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April 2012
Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
- Terry Pratchett,
A Hat Full of Sky
March 2012
I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.
- Frank Howard Clark
February 2012
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
- Carl Sagan
January 2012
A year from now you will wish you had started today.
-Karen Lamb
December 2011
Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?
- Robert G. Ingersoll
November 2011
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
- Mark Twain
October 2011
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
~Albert Camus
September 2011
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
- Virginia Woolf
August 2011
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
- Leo Rosten
July 2011
Action is the antidote to despair.
- Joan Baez
June 2011
The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair; and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
- J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings
(Haldir - The Fellowship of the Ring)
May 2011
Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.
- Ellis Peters
April 2011
All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming"
- Helen Keller
March 2011
Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
- Socrates
February 2011
Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion –- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.
- Mark Twain
January 2011
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
~Anatole France
December 2010
Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.
~Shunryu Suzuki
November 2010
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
- Thomas Jefferson
October 2010
To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet.
Some of these apples might be labeled, “To be eaten in the wind.” It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit. . . The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England. I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor soul, there are many pleasures which you will not know! . . . the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for our apples in a barrel.
- Henry David Thoreau
September 2010
{N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
- Thomas Jefferson
August 2010
"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.
- A.A. Milne
July 2010
The years teach much which the days never know.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
June 2010
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.
~John Lubbock
May 2010
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
- Albert Guerard
April 2010
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
- George Bernard Shaw
March 2010
Little by little, one travels far.
- J. R. R. Tolkien
February 2010
Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.
- William Shakespeare
January 2010
And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?
- Tillie Olsen
December 2009
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
- Steven Wright
November 2009
I intend to live forever, or die trying.
- Groucho Marx
October 2009
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
– Siddhartha Buddha
September 2009
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.
– Francois de La Rochefoucauld
August 2009
The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.
– H. G. Wells"
July 2009
I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in tune once more.
~John Burroughs
June 2009
From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle; we just decided to go.
- Tom Hanks
May 2009
The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
- George Carlin
April 2009
Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy - in fact, they're almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other.
- Robert Heinlein
March 2009
There are worlds on which life has never arisen. There are worlds that have been charred and ruined by cosmic catastrophes. We are fortunate: we are alive; we are powerful; the welfare of our civilization and our species is in our hands. If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?
- Carl Sagan
Cosmos
February 2009
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
- Buddha
January 2009
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
- Douglas Adams
December 2008
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken
November 2008
A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of achieving full victory.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
October 2008
Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
- Bernard Baruch
September 2008
He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.
- Joseph Joubert.
August 2008
Call it "nationalism" when you affix a flag to your car, and leave the word "patriotism" for your efforts to make this country a kinder, more egalitarian place, and one that is less dangerous to the rest of the world.
- Barbara Ehrenreich
July 2008
Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life.
- Sir William Osler
June 2008
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.
- Steve Eley
May 2008
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long they live, although it is in the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
- Seneca the Elder
April 2008
Sticks and stones are hard on bones Aimed with angry art, Words can sting like anything But silence breaks the heart.
-Suzanne Nichols
March 2008
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
- Mohandas K. 'Mahatma' Gandhi
February 2008
It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.
- Vincent van Gogh
January 2008
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
- Bertrand Russell
December 2007
How a minority,
Reaching majority,
Seizing authority,
Hates a minority!
- Leonard H. Robbins
November 2007
Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
Octobber 2007
There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages.
- Richard Lederer
- Robert K. Merton,
Social Theory
September 2007
He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all un-wisdom.
- Arthur Desmond
August 2007
When I had youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life. I suppose it's the discipline I need; but it's rather hard to love the things I do, and see them go by because duty chains me to my galley. If I ever come into port with all sails set, that will be my reward perhaps.
- Louisa May Alcott
July 2007
There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.
- Walter Lippmann
June 2007
To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.
- David Brooks
May 2007
How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.
- Christiaan Huygens,
c. 1690
April 2007
You are told, by astrologers, psychics and other such "experts", that you are not the capable, responsible and rather remarkable person that you really are. We belong to a species that has reached out a quarter of a million miles to set foot on the moon, and if that is not miracle enough for us all, I despair for our sense of wonder. The modern soothsayers suggest that you stop thinking for yourselves. They ask you to retreat to the caves from which our ancestors are said to have come, while you have the choice of going to the stars. I have opted for the stars, and I invite you to join me.
- James Randi, "The Mask of Nostradamus"
March 2007
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
- Doug Larson
February 2007
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
January 2007
Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.
- Samuel Ullman
December 2006
Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness. Broad, wholesome, and charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one tiny corner of the globe.
- Mark Twain
November 2006
t is typical that a nation where half the country thinks Evolution is a myth also believes in Survival of the Fittest.
- Garrison Keillor from the short essay The Older Scout
October 2006
When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.
- Emo Phillips
September 2006
We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.
- Epictetus
August 2006
Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.
- Umberto Eco
July 2006
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
- Abraham Lincoln
June 2006
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
- William Arthur Ward
May 2006
The concept of a Supreme Being who childishly demands to be constantly placated by prayers and sacrifice and dispenses justice like some corrupt petty judge whose decisions may be swayed by a bit of well-timed flattery should be relegated to the trash bin of history, along with the belief in a flat earth and the notion that diseases are caused by demonic possession. Ironically, the case for the involuntary retirement of God may have been best stated by one Saul or Paul of Tarsus, a first-century tentmaker and Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, who wrote, 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things' (I Corinthians 13:11). Those words are no less relevant today than they were two thousand years ago.
- John J. Dunphy
April 2006
As soon as one's convictions become unshakeable, evidence ceases to be relevant except as a means to convert the unbelievers. Factual inaccuracies... are excusable in the light of the Higher Truth.
- P.H. Hoebens
March 2006
To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.
- Confucius
February 2006
Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.
- Ludwig Borne
January 2006
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit atrocities.
- Voltaire
December 2005
Much unhappiness has come into this world because of things left unsaid.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
November 2005
For the media owners, allegations of a liberal bias make it easier for them to impose the conservative bias they prefer. For the pseudoliberals who work in the media system, confessing to a liberal bias is far more comfortable than admitting that they've sold out their beliefs for a nice salary. It's only because the mainstream media is so conservative that all these right-wing pundits can make accusations of liberal bias without opposition.
- John K . Wilson
October 2005
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest-- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
- Albert Einstein
September 2005
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.
- David Hume
August 2005
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
- Charles Darwin
July 2005
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
- Benjamin Franklin
June 2005
To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority. But there is obviously an important difference between an establishment that is open and invites every one to come, study its methods, and suggest improvement, and one that regards the questioning of its credentials as due to wickedness of heart, such as (Cardinal) Newman attributed to those who questioned the infallibility of the Bible. Rational science treats its credit notes as always redeemable on demand, while non-rational authoritarianism regards the demand for the redemption of its paper as a disloyal lack of faith.
- Morris Cohen,
"Reason and Nature" (1931)
May 2005
Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone; but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.
- Ethan Allen
April 2005
To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.
- John Quincy Adams
March 2005
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
- Charles Darwin
February 2005
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.
- Demosthenes
January 2005
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
- Albert Einstein
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