you cannot tell it about other people."
~Virginia Woolf~

"Loneliness is never more cruel
than when it is felt in close propinquity
with someone who has ceased to communicate."
~Germaine Greer~

"Humor is laughing at what you haven't got
when you ought to have it."
~Langston Hughes~

"The world goes on no matter what you do."
~Eubie Blake~

"A blow with a word strikes deeper
than any blow with a sword."
~Robert Burton~

"Poverty makes you sad as well as wise."
~Bertolt Brecht~

"The softer you sing the louder you're heard."
~Donovan Leitch~

"Your sexuality is a dimension of your personality,
and whenever you are sexually active,
you are expressing yourself
the self that you are at that moment,
the mood that you're in, the needs that you have."
~Virginia E. Johnson~

"We judge ourselves by our motives
and others by their actions."
~Dwight Morrow~

"Today, colleges have come to think of
students as customers, and as long as they do,
well have the higher illiterates we see on campuses today."
~Stringfellow Barr~

"Often the test of courage is not to die but to live."
~Vittorio Alfieri~

"There is nothing so powerful as truth
and often nothing so strange."
~Daniel Webster~

"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."
~Janis Joplin~

"Old people dont get tired
it's only the young who tire.
Confusion exhausts them."
~George Balanchine~

"Music can measure how broad our horizons are.
My mind wants to see into infinity."
~Stevie Wonder~

"We do not write in order to be understood;
we write in order to understand."
~Cecil Day-Lewis~

"It is necessary to be slightly underemployed
if you are to do something significant."
~James D.Watson~

"Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose."
~Billie Holiday~

"If you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your path."
~Mary Webb~

"It isn't what they say about you
it's what they whisper about you."
~Errol Flynn~

"Beware of the danger signals that flag problems:
silence, secretiveness, or sudden outbursts."
~Sylvia Field Porter~

"A perfectly normal person is rare in our civilization."
~Karen Horney~

"Men can starve from a lack of self-realization
as they can from a lack of bread."
~Richard Wright~

"Anxious mothers make insane kids."
~Bruno Bettelheim~

"Loneliness and the feeling of being
unwanted is the most terrible poverty."
~Mother Teresa~

"Music...can name the unnamable
and communicate the unknowable."
~Leonard Bernstein~

"The first duty of love is to listen."
~Paul Tillich~

"For me insanity is super-sanity.
The normal is psychotic
a collective psychosis.
Normal means lack of imagination,
lack of creativity."
~Jean Dubuffet~

"Happiness isn't something you experience;
it's something you remember."
~Oscar Levant~

"I dream for a living."
~Steven Spielberg~

"Music is a higher revelation than philosophy."
~Ludwig van Beethoven~

"Jazz is about the only form of art existing today
in which there is freedom of the individual
without the loss of group contact."
~Dave Brubeck~

"The blues is where we came from and what we experience.
The blues came from nothingness, from want, from desire."
~W. C. Handy~

"Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it
through their feet instead of their brains."
~John Philip Souza~

"Be as you are and hope that it's right."
~Dizzy Gillespie~

"There are no wrong notes."
~Thelonious Monk~

"A creative artist works on his next composition
because he was not satisfied with his previous one."
~Dmitri Shostakovich~

"We did not change as we grew older;
we just became more clearly ourselves."
~Lynn Hall~

"I used to think I had ambition...
but now I'm not so sure.
It may have been only discontent.
They're easily confused."
~Rachel Field~

"When the habitually even-tempered
suddenly fly into a passion,
that explosion is apt to be more impressive
than the outburst of the most violent amongst us."
~Margery Allingham~

"To be alone is to be different,
to be different is to be alone."
~Suzanne Gordon~

"You come into the world alone
and you go out of the world alone
yet it seems to me you are more alone
while living than even going and coming."
~Emily Carr~

"Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone."
~Maya Angelou~

"So when you are listening to somebody,
completely, attentively, then you are
listening not only to the words, but also
to the feeling of what is being conveyed,
to the whole of it, not part of it."
~Jiddu Krishnamurti~

"Listening is noting what, when
and how something is being said.
Listening is distinguishing what is
not being said from what is silence.
Listening is not acting like
you're in a hurry, even if you are.
Listening is eye contact,
a hand placed gently upon an arm.
Sometimes, listening is taking
careful notes in the person's own words.
Listening involves suspension of judgment.
It is neither analyzing nor racking
your brain for labels, diagnoses, or remedies
before the person is done relating her symptoms.
Listening, like labor assisting, creates a safe space
where whatever needs to happen or be said can come."
~Allison Para Bastien~

"The most basic of all human needs is the
need to understand and be understood.
The best way to understand people
is to listen to them."
~Ralph Nichols~

"The opposite of talking is not listening.
The opposite of talking is waiting."
~Fran Lebowitz~

"The greatest gift you can give another
is the purity of your attention."
~Richard Moss~

"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing,
a creative force...When we are listened to,
it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.
Ideas actually begin to grow within us
and come to life...When we listen to people
there is an alternating current, and this recharges
us so that we never get tired of each other...
and it is this little creative fountain inside us
that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and
unexpected laughter and wisdom...Well, it is when
people really listen to us, with quiet facinated attention,
that the little fountain begins to work again,
to accelerate in the most surprising way."
~Brenda Ueland~

"People told me I shouldn't take everything
too seriously, and I didn't listen.
Now I wish I had, because I tormented
myself over every little thing.
What's bad is when you get to age 19,
you're looking back thinking, 'I wish I could
be young again and just have a better time.'"
~Anonymous~

"Listen to your intuition.
It will tell you everything you need to know."
~Anthony J. D'Angelo~

"The more I look around and listen
I realize that I'm not alone.
We are all facing choices that define us.
No choice, however messy, is without importance
in the overall picture of our lives.
We all at our own age have to claim something,
even if it's only our own confusion.
I am in the middle of growing up and into myself. "
~Sabrina Ward Harrison~

"Just remember all...that words are powerful, so very
powerful, that it can change attitudes (for the better or
for the worse), with or without provocation. They can be
triggers, reminders, movers, and emotives...Be kind with
your words and listen to positive messages in things that
we have in common...Communication in the ways that make
a positive impact and even possibly profitable (new
friendships, good feelings, etc.) for all parties, is the key."
~Anonymous~

"We don't live in the world of reality,
we live in the world of how we perceive reality."

"We do not believe in ourselves until
someone reveals that deep inside us
is valuable, worth listening to,
worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.
Once we believe in ourselves we can risk
curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or
any experience that reveals the human spirit."
~e.e. cummings~

"I only wish I could find an institute
that teaches people how to listen.
Business people need to listen at
least as much as they need to talk.
Too many people fail to realize that real
communication goes in both directions."
~Lee Iacocca~

"You cannot truly listen to anyone
and do anything else at the same time."
~M. Scott Peck~

"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when
one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."
~Henry David Thoreau~

"To say that a person feels listened to means
a lot more than just their ideas get heard.
It's a sign of respect.
It makes people feel valued."
~Deborah Tannen~

"Listening looks easy,
but it's not simple.
Every head is a world."
~Cuban Proverb~

"In order to truly love someone,
you have to love them more than you need them."

"People don't see the world as it is, but as they are."

"You can't walk a mile in someone else's
shoes until you take off your own."

"Things will happen in your life that you can't stop.
But that's no reason to shut out the world."
~"Now and Then"~

"Why should I live up to other people's
expectations rather than my own?"
~"10 Things I Hate About You"~

"Too often we underestimate the power
of a touch, a smile, a kind word,
a listening ear, an honest compliment,
or the smallest act of caring,
all of which have the potential
to turn a life around."
~Leo Buscaglia~

"Life isn't measured by how many breaths you take,
but by what takes your breath away."

"Sometimes it is too difficult to
realize that life is too simple."

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs
and returns home to find it."
~George Moore~

"Many people today don't want honest answers
insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing,
They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety."
~Louis Kronenberger~

"There's a little truth to every 'just kidding'."

"The house of delusions is cheap
to build but drafty to live in."
~A.E. Housman~

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence."
~Robert Louis Stevenson~

"Every time we give our word, it counts.
For the most part, most people
give it entirely too often.
Our word is a precious commodity
and should be treated as such."
~John-Roger and Peter McWilliams~

"It is the question that drives us mad.
The answer is out there; it will find you,
if you want it to."
~"The Matrix"~

"This world is a comedy for those who think
and a tragedy for those who feel."
~Horace Walpole~

"We tell lies when we are afraid,
...afraid of what we don't know,
afraid of what others will think,
afraid of what will be found out about us.
But every time we tell a lie,
the thing that we fear grows stronger."
~Tad Williams~

"Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind."
~Dr. Seuss~

"Reality is merely an illusion,
albeit a very persistent one."
~Albert Einstein~

"Never regret what you said
because it was what you were feeling at that moment."

"The most important thing in communication
is hearing what isn't being said."
~Anon~

"I've learned that good-byes will always hurt,
pictures never replace having been there,
memories good or bad, will bring tears;
and words can never replace feelings."

"It always rains hardest on those that deserve the sun."

"A person's eyes tell their story. Some eyes are so pure, so innocent,
while others show that life can be a major struggle."

"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."
~Jules de Gautier~

"Murphy's Law:
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer than you expect.
And if anything can go wrong,
It will at the worst possible moment."

"Subtlety is the art of saying what you think
and getting out of the way before it is understood."

"Don't ask me any questions,
because I just might tell you the truth."

"Much unhappiness has come into the world
because of bewilderment and things left unsaid."
~Fyodor Dostoyevsky~

"We fear the thing we want the most."
~Robert Anthony~

"When something important is going on, silence is a lie."

"Little things console us because little things afflict us."

"Sanity is a cozy lie."
~Susan Sontag~

"Dare to be naive."
~R. Buckminster Fuller~

"If you smile when no one else is around,
you really mean it."
~Andy Rooney~

"To move forward, I have to let go."

"It is often hard to bear tears that we ourselves have caused."

"Always think before you speak,
especially if what you are going to
say is exactly what you think."

"There's nothing wrong with building dream castles
as long as you don't try to move in."

"The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others."
~Sonya Friedman~

"Tears are the rinse water of an unhappy heart."
~Raynor Schein~

"Behavior is a much better barometer
of what you are than words."
~Wayne Dyer~

"Anyone who isn't confused really
doesn't understand the situation."
~Edward R. Murrow~

"We run away all the time to avoid
coming face to face with ourselves."

"The ability to delude yourself
may be an important survival tool."
~Jane Wagner~

"Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.
And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them."
~The Dalai Lama~

"In your life, you meet people.
Some you never think about again.
Some, you wonder what happened to them.
There are some that you wonder if
they ever think about you.
And then there are some you wish
you never had to think about again.
But you do."

"Hear the meaning within the word."
~William Shakespeare~

"Nothing improves your memory like trying to forget."

"The scariest thing in the world is to not know your place.
To not know why you're here. That's a terrible feeling."
~"Unbreakable"~

"There are three truths in life:
you are born, you will die, and things change.
Ok, maybe one more: everyone has their Stella,
and when they do, no one else can even compare."
~"Entropy"~

"Most conversations seem to be carried ou on two levels,
the verbal level and the emotional level.
The verbal level contains those things
which are socially acceptable to say,
but it is used as a means of satisfying emotional needs.
Yesterday a friend of mine related
something that someone had done to her.
I told her why I thought the person had acted the way he had
and she became very upset and started arguing with me.
Now, the reason is clear.
I had been listening to her words
and had paid no attention to her feelings.
Her words had described how terribly
this other person had treated her,
but her emotions had been saying,
'Please understand how I felt.
Please accept my feeling the way I did.'
The last thing she wanted to hear from me was
an explination of the other person's behavior."
~Hugh Prather~

"If you can't believe in yourself,
let me believe in you for a while."

"'You're wrong' means 'I don't understand you'
I'm not seeing what you're seeing.
But there is nothing wrong with you,
you are simply not me and that's not wrong."
~Hugh Prather~

"Many people think they are acting
the way they feel when they tell someone off.
Someone is critical of me and I answer
by calling him an S.O.B.
My feeling is not that he is an S.O.B.;
my feeling is that he has hurt me:
'You have hurt my feelings and now I want to hurt yours.'
Launching a verbal attack covers up my feeling
of being hurt with an appearance of strength.
I get angry when I think someone has hurt me
in a way I am helpless to do anything about."
~Hugh Prather~

"The main thing in life in not to be afraid to be human."
~Pablo Casals~

"Are you aware that anger is closely linked to love
and that you can and usually do get angry at people you love?
Love and anger are not mutually exclusive.
You can get deeply angry at people and love them enough
so that you want the very best of all things for them."
~Theodore Issac Rubin~

"To be nobody but yourself in a world
which is doing its best, night and day,
to make you everybody else means to fight
the hardest battle which any human being
can fight; and never stop fighting."
~e. e. cummings~

"We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men;
and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads,
our actions run as causes,
and they come back to us as effects."
~Herman Melville~

"I will forgive myself if I fail;
I won't forgive myself if I don't try."

"I will not try to put others on pedestals.
It makes it too easy for them to fall off."

"Life must be understood backwards,
but...it must be lived forward."
~Soren Kierkegaard~

"The time you enjoy wasting is no wasted time."
~Bertrand Russell~

"The bottom line is important,
but so is the rest of the page."

"Don't cry over anyone who won't cry over you."

"It's not whatcha got, it's whatcha give.
It's not the life you choose, it's the life you live.
Everybody wants something for nothing.
Everyone wants something for free.
So in your life, what's your choice gonna be?"

"Let no one deny you the right of telling what is in your heart."
~Don Evans~

"Actions speak louder than words."

"Yield to temptation...it may not pass your way again."
~Lazarus Long~

"You can't depend on your judgment when
your imagination is out of focus."
~Mark Twain~

"He who proposes to be an author,
should first be a student."
~John Dryden~

"In all things it is a good idea to hang a question mark
now and then on the things we have taken for granted."
~Bertrand Russell~

"Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at."
~Goethe~

"No smile is as beautiful as one that struggles through the tears."

"Don't let anyone ever make you feel
like you don't deserve what you want."
~"10 Things I Hate About You"~

"A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something."

"Truly great madness can not be achieved
without significant intelligence."

"There are two rules for success in life:
1. Don't tell people everything you know."

"You have to be honest with yourself.
It's not that important with other people."

"If your strength is small, don't carry heavy burdens.
If your words are worthless, don't give advice."
~Chinese Proverb~

"The life is a wonderful thing.
You have to appreciate it NOW...
because you never know what is
going to happen tomorrow."
~Ekaterina Gordeeva~

"Life is a razor, you are always in hot water or a scrape."

"Every solution of a problem is a new problem."
~Goethe~

"We are what we repeatedly do."
~Aristotle~

"Happiness is often the result of
being too busy to be miserable."

"Failure is an event-not a person."

"In the province of the mind,
what one believes to be true
either is true, or becomes true."
~John Lily~

"If you don't know what you want from life,
what do you think you'll get?"

"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do."

"Maturity begins when we're content to feel
we're right about something without feeling
the necessity to prove someone else wrong."

"It is better to be alone than in the wrong company."

"A good-bye is only painful if you know
you will never say hello again."

"Cling to your imperfections...
for that's what makes you unique."

"Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."

"The real art of conversation
is not only to say the right thing at the right time,
but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing
at the tempting moment."

"Trust your hunches...
They're usually based on facts
filed away just below the conscious level."

"All your life people will try to
take your accomplishments away from you;
don't take them away from yourself."
~Sarah Harding~

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers."
~Voltaire~

"Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse."
~African Proverb~

"The best education in the world
is that got by struggling to get a living"
~Wendell Phillips~

"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge."
~Kahlil Gibran~

"The best way to cheer yourself up
is to try to cheer somebody else up."
~Mark Twain~

"My creed is that:
Happiness is the only good.
The place to be happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to make others so."
~Robert G. Ingersoll~

"Passion: There are many things in life
that will catch your eye, but only a few
will catch your heart. Pursue those."

"Most of us spend a lifetime going to sleep
when we're not sleepy and getting up when we are."

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and
look around once in a while, you might miss it."
~Ferris Bueller~

"Do not the most moving moments
of our lives find us without words?"
~Marcel Marceau~

"Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while,
so that we can see life with a clearer view again."
~Alex Tan~

"Hating something is too much work to do.
What you want to do is ignore something.
It is more effective."
~Sridhar Ramaswamy~

"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman,
but believing what he read made him mad."
~George Bernard Shaw~

"If you cannot be a poet, be the poem."
~David Carradine~

"I will permit no man to narrow
and degrade my soul by making me hate him."
~Booker T. Washington~

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

"The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope."
~William Shakespeare~

"Our destiny rules over us,
even when we are not yet aware of it;
it is the future that makes laws for us today."
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche~

"Pessimism...is, in brief, playing the sure game.
You cannot lose at it; you may gain.
It is the only view of life in which
you can never be disappointed.
Having reckoned what to do
in the worst possible circumstances,
when better arise, as they may,
life becomes child's play."
~Thomas Hardy~

"I don't consider myself a pessimist.
I think of a pessimist as someone
who is waiting for it to rain.
And I feel soaked to the skin."
~Leonard Cohen~

"One day everything will be well, that is our hope.
Everything's fine today, that is our illusion."
~Voltaire~

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
~William Shakespeare~

"When people seem to push you away,
that's when they need you the most."

"Bad things are always going to happen in life.
People will hurt you.
But you cant use that as an excuse to hurt someone back.
You'll only hurt yourself."

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by
the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore... Dream... Discover."
~Mark Twain~

"People take different roads
seeking fulfillment and happiness.
Just because they are not on your road
does not mean they have gotten lost."
~Jackson Browne~

"Anybody can become angry, that is easy;
but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree,
and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way,
that is not within everybody's power and is not easy."
~Aristotle~

"Fear less, hope more;
Whine less, breathe more;
Talk less, say more;
Hate less, love more;
And all good things are yours."
~Swedish Proverb~

"We cannot change anything until we accept it.
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses."
~C. G. Jung~

"If you're not big, at least be loud."
~Brandon Wallace~

"The happiest people are the ones who are able to laugh at themselves.
For they will never cease to be amused."

"I am a firm believer in fate and destiny, but I also think you have to work hard for it.
Fate will only get you so far because once you are there it is up to you to make it happen.
Don't live your entire life wondering what would have happened if only you had done this or said that.
Having regrets will get you nowhere fast."

"The truth of the matter is, you always know the right thing to do.
The hard part is doing it."

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma,
a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to
interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."
~Umberto Eco~

"The whole problem with the world is that
fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves,
but wiser people so full of doubts."
~Bertrand Russell~

"The most difficult thing in the world is
to know how to do a thing and to watch
someone else do it wrong without comment."
~Theodore H. White~

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."
~Alfred Adler~

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
and the pessimist fears this is true."
~James Branch Cabell~

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But, in practice, there is."
~Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut~

"When people talk, listen completely.
Most people never listen."
~Ernest Hemingway~

"You can only find truth with logic
if you have already found truth without it."
~G. K. Chesterfield~

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about."
~Oscar Wilde~

"There is a great deal of pain in life,
and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided,
is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain."

"Happiness cannot come from without.
It must come from within.
It is not what we see and touch
or that which others do for us which makes us happy;
it is that which we think and feel and do,
first for the other fellow and then for ourselves."
~Helen Keller~

"People have a way of becoming what you encourage to them to be-
not what you nag them to be."
~Scudder N. Parker~

"Live like today is your last day,
Love like you've never been hurt,
And dance like no one's watching."

"Don't cry because its over,
smile because it happened."

"A person who asks a question is a fool for five minutes,
a person who doesn't is a fool forever..."

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is
to be continually fearing you will make one."
~Elbert Hubbard~

"Philosophy is a kind of journey,
ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth."
~Albert Pike~

"What distinguishes a man from a male is that a man knows how to say sorry, when to ask for help,
the difference between listening and hearing, and that sex is taking while love is giving."
~JJ~

"Not everything that can be counted counts;
and not everything that counts can be counted."
~Albert Einstein~

"We make a living by what we get,
we make a life by what we give."
~Winston Churchill~

"You can observe a lot by watching."
~Yogi Berra~

"Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."
~John Lennon~

"People may not remember exactly what you did or what you said,
but they will always remember how you made them feel."

"Who are you to judge the life I live?
I know I'm not perfect and I dont live to be,
but before you start pointing fingers
make sure your hands are clean."
~Bob Marley~

"Wars are not acts of God.
They are caused by man,
by man-made institutions,
by the way in which man
has organized his society.
What man has made, man can change."
~Frederick M. Vinson~

"Thinking is what a great many people think they are doing,
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
~William James~

"The most revolutionary thing you can
do in this country is change your mind."
~"Country Joe" McDonald~

"Beware the man of one book."
~Isaac D'Israeli~

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."
~Fulton J. Sheen~

"If a guy's got it, let him give it.
I'm selling music not prejudice."
~Benny Goodman~

"Minds are like parachutes.
They only function when they are open."
~Lord James Dewar~

"Men never do evil so completely or cheerfully
as when they do it from religious conviction."

"I always distrust people who know so much about
what God wants them to do to their fellows."
~Susan B. Anthony~

"If you don't like MTV, don't watch it.
If you don't like abortion, don't have one.
If you don't like gay people, don't be one.
But don't hate people because of
their beliefs and preferences.
Life's too short to waste on hate."

"Of course abortion isn't right.
But it is even less right to bring
unwanted children into lifelong
suffering and to strip women
of their choice.
Making abortion illegal is
not the way to prevent it.
There is a much larger picture
that starts with much deeper roots."

"O Great Spirit! Let me not judge another man
without first walking a mile in his moccasins."
~Sioux Prayer~

"Do not believe in anything simply
because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply
because it is spoken and rumored by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is
found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on
the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because
they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis,
when you find that anything agrees with reason
and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live up to it."
~Buddha~

"To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act
is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer."
~Saddi~

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior
to all other countries because you were born in it."
~George Bernard Shaw~

"For those who believe in God,
most of the big questions are answered.
But for those of us who can't
readily accept the God formula,
the big answers don't remain stone-written.
We adjust to new conditions and discoveries.
We are pliable.
Love need not be a command or faith a dictum.
I am my own God.
We are here to unlearn the teachings of
the church, state, and our educational system.
We are here to drink beer.
We are here to kill war.
We are here to laugh at the odds
and live our lives so well that
Death will tremble to take us."
~Charles Bukowski~

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet
broke a chain or freed a human soul."
~Mark Twain~

"Religions that teach brotherly love have
been used as an excuse for persecution,
and our profoundest scientific insight is
made into a means of mass destruction."
~Bertrand Russell~

"Think for yourself and let others enjoy
the privilege of doing so too."
~Voltaire~

"Quick to judge, quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand..."
~"Witch Hunt" by Neil Peart~

"Fight for your opinions,
but do not believe that
they contain the whole truth
or the only truth."
~Charles Anderson Dana~

"The little things, I can obey.
But the big things,
how we think, what we value,
those you must choose yourself.
You can't let anyone,
or any society,
determine those for you."
~Morrie Schwartz~

"One sign of maturity is the ability to be
comfortable with people who are not like us."
~Virgil A. Kraft~

"Readjusting is a painful process,
but most of us need it at one time or another."
~Arthur Christopher Benson~

"To know what you prefer,
instead of humbly saying "Amen"
to what the world tells you
you ought to prefer,
is to keep your soul alive."
~Robert Louis Stevenson~

"If in the last few years you haven't
discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one,
check your pulse. You may be dead."
~Gelett Burgess~

"We are each burdened with prejudice;
against the poor or the rich,
the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese.
It is natural to develop prejudices.
It is noble to rise above them."

"Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination."

"One day our descendants will think it
incredible that we paid so much attention
to things like the amount of melanin in
our skin or the shape of our eyes or our
gender instead of the unique identities
of each of us as complex human beings."
~Franklin Thomas~

"Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power."
~Abraham Lincoln~

"And when the future hinges
on the next words that are said,
Don't let logic interfere,
believe your heart instead."

"Education's purpose is to replace
an empty mind with an open one."
~Malcolm Forbes~

"An open mind leaves a chance for someone
to drop a worthwhile thought into it."

"I am inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.
Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color.
They are superior who have the best heart-the best brain."
~Robert Green Ingersoll~

"Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world,
there is no straight world. There's a world,
you see, which has people in it
who believe in a variety of different things.
Everybody believes in something and everybody,
by virtue of the fact that they believe in something,
use that something to support their own existence."
~Frank Zappa~

"The illiterate of the 21st century
will not be those who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
~Alvin Toffler~

"Laws are only words words written on paper,
words that change on society's whim
and are interpreted differently daily
by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen.
Anyone who believes that all laws should
always be obeyed would have made a fine
slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all
laws are applied equally, despite race,
religion, or economic status, is a fool."
~John J. Miller~

"Education makes a people easy to lead,
but difficult to drive; easy to govern
but impossible to enslave."
~Baron Henry Peter Brougham~

"In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story."
~Walter Cronkite~

"Get your facts first,
then you can distort them as you please."
~Mark Twain~

"The truth is more important than the facts."
~Frank Lloyd Wright~

"I knew in my bones that my sexuality
was not a decision, but a natural part of who I am."
~Jonathan Tolins~

"The beauty of religious mania is that
it has the power to explain everything.
Once God (or Satan) is accepted as
the first cause of everything which happens
in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...
logic can be happily tossed out the window."
~Stephen King~

"Gods are fragile things;
they may be killed by a whiff of science
or a dose of common sense."
~Chapman Cohen~

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is
not the fanatical athiest but the gentle cynic
who cares not whether there is a God or not."
~Eric Hoffer~

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of
the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
~Thomas Jefferson~

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical
belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
~Henry L. Mencken~

"Most people are bothered by those passages of
Scripture they do not understand, but the passages
that bother me are those I do understand."
~Mark Twain~

"A closed mind is a good thing to lose."

"A disbelief in God does not result
in a belief in nothing;
disbelief in God usually results
in a belief in anything."

"Let me give you one definition of ethics:
It is good to maintain life and to further life;
it is bad to damage and destroy Life.
And this ethic, profound, universal,
has the significance of a religion.
It is religion."
~Albert Schweitzer~

"A child does not have to be taught
how to be happy or the ways of love.
It is fear, hatred, and prejudice
that have to be taught.
And from the condition of the world
we can see that unfortunately
there are some very good teachers."
~Javan~

"Faith is not a function of stupidity
but a frequent cause of it."
~Wendy Kaminer~

"... humans are, by nature,
a forward-looking species
always seeking greater levels of
happiness and satisfaction.
Unfortunately, the corollary is
that humans are all too often willing
to grasp at unrealistic promises
of a better life or to believe that
a better life can only be attained by
clinging to intolerance and ignorance,
by lessening the lives of others.
And sometimes, by focusing on a life to come,
we miss what we have in this life.
It is a different source of hope,
but it is hope nonetheless: hope that
human intelligence, combined with compassion,
can solve our myriad problems and enhance
the quality of each life; hope that
historical progress continues on its
march toward greater freedom and acceptance
for all humans; and hope that reason
and science as well as love and empathy
can help us understand our universe,
our world, and ourselves."
~Michael Shermer~

"If acorns start growing into theologians,
or if women begin turning into pillars of salt,
then we may wish to hypothesize about
a supernatural influence. But until such time as nature
becomes hopelessly unintelligible and unpredictable,
we need look no further than nature itself for explanations."
~George H. Smith~

"If your mind isn't open, keep your mouth shut too."
~Sue Grafton in "M is for Malice"~

"We all live in a multi-colored universe
but what of me who is color blind?"
~Lucas Shinkovich~

"Truth? We search and search.
Many have opinions that are laws unto themselves
but in trying to impose those laws on others
truth probably walked right by
laughing or crying, unnoticed."
~Roger Pielechaty~

"A genius is a genius,
regardless of the number of morons
who belong to the same race,
and a moron is a moron,
regardless of the number of geniuses
who share his racial origin."
~Ayn Rand~

"Intolerance is the most socially
acceptable form of egotism,
for it permits us to assume superiority
without personal boasting."
~Sidney J. Harris~

"Prejudices are what fools use for reason."
~Voltaire~

"Man associates ideas not according
to logic or verifiable exactitude,
but according to his pleasure and interests.
It is for this reason that most truths
are nothing but prejudices."
~Remy De Gourmont~

"To punish a man because he has committed a crime,
or because he is believed, though unjustly,
to have committed a crime, is not persecution.
To punish a man, because we infer from the nature
of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct
of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him,
that he will commit a crime, is persecution,
and is, in every case, foolish and wicked."
~Thomas B. Macaulay~

"The much vaunted male logic isn't logical,
because they display prejudices
-against half the human race-
that are considered prejudices
according to any dictionary definition."
~Eva Figes~

"Logic, like whiskey,
loses its beneficial effect
when taken in too large quantities."
~Lord Dunsany~

"Even God doesn't plan to judge a man
till the end of his days,
why should you and I?"

"Hesitancy in judgment is the
only true mark of the thinker."
~Dagobert D. Runes~

"Remember, when the judgment's weak,
the prejudice is strong."
~K. O'Hara~

"Do not condemn the judgment of another
because it differs from your own.
You may both be wrong."
~Dandemis~

"Facts have a cruel way of
substituting themselves for fancies.
There is nothing more remorseless,
just as there is nothing more helpful,
than truth."
~William C. Redfield~

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
~Friedrich Nietzsche~

"Facts and truth really don't
have much to do with each other."
~William Faulkner~

"Until he extends his circle of compassion
to include all living things,
man will not himself find peace."
~Albert Schweitzer~

"Tolerance implies no lack
of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression
or persecution of others."
~John F. Kennedy~

"Every religion is true one way or another.
It is true when understood metaphorically.
But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors,
interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."
~Joseph Campbell~

"A religion true to its natures must also
be concerned about man's social conditions.
Religion deals with both earth and heaven,
both time and eternity.
Religion operates not only on the vertical plane
but also on the horizontal.
It seeks not only to integrate men with God
but to integrate men with men
and each man with himself."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

"In the long term we can hope that religion
will change the nature of man and reduce conflict.
But history is not encouraging in this respect.
The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars."
~Richard Nixon~

"We have just enough religion to make us hate,
but not enough to make us love one another."
~Jonathan Swift~

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.
It makes the hand bleed that uses it."
~Rabindranath Tagore~

"Man has such a predilection for systems
and abstract deductions that he is ready
to distort the truth intentionally,
he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses
only to justify his logic."
~Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky~

"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illumines it."
~Martin Luther King, Jr~

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually
on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs;
no religious basis is necessary.
Man would indeed be in a poor way
if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment
and hope of reward after death."
~Albert Einstein~

"I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they
will not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.~

"So many gods, so many creeds;
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs."
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox~

"Judge not, that ye be not judged."
~The Bible, Matthew 7:1~

"We may fight against what is wrong,
but if we allow ourselves to hate,
that is to insure our spiritual defeat
and our likeness to what we hate."
~George William Russell~

"Do not put your faith in what statistics say
until you have carefully considered what they do not say."
~William W. Watt~

"A casual stroll through a mental asylum
shows that faith proves nothing."
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche~

"Is man merely a mistake of God's?
Or God merely a mistake of man's?"
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche~

"To be, or not to be: that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"
~William Shakespeare~

"It's like I always said...
there's nothing an agnostic can't do
if he really doesn't know whether
he believes in anything or not."
~Monty Python "The Meaning of Life"~

"Judge not, lest you be so fearful of judgment
that you can hardly breath."
~Paul Williams~