Tips and Inspiration
If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further.
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
-Francis Bacon
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
-Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
-Eric Hoffer
There can be no justice in the world unless every woman has equal rights.
-First Lady Laura Bush
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
-Indira Gandhi
Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, "What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now." Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.
-Vincent Van Gogh
Often the real test of courage is not to die, but to live.
-Conte Vittorio Alfieri
There is pleasure in the pathless woods, / There is rapture in the lonely shore, / There is society where none intrudes, / By the deep sea, and music in its roar: / I love not man the less, but nature more.
-Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)
Love must be as much a light as a flame.
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.
-Zen saying
I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, not from our words, that our religion must be judged.
-Thomas Jefferson
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.
-Henry David Thoreau
Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
-Henry Miller
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
-Voltaire, philosopher and writer (1694-1778)
If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
-Noam Chomsky
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.
-John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)
When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.
-Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.
-Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971)
As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. As long as the Earth can flower and produce nurturing fruit, I can, because I'm the Earth. I won't give up until the Earth gives up.
-Alice Walker
He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)
The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
-Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator(1833-1899)
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
-Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)
If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.
-Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches,
no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no
magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and
wonderfully diversified human race.
-Jacques Barzun, professor and writer (1907- )
Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.
-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)
There are hundreds of paths up the mountain,
all leading in the same direction,
so it doesn't matter which path you take.
The only one wasting time is the one
who runs around and around the mountain,
telling everyone else that their path is wrong.
-Hindu Teaching
A person's true wealth is the good he or she does in the world.
-Mohammed
Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.
-Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965)
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
-J. William Fulbright, US Senator (1905-1995)
I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, other-centered men can build up.
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.
-Albert Schweitzer
So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.
-Roger Baldwin, civil rights advocate(1884-1981)
It is the same for all. There is one fate for the righteous and for the wicked; for the good, for the clean and for the unclean; for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner; as the swearer is, so is the one who is afraid to swear. / This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards they go to the dead.
-Ecclesiastes 9:2-3 (New American Standard Bible)
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
-Rumi
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