by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind ProductsThe collection as a whole is copyrighted, though obviously the individual quotations are not.
animal rights
the environment
evolution
living love
miscellaneous
politics
religion
“For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century.…We are now heaving more than a thousand different species of animals and plants off the planet every year.”
~ Douglas Adams author of Last Chance to See
 |
recommend book⇒Last Chance to See | ||
| paperback | hardcover | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| ISBN13: | 978-0-345-37198-0 | 978-0-517-58215-2 | |
| ISBN10: | 0-345-37198-4 | 0-517-58215-5 | |
| publisher: | Ballantine | ||
| published: | 1992-10-13 | ||
| by: | Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine | ||
| Poingant, funny description of an odyssey to visit with various animals on the verge of extinction. | |||
“One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”
~ Woody Allen
“In real love you want the other person’s good. In romantic love you want the other person.”
~ Margaret Anderson
“A deficit is a tax compounded with interest for late payment.”
~ Anonymous
“May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness;
May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering;
May all sentient beings never be separated from the happiness that knows no suffering;
May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment and anger that hold some close and others distant.”
~ Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion, The Four Immeasurables
“I am who I am, not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being, but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me.”
~ Stephen Batchelor
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…the…Great…er…Oz has spoken.”
~ Frank Baum The Wizard Of Oz
“Is it possible that a few rich men — a small class of men — have persuaded a million poor men to attack and attempt to destroy another million men as poor as they, so that the rich may be richer still?They told them that this brutal war was the destiny of the race. It was for the glory of the emperor; it was for the honour of the state; it was for their king and country. False - false as hell! They make war to capture markets by murder, raw materials by rape. They find it cheaper to steal than to exchange, easier to butcher than to buy. This is the secret of war. It is the secret of all wars: profit.
Business. Profit. Blood money.
Threaten a reduction on the profit of their money, and the beast in them awakens with a snarl. They become as ruthless as savages, brutal as madmen, remorseless as executioners.”
~ Dr. Norman Bethune, 1939, from his essay Wounds.
“There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“God fights on the side with the best artillery.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“How many things apparently impossible have nevertheless been performed by resolute men who had no alternative but death.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“Religion is what keeps the poor man from murdering the rich.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.”
~ Napoléon Bonaparte
“The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all the evil that is in the world.”
~ Max Born, physicist
“Wipe out the mind of pride and arrogance.”
~ Gautama Buddha, The Lotus Sutra
“God is all that is. Since everything that exists is God, in one form or another, the only way that God can make a tree is by becoming the tree. Likewise, the way God made you was by becoming you.”
~ Tolly Burkan
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
~ Edmund Burke
“I do not really care what people do as long as they do not do it in the street and frighten the horses.”
~ Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Victorian
“The American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
~ George Carlin
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you have.”
~ Emilé Chartier
“Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild lifes become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.”
~ Anton Chekhov, 1860—1904
“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
~ Winston Churchill
“The secret of success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
~ Winston Churchill
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.”
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
“What we’re saying today is that you’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.”
~ Eldridge Cleaver, U.S. African-American leader
“I know you need your sleep now, I know your life’s been hard, but many men are falling where you promised to stand guard. I never asked but I heard you cast your lot along with the poor.”
~ Leonard Cohen, Field Commander Cohen
“I would not be jealous if I heard that they sweetened your night.”
~ Leonard Cohen, Sisters of Mercy
“You are not responsible for what your friends do, but you will be judged by the company you keep.”
~ Leonard Cole
“You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.”
~ Joseph Conrad
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common that unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
~ Calvin Coolidge
“We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re certain it wasn’t a fish.”
~ John Culkin
“You do not have to change: survival is not mandatory.”
~ Dr. W. (William) Edwards Deming, (1900-10-14— 1993-12-20) On Overcoming Resistance to Change
“Freedom, like peace, is indivisible. I must protect my neighbour’s rights in order to protect safeguard my own.”
~ Tommy C. Douglas, 1904— 1986, leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada, voted the Greatest Canadian
“We must abolish war, or sooner or later it will abolish us.”
~ Gywnne Dyer
“Take the year a country first reaches 50% literacy, and add one or two generations to allow the idea to sink in, and, democracy, more or less automatically, appears.”
~ Gwynne Dyer
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.”~ Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Burial Of the Dead from The WasteLand
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
~ Thomas Stearns Eliot, Four Quartets
“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”
~ Euripides
“Mother said, “Don’t take money from strangers!”
“Don’t take money from your friends!”
Who does that leave? Known enemies!”
~ I. Forget
“The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges.”
~ Anatole France
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
~ Benjamin Franklin
“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.”
~ Sigmund Freud
“Think globally; act locally.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller
“Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we’ve been ignorant of their value.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller
“I seem to be a verb —
an evolutionary process —
an integral function of the universe,
and so are you.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller
“Sometimes I think we’re alone. Sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the thought is staggering.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller
“The earth is like a spaceship that didn’t come with an operating manual.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller
“Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller
“Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.”
~ Richard Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller
“As we look at the mistakes in generalship over the past 100 years, the common theme is that the general did not understand the technology of his time or, as they say, he elected to fight the last war rather than the one he happened to be in.”
~ General John R. Galvin
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“Enlightenment is getting off your tail and doing something.”
~ Stephen Gaskin
“You are the people. You are this season’s people — There are no other people this season. If you blow it, it’s blown.”
~ Stephen Gaskin
“Hell begins the day that God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German author, scientist and statesman, 1749-1832
“The trust of others is a sacred thing, not to be exploited for petty gain or mere amusement.”
~ Mahatma Gonzi
“Face your fears.”
~ Barbara Green (my Mom) (1920-01-17— 1994-03-22)
“You can’t meet people half way. You have to meet them three-quarters way.”
~ Barbara Green (my Mom) (1920-01-17— 1994-03-22)
“Don’t worry about where you are. Watch the first derivative.”
translation:
“Don’t worry about how things are. Watch where they are headed.”
~ Fred Green (my Dad, an electrical engineer) (1913-07-12— 1992-04-10)
“When you hate someone intensely, 80% of what you think is delusion.”
~ Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama
“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
~ J.B.S. Haldane
“The less justified a man is in claiming his excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”
~ Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
“Attack the idea, not the person.”
~ Ad hominem
“The public doesn’t want new music: the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead.”
~ Arthur Honegger
“Do what you fear most and you control fear.”
~ Tom Hopkins
“A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.”
~ Aldous Huxley
“One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.”
~ Aldous Huxley
“It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region through which they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.”
~ William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
“Love your enemies. Do good to them that persecute you.”
~ Jesus
Matthew 5:44
“’Tis said that Chowmushih slept in a boat so that his dreams might mingle with those of the lotus.”
~ Okakura Kakuzo, The Book Of Tea
“Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.”
~ Immanuel Kant
“Beauty is truth, and truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”
~ John Keats
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
~ Robert F. Kennedy
“I open myself genuinely to all people by being willing to fully communicate my deepest feelings since hiding in any degree keeps me stuck in my illusion of separateness from other people.”
~ Ken Keyes Jr. (1921-01-19— 1995-12-20)
The Seventh Pathway from Handbook to Higher Consciousness
“I am discovering how my consciousness-dominating addictions create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me.”
~ Ken Keyes Jr. (1921-01-19— 1995-12-20)
The Second Pathway from Handbook to Higher Consciousness
“I am perceiving everyone, including myself as an awakening being who is here to claim his or her birthright to the higher consciousness planes of unconditional love and oneness.”
~ Ken Keyes Jr. (1921-01-19— 1995-12-20)
The Twelfth Pathway from Handbook to Higher Consciousness
“Conjecture abounds when the truth is hushed up for political reasons. If there is no truth today, there will be myths tomorrow.”
~ Yuli Khariton, Soviet physicist, 1993.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“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.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I Have A Dream, 1963-08-23
“Common sense isn’t as common as it should be.”
~ Alan Krueger
“A thing hasn’t been said until its been said a thousand times.”
~ Ring Lardner
“Admiration in the highest form of apathy.”
~ Phil Laut
“Despite how it looks, it is always the female who chooses her mate.”
~ Toni Lilly
“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
“The fluttering of a butterfly’s wing in Rio de Janeiro, amplified by atmospheric currents, could cause a tornado in Texas two weeks later.”
~ Edward Lorenz
“When you encounter obstacles, you know what you are doing is important.”
~ Gottfried Müller
“A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for those candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest democratic nations has been 200 years.
Each has been through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith.
From faith to great courage.
From courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to complacency.
From complacency to selfishness.
From selfishness to apathy.
From apathy to dependency.
And from dependency back again into bondage.”
~ Lord Thomas MacCauley
“Complacency is the root of all evil.”
~ Maitreya
“God has no mercy on one who has no mercy for others.”“None of you truly believes (in God) until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”
“He who eats his fill while his neighbour goes without food is not a believer (in God).”
“The truthful and trustworthy businessman is associated with the prophets, the saints and the martyrs.”
“Powerful is not he who knocks the other down, indeed powerful is he who controls himself in a fit of anger.”
“God does not judge according to your bodies and appearances but He scans your hearts and looks into your deeds.”
“A man walking along a path felt very thirsty. Reaching a well he descended into it, drank his fill, and came up. Then he saw a dog with its tongue hanging out, trying to lick up mud to quench its thirst. The man saw that the dog was feeling the same thirst that he had felt so he went down to the well again and filled his shoe with water and gave the dog a drink. God forgave his sins for this action.”
The prophet was asked: “Messenger of God, are we rewarded for kindness towards animals?” He said, “There is a reward for kindness to every living thing”.
~ From the Hadith collections of Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi and Bayhaqui
“Almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching.”
~ Terje Mathisen
“I am sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”
~ George McGovern
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
~ Margaret Mead
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
~ H. L. Menken
“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”
~ Olin Miller
“I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at.”
~ Wilson Mizner
“Whenever a new discovery is reported to the world, they say first, ‘It is probably not true,’ Then after, when the truth of the new proposition has been demonstrated beyond question, they say, ‘Yes, it may be true, but it is not important.’ Finally, when sufficient time has elapsed to fully evidence its importance, they say, ‘Yes, surely it is important, but it is no longer new.’”
~ Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592
“The Fermi Paradox is an observation by the famous physicist Enrico Fermi, who created the first controlled atomic chain reaction under the auspices of the Manhattan Project, that if technological civilizations have even a slight probability of evolving, their presence should be visible throughout the universe. … The sky should be filled with the cosmic equivalent of roaring traffic and flashing neon signs. But instead we perceive a great silence.”I see two most probable explanations:
~ Hans P. Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence
“Imagine a robot that looks like a tree, with a big stem repeatedly branching into thinner, shorter, and more numerous twigs, ultimately ending in an astronomical number of microscopic cilia.This refers both to income tax and to a poem by T.S. Eliot, The Burial Of the Dead from The Wasteland:If each joint can measure the forces and motions applied to it, we have a remarkable sensor. There are a trillion leaf fingers, each able to sense a movement of perhaps a tenth of a micron and a force of a few micrograms, at speeds up to a million changes per second. This is vastly greater than the sensing ability of the human eye, which has a million distinguishable points that can register changes at most a hundred times per second. If our bush puts its fingers on a photograph, it will ‘see’ the image in immense detail simply by feeling the height variations of the developed silver on the paper.
In addition to having a sensing capability to match that of the world’s current human population, our bush would have the ability to affect its environment at the same prodigious rate. The bush robot could reach into a complicated piece of delicate mechanical equipment — or even a living organism — simultaneously sense the relative position of millions of parts, some possibly as small as molecules, and rearrange them for a near-instantaneous repair. In most cases the superior touch sense would totally substitute for vision, and the extreme dexterity would eliminate the need for special tools.
A bush robot would be a marvel of surrealism to behold. Despite its structural resemblance to many living things, it would be unlike anything yet seen on earth. Its great intelligence, superb coordination, astronomical speed, and enormous sensitivity to its environment would enable it to constantly do something surprising, at the same time maintaining a perpetual gracefulness. Two-legged animals have three or four effective gaits; four-legged animals have a few more. Two-handed humans have two or three ways to hold an object. A trillion-limbed device, with a brain to match, is an entirely different order of being. Add to this the ability to fragment into a cloud of coordinated tiny fliers, and the laws of physics will seem to melt in the face of intention and will. As with no magician that ever was, impossible things will simply happen around a robot bush.”
~ Hans Moravec in Mind Children
“Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would have come their way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” ~ William H. Murray, “Noes on the Scottish Himalayan Expedition”. The last three sentences beginning with “Whatever you can do…” is a quote from Goethe.
“First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.”
~ Pastor Martin Niemöller
“He who struggles with monsters should ensure that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares back into you.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
“Pride is sinful because it is not simple happiness about having done something well or having something nice. It is happiness associated with having done something better than someone else or having something nicer than someone else. In other words, pride is associated with placing oneself above another person, not simply enjoying whatever it is that we have attained.”
~ John O’Conner
“Greed drives the desire for profit at any cost.Envy is a mainstay of the fashion industry, and marketing as a whole.
Anger is subtly exploited in the Army of One fantasies of video games and recruitment advertisements.
Pride fuels the ‘high-esteem’ bandwagon.
In the era of hypercapitalism, these and most of the other so-called deadly sins can be rehabilitated by the market as positive, even praiseworthy, states of mind. ‘Sin’ has been spun. Hence I call them ‘the Deadly Spins’.”
~ Geoff Olson, Common Ground, 2005-05
“I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. Lately, I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock, but it would not hold. Gravel gave way, I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realised that my fall was relative; that there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realised that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.”
~ Heinz Pagels, physicist and quantum mechanics researcher before his death in 1988 in a climbing accident.
“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”
~ Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“Knowledge without love is a cold light, a false light, which leads into the abyss.”
~ Abram Poljak
“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
~ African proverb
“When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.”
~ Kikuyu Proverb
Islam requires you to wash your hands before reading the Qur’an.
The following two entries are quoted from it.
“O ye who believe!
Stand out firmly
For Allah, as witnesses
To fair dealing, and let not
The hatred of others
To you make you swerve
To wrong and depart
From justice. Be Just: that is
Next to Piety: and fear Allah.
For Allah is well-acquainted
With all that ye do.”
~ Qur’an : Surah al-Maidah (2:8)
~ Qur’an : Surah Fatir (3:16-17)
“If He so pleased, He
Could blot you out
And bring in
A New Creation.Nor is that (at all)
Difficult for Allah.”
“I thank [my Higher Powers] for [Vlad The Impaler]. I know he is a man who wants to do right in the world. I know he struggles with the same problem I do: closing my heart to those who disagree with me. There are no feelings that he has that I haven’t had, and vice versa.[Vlad] is doing a perfect job of focusing the energy of his constituency. May both of us learn compassion for people in our country and far away, for rich and poor alike. May [Vlad] and I become less frightened of each other. May my focus become more to encourage his steps in the right direction, and less to criticize his mistakes.
Help me to remember that sharing love with the world is the highest contribution I can make, and will lead to children being fed and the planet surviving.
May I let go of my righteousness and anger, and open my heart and mind to find the next way to assist [Vlad] in expressing his own love for the planet.”
~ R.E.S.U.L.T.S. Prayer for recalcitrant world leaders, in this case Vlad the Impaler.
“Lord, forgive us for viewing the world with dry eyes.”
~ A man at a R.E.S.U.L.T.S. conference
“Heisenberg might have slept here.”
~ sign on a Bavarian inn
“When you were a child your parents taught you not to take money from strangers and not to take money from your friends. Who does that leave? Known enemies.”
~ Sondra Ray
“There is no end to what can be accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
~ Art Rennison
“It isn’t necessary to want to or to decide to or to get it together in order to or to motivate oneself, or to make the effort or otherwise insert some step before the doing. It is the doing that counts.”
~ David K. Reynolds
“The United States spends more on its military than all other countries in the world put together. Polls tell us Americans believe this money is well spent, necessary to prevent invasion. They fail no notice that almost no countries are ever invaded, not even ones without militaries like Costa Rica. The country most likely to invade others is the United States itself. This suggests the purpose of the US military is not defence, but planetary hegemony.”
~ Roedy (born 1948-02-04)
“The more intelligent you are, the more distressing it is how many of your fellow humans base their lives on delusions.”
~ Roedy (born 1948-02-04)
“Try something; if it does not work, try something else; repeat until you obtain the desired result. If you can’t think of something new to try, repeat the thing that had any effect at all, no matter how small.”
~ Roedy (born 1948-02-04)
“Progress consists not so much in learning something new as in unlearning something false.”
~ Roedy (born 1948-02-04)
“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
“If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love, you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen.”Here is a Rumi poem on the importance of taking care of the physical body, among other things.
~ Jalal Al-Din Rumi
After the Meditation
“Now I see something in my listeners
that won’t let me continue this way.
The ocean flows back in
and puts up a foam barrier,
After a while,
it will come in again.
This audience wants to hear more
about the visiting sufi and his friends
in meditation. But be discerning.
Don’t think of this as a normal character
in an ordinary story.
The ecstatic meditation ended.
Dishes of food were brought out.
The sufi remembered his donkey
that had carried him all day.
He called to the servant there, “Please,
go to the stable and mix the barley generously
with the straw for the animal. Please.”
“Don’t worry yourself with such matters.
All things have been attended to.”
“But I want to make sure that you wet the barley first.
He’s an old donkey, and his teeth are shaky.”
“Why are you telling me this?
I have given the appropriate orders.”
“But did you remove the saddle gently,
and put salve on the sore he has?”
“I have served thousands of guests
with these difficulties, and all have gone away
satisfied. Here, you are treated as family.
Do not worry. Enjoy yourself.”
“But did you warm his water
just a little, and then add only a bit of straw
to the barley?”
“Sir, I’m ashamed for you.”
“And please,
sweep the stall clean of stones and dung,
and scatter a little dry earth in it.”
“For God’s sake, sir,
leave my business to me!”
“And did you currycomb his back?
He loves that.”
“Sir! I am personally
responsible for all these chores!”
The servant turned and left at a brisk pace…
to join his friends in the street.
The sufi then lay down to sleep
and had terrible dreams about his donkey,
how it was being torn to pieces by a wolf,
or falling helplessly into a ditch.
And his dreaming was right!
His donkey was being totally neglected, weak and gasping
without food or water all the night long.
The servant had done nothing he said he would.
There are such vicious and empty flatterers
in your life. Do the careful,
donkey-tending work.
Don’t trust that to anyone else.
There are hypocrites who will praise you,
but who do not care about the health
of your heart-donkey.
Be concentrated and leonine
in the hunt for what is your true nourishment.
Don’t be distracted by blandishment-noises,
of any sort.”~ Jalal Al-Din Rumi Mathnawi II: 194-223; 260-63
 |
recommend book⇒The Essential Rumi | ||
| paperback | hardcover | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| ISBN13: | 978-0-06-250959-8 | 978-0-7858-0871-8 | |
| ISBN10: | 0-06-250959-4 | 0-7858-0871-X | |
| publisher: | Castle | ||
| published: | 1997-08 | ||
| by: | Coleman Barks | ||
A Goat Kneels!
“The inner being of a human being
is a jungle. Sometimes wolves dominate,
sometimes wild hogs. Be wary when you breathe!
At one moment gentle, generous qualities,
like Joseph’s, pass from one nature to another.
The next moment vicious qualities
move in hidden ways.
Wisdom slips for a while into an ox!
A restless, recalcitrant horse suddenly
becomes obedient and smooth-gaited.
A bear begins to dance.
A goat kneels!
Human consciousness goes into a dog,
and that dog becomes a shepherd,
or a hunter.
In the Cave of the Seven Sleepers
even the dogs were seekers.
At every moment a new species rises in the chest -
now a demon, now an angel, now a wild animal.
There are also those in this amazing jungle
who can absorb you into their own surrender.
If you have to stalk and steal something,
steal from them!”~ Jalal Al-Din Rumi Mathnawi II: 1416-1429
“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 (1872-05-18— 1970-02-02)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
~ George Santayana
“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.”
~ Jean-Paul Sartre
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
“The earth does not belong to us.
We belong to the earth.”
~ Chief Seattle 1834
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
~ The Golden Rule, a paraphrase of
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
~ Jesus
Matthew 7:12
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca: Seneca the younger.
“The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
~ William Shakespear: Julius Caesar Act II scene ii
“That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!”
~ William Shakespear: Duke Orsino, Act I, Scene i, The Twelfth Night
“Golden vials full of odours, which are prayers of the saints.”
~Revelation 5:8
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
“I let them do it. If I had known, I would have torn her from their hands. You don’t know: you havnt seen: it is so easy to talk when you dont know. You madden yourself with words: you damn yourself because it feels grand to throw oil on the flaming hell of your own temper. But when it is brought home to you; when you see the thing you have done; when it is blinding your eyes, stifling your nostrils, tearing your heart, then — then — [Falling on his knees] O God, take away this sight from me! O Christ, deliver me from this fire that is consuming me! She cried to Thee in the midst of it: Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! She is in Thy bosom; and I am in hell for evermore.”
~ George Bernard Shaw, St. Joan the chaplain de Stogumber after viewing Joan Of Arc consumed by flames as he had demanded.
“Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?”
~ George Bernard Shaw, Cauchon, St. Joan after hearing de Stogumber’s guilty rantings after burning Joan Of Arc alive.
“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”
~ George Bernard Shaw
“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”
~ George Bernard Shaw
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
~ Upton Sinclair
“The rule in our society is that while those who kill once make wretched a single person are severely punished, those (heads of state, inventors, manufacturers) who are responsible for the death, mutilation or general wretchedness of thousands or millions are rewarded with fame, riches and prizes… If you are going to rob, rob big; if you’re going to kill, kill big.”
~ Philip Slater
“A coincidence is a trend we have decided not to take seriously.”
~ Philip Slater, The Wayward Gate: Science and the Supernatural
“Motors make noise, and that tells you about the feelings and attitudes that went into it. Something was more important than sensory pleasure — nobody would invent a chair or dish that smelled bad or that made horrible noises -- why were motors invented noisy? How could they possibly be considered complete or successful inventions with this glaring defect? Unless, of course, the aggressive, hostile, assaultive sound actually served to express some impulse of the owner.”
~ Philip Slater, The Wayward Gate: Science and the Supernatural
“The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honour you can bestow on him. It means that you recognise his superiority to yourself.”
~ Joseph Sobran
“You can always choose to do something good.”
~ Spider Man
“The pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.”
~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Escape at Bedtime
“If we plant an idea in the minds of children, it may bear fruit in 20, 40 or 50 years.”
~ Sting
“Make something beautiful for God.”
~ Mother Theresa
“We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”
~ Mother Theresa
“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered
… Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
… Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
… Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
… Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
… Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
… Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
… Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
… Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.”
~ Mother Theresa
“Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most.”
~ Thucydides
Colin Powell had this quotation under the glass of his desk.
“The desire for gold is the desire to make others do what they do not want to do.”
~ Emile de Tocqueville
“One should strive not to lie in the negative sense by remaining silent.”
~ Leo Tolstoy
“Ridicule is a weak weapon when pointed at a strong mind; but common people are cowards and dread an empty laugh.”
~ Martin Tupper
“Forgiveness is abandoning your right to revenge.”
~ Bishop Desmond Tutu
“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
“Heaven is the very last place to come to rest, and don’t you be afraid to bet on that!”
~ Mark Twain, Captian Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven
“We have the best government that money can buy.”
~ Mark Twain
“Drop this mean and sordid and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt up something to do that’s got some dignity to it! Risk your souls! Risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care? Reform!”
~ Mark Twain, Was it Heaven? or Hell?
“The Java sandbox is the cyberspace equivalent of the condom.”
~ Tim Tyler
“When abroad, behave to everyone as if you were receiving an important guest; treat people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice; do not do to others as you would not wish done to yourself. Thereby you will let no murmuring rise against you in the country, and none in the family…”
~ K’ung Fu Tzu (Confucius)
“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
~ Gore Vidal (born 1925-10-03)
“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
“Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.”
“Anything too stupid to be said is sung.”
“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
“I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.”
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
“It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.”
~ Voltaire[François Marie d’Arouet Voltaire] (1694—1778)
“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.”
~ David Wheeler
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”
~ Charlotte Whitton, Mayor of Ottawa
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
~ Oscar Wilde
The Red Wheelbarrowso much depends
upona red wheel
barrowglazed with rain
waterbeside the white
chickens.~ William Carlos Williams
“Imagine this butterfly, exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful.”
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
“He who controls vocabulary controls thought.”There is no Luigi Wittgenstein. I made up this bogus quotation which has generated a pile of email ernestly telling me that Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said this, not Luigi. I enjoy it that I was able to come up with something that sounded plausibly Wittgensteinian to fool so many people. The serious reason for doing this was to point out that people are more impressed by names than content. If I signed my own name to it, who would take it seriously?
~ Luigi Wittgenstein, Ludwig’s fictitious younger brother.
“There is nothing to which men cling more tenaciously than the privileges of class.”
~ Leonard Sidney Woolf
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?~ William Butler Yeats
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