Quotes

Through the years I’ve collected “just a few” quotes from a lot of different sources. I thought it time to share my ever-growing collection here.

[Age][Art][Beauty][General][Humanity][Knowledge][Life & Death][Love & Relationships]
[Politics][Power][Religion & Spirituality][Sexuality & Gender][Time]

Age

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were? ~Satchel Page

We are always the same age inside. ~Gertrude Stein

I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates. ~T.S. Eliot

We grow old as soon as we cease to love and trust. ~Madame de Choiseul

You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it. ~Tennessee Williams

The years pass and you wonder if you are getting closer or farther away from what you are. ~Hellboy (Comic book)

Art

There’s a great fear of the imagination. It’s a dangerous thing. It’s out of control, it’s subversive. ~Ursula Le Guin

Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. ~Bertolt Brecht

La société a besoin de poètes, comme la nuit a bèsoin d’étoiles. / Society needs poets, like the night needs stars. ~Stanislas de Boufflers

Good sound is not in the ear, good taste is not in the mouth. ~Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Nous connaîtrions-nous seulement un peu nous-mêmes sans les arts?/Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts? ~Gabrielle Roy

Beauty

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it. ~Confucius

Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. ~Margaret Cho

Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems. Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time. And I loved her for that. ~Dorothy Allison

Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for
sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form. ~Dorothy Allison

Awareness is a mirror reflecting the four elements. Beauty is a heart that generates love and a mind that is open. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

General

The wondrous thing about nature, her gift to us, is her wanton promiscuity. She reproduces herself with abandon, with teeming infinite generosity. ~Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

And the time came when the risk it took to remain closed tight in a bud became greater than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anais Nin

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Anti-exoticism is Anti-Life: God giveth it a body as it pleased him, and to every seed his own body [1 Corinthians 15:38]. ~Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

An unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion. ~Alfred North Whitehead

As an activist, you gotta pick something that’s particularly interesting to you and go for it – because there’s no shortage of things to do. And it’s sort of a long-term commitment. Activism is for life. ~Pat Califia

Before the boiling of blood and the searing of skin comes the secret catastrophe: Before Life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible, it will for a long time before have become completely unbearable. ~Tony Kushner, Angels in America Part II: Perestroika

Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man. ~Lin Yutang

We all know that a winter scene, though it may be covered over one day, with even the trees dressed in shawls of snow, will be unrecognizable the following spring. ~Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

Only when a heart feels dissatisfied can it feel pity. ~Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes- all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults. It both sustains and kills- like a God. It is the Ordinary made beautiful; it is also the Average made leathal. The Normal is the indispensable, murderous God of Health… ~Peter Shaffer, Equus

What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over. ~Peter Shaffer, Equus

It is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there: Pale Anguish keep the heavy gate, And the warder is Despair. ~Oscar Wilde

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

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

I must not fear
Fear is the mind killer
I will face my fear
I will let it pass through me
Only I will remain ~Frank Herbert, Dune

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. ~H. L. Mencken

When it comes to your inner critic, my advice is to not take advice from someone who doesn’t like you. That’s like returning to the perpetrator for healing after you’ve been abused. ~Pat Califia

Let the ancient serve the present, let the foreign serve the national; by developing that which has been accomplished one creates something that is new. ~Mao Zedong

Even if my memory were to fail me in the future, I would still be able to retrace with certainty the footsteps of my soul. ~Ye Si

Evil is a moral entity and not a created one, an eternal and not a perishable entity: it existed before the world; it constituted the monstrous, the execrable being who was also to fashion such a hideous world. It will hence exist after the creatures which people this world. ~Marquis De Sade

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 which he hears, however measured or far away. ~Henry David Thoreau

Have good trust in yourself – not in the One that you think you should be, but in the One that you are. ~Maezumi Roshi

A lot of people who are depressed, I think, are suffering from blocked creativity. ~Pat Califia

Our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper. ~Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

The rose is the heart of the world, like the heart is the heart of the body ~Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo

Sweet are the uses of adversity. ~William Shakespeare

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear- not absence of fear. ~Mark Twain

Of all that is written, I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit … He that writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read but learned by heart. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

know first, the heaven, the earth, the main,
The moon’s pale orb, the starry train,
are nourished by a Soul, a Spirit,
whose celestial flame glows in each member of the frame,
and stirs the mighty whole
~Maro

The necessary condition for the existence of peace and joy is the awareness that peace and joy are available. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

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

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. ~Albert Einstein, quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu (Boston 1977)

The visible world was only an imperfect reflection of the Ideal, which the Philosopher sought to transcend. ~Marion Zimmer Bradley, Priestess of Avalon

Serenity is not freedom from the storm but a place within it. ~Unknown

Do not try to become anything.
Do not make yourself into anything.
Do not be a meditator.
Do not become enlightened.
When you sit, let it be.
What you walk, let it be.
Grasp at nothing.
Resist nothing.
If you haven’t wept deeply, you haven’t begun to meditate.
~Ajhan Chah

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. ~Buddha

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. ~Shunryu Suzuki

The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still. ~Alexander Pope

I believe people are see-through if you hold em up to the light… I believe people are enlightening if you plug em in right. ~Alix Olson (Slam poet)

May all being everywhere plagued with sufferings of the body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses. May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free. May the powerless find power, and may people think of befriending each other. May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wilderness – the children, the aged, the unprotected – be guarded by beneficial celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood. ~Prayer for peace

The Six Main Mental Afflections
1. Attachment or Craving
2. Anger
3. Pridefullness
4. Ignorance and delusion
5. Afflictive doubt
6. Afflicted views

Jealousy is the dragon in paradise; the hell of heaven; and the most bitter of the emotions because associated with the sweetest. ~A.R. Orage

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

The grass may be greener on the other side, but it’s just as hard to cut. ~Little Richard

The fire which seems out often sleeps beneath the cinders. ~Pierre Corneille

The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves- in finding themselves. ~Andre Gide

Individuation begins when we look inside ourselves for answers, when we stop blaming others for our feelings and begin relating to our emotions and intuition as our teachers. ~Philip Kavanaugh

Glory remains unaware of my neglected dwelling where alone I sing my fearful song which has charms only for me. ~Charles Brugnot

Judgements like “right” and “wrong”; only build barriers and encourage shame within individuals. ~Rebecca Walker

The need for control and the addictive quest for dominance is a universal quest aimed at avoiding the inner void. Because of its scope, and because it forms the underpinnings of all unhealthy addictions, it has won itself the label as the Master Addiction. ~Philip Kavanaugh

…The surest way to make ourselves crazy is to get involved in other people’s business, and the quickest way to become sane and happy is to tend to our own affairs. ~Melody Beattie

Every day is closer to the day.

I refuse to ACCEPT the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of RACISM and WAR that the bright day break of peace and brotherhood can never become a REALITY. ~Daniel Woolf, Sevendust band member

Difference must not be merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark… ~Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he hates to stand alone in his opinions. ~George Santayana

Only when complemented by a surrender to a “higher” or more inclusive order can the effort of the personal will bear wholesome fruit. ~Philip Novak

Evolution to date is a supreme inescapable gesture, pointing toward a mysterious future for living forms…. We harbor transformative capacities…. It is not unreasonable to think that, in spite of our many liabilities, further progress, even a new kind of evolution, might be available to us. ~Michael Murphy

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition and not our circumstances. ~Martha Washington

Every wave is a water sprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water. ~Emile Zola

Don’t let fear cloud reality.

Leave the nightlight on inside your birdhouse in your soul. ~They Might Be Giants

Change happens not by trying to make yourself change, but by becoming conscious of what’s not working. ~Shakti Gawain

Human speech is a cracked kettle on which we tap out broken rhythms for beans to dance to, while we yearn to make music that would melt stars. ~Susanna Budapest, Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries

Don’t just change…revolt.

May the devil chase you every day of your life and never catch you. ~Irish toast

There are people whose society I find delicious; but when I sit alone and think of them I shudder. ~Logan Pearsall Smith

Sometimes silence resolves a conversation confused by Mad Misconstruction. ~Hugh Leonard

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself. ~Isak Dinesen

How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite of it; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem; and I cannot help thinking that if Aesop had noticed them, he would have made a fable about God trying to reconcile their strife, and when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and this is the reason why when one comes the other follows, as I find in my own case pleasure comes following after the pain. ~Plato, Phaedo

If I am for myself alone who am I? If I am not for myself who will be for me? If not now, when? ~Talmud

William James once made an acute point about the relationship between happiness and expectation. He argued that satisfaction with ourselves does not require us to succeed in every endeavour. We are not always humiliated by failing; we are humiliated only if we first invest our pride and sense of worth in a given achievement and then do not reach it. ~Alain de Botton

Every man who is truly a man must learn to be alone in the midst of all the others, and if need be against all the others. ~Romain Rolland

That night it occurred to me that most things we think are wicked or evil are just lonely, and lacking in social niceties. ~Big Fish

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads. ~Erica Jong

“Counterwise,” continued Tweedle-Dee, “if it was so it will be, if it were so it might be but if it isn’t it ain’t. That’s logic!” ~Alice in Wonderland

An it harm none, do what thou wilt. ~Witch’s Rede

Leave the boat and stand on firm ground. ~Fortune Cookie

It is better to be envied than to be pitied. ~Fortune Cookie

A good evening is one spent in good company. ~Fortune Cookie

Constantly talking is not necessarily communicating. ~Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. ~Napoleon Bonaparte

A word is worth one coin. Silence is worth two. ~Talmud

Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought. ~Fortune Cookie

I do not despair in the least of ultimate triumph. I repeat it with intense conviction. ~Emile Zola

To hell with pleasure that’s haunted by fear. ~Jean de la Fontaine

I realize that advice is worth what it costs- that is, nothing. ~Douglas MacArthur

It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home. ~Thornton Wilder

Sleep is still most perfect, in spite of hygenists, when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing. ~D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a couple of times since then. ~Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. ~Ernest Hemingway

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius!…I’ve failed my way to success. ~Thomas Edison

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein

Humanity

Human nature is violent, argumentative, fallible, and given to endless fantasizing. ~Donald A. Wollheim, 1980 Annual World’s Best SF

Knowledge

Believe nothing.
No matter where you read it,
Or who said it,
Even if I have said it,
Unless it agrees with your own reason
And your own common sense.
~Buddha

And the end of all our searching shall be to return to the place where we started and know it for the first time. ~T.S. Eliot

With the ancient is wisdom; and in length of days understanding. ~Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

“Ignorance” In this root sense, ignorance is an act of will, a choice that one makes over and over again, especially when information overwhelms and knowledge has become synonymous with impotence. If we can’t act on knowledge, then we can’t survive without ignorance. So we cultivate the ignorance, go to great lengths to celebrate it, even. ~Ruth Ozeki, My Year of Meats

For in this strange anatomy we wear, the head has greater powers than the hand; the spirit, heart, and mind are over all. ~Ovid, the Metamorphoses

Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do from success, and in some ways it’s better to have failure at the beginning of your career or your life. ~Michael Crawford

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind. ~Louis Pasteur

The sign of intelligence is the ability to carry opposed thoughts at the same time. ~Scott Fitzgerald

I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong. ~Bertrand Russel

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. ~B.F. Skinner

He who is wise is he who learns from all men. He who is rich has a full heart and is content. He who is strong is he who controls his passions. ~Talmud

Your mind is your house and if you fill it with rubbish from the cinemas it will rot in your head. You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. ~Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

The mind can go either direction under stress – toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training ~Frank Herbert, Dune

The road to knowledge begins with the turn of the page. ~Fortune Cookie

Trouble is experience and experience is wisdom. ~Fortune Cookie

There is no royal road to knowledge. ~Greek saying

A person’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains it’s original dimensions. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Mistakes are the portals for discovery. ~James Joyce

You have to reconcile yourself to the world’s unperfectability by being thoroughly in the world but not of it. The rhythm of history is conservative. You have to accept that. And accept as rightfully yours the happiness that comes your way. You can’t live in the world without an idea of the world, but it’s a living that makes the ideas. You can’t wait for a theory but you have to have a theory. ~ Unknown

Life and Death

Every seed has a story. ~Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. ~Albert Pine

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. ~D. H. Lawrence, “Self Pity”

It needs ashes, mountain winds, and winter storms to thrive…It can send its roots deep into the rock, and rise out of the ashes tall and strong. It needs adversity to thrive. ~Mercedes Lackey, Brightly Burning

Change or stagnate. Keep moving or die. ~Mercedes Lackey, The White Gryphon

Caught between glass and wood, that which breaks and that which bends, that which sings and that which survive. So our lives go. Mercedes Lackey, The Silver Gryphon

Life is too important to be taken seriously. ~Oscar Wilde

Life is evanescent, but left to itself it rarely fails to offer some consolation. ~Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation

From out of the nothingness of the great void the light issued forth
From the Light you sprang forth into being… Masters of Destiny
You have since the beginning always held the ability to set forth the dictates of your reality
Even now the universe awaits your command…
Master yourself and you will master your life
From the light you came and unto the light you will return
… from the dream
~Robert Ghost Wolf, Changing the Tides of Fear

We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone…and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something. ~Sandra Day O’Connor

Take the life- lie away from the average man and straight away you take away the happiness. ~Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck

…The newborn child has a heritage of tendencies and inclinations which furnish the foundation of groundwork from which he must build his house of Life. ~ The Harvest of the Years

Forget regret or life is yours to miss. ~Jonathan Larson, Rent

There’s no future. There’s no past. I live each moment as my last. ~Jonathan Larson, Rent

To go through life and call it yours- your life- you first have to get your own pain. Pain that’s unique to you. You can’t just dip into the common bin and say “That’s enough!” ~Peter Shaffer, Equus

Life is not measured by the amount of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. ~Unknown

My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot. ~Ashleigh Brilliant

I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life… ~Henry David Thoreau

I stick my finger into existence- It smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it who has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? ~Soren Kierkegard

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. ~Helen Keller

Everything can be taken away from us but one thing: the last of the human freedoms– to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. ~Viktor Frankle

The people who keep coping, keep trying, no matter how many blows Fate takes at them. Nobody’ll make a song about them, but they’re heroes all the same. ~Mercedes Lackey, Oathblood

The hatched chick cannot go back to the shell, the falcon who has found the sky does not willingly sit the nest. ~Mercedes Lackey, Oathblood

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Get busy living or get busy dying. ~Shawshank Redemption

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid sideways, Champagne in one hand, chocolate in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, “WOO HOO- what a ride!” ~Unknown

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice. ~Cherokee Proverb

A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea. ~Ursula LeGuin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Queer little twists and quirks go into making an individual. To suppress them all and follow clock and calendar and creed until the individual is lost in the neutral gray of the host is to be less than true to our inheritance…Life, that gorgeous quality of life, is not accomplished by following another man’s rules. It is true we have the same hungers and same thirsts, but they are for different things and in different ways and in different seasons. Lay down your own day, follow it to its noon, your own noon, or you will sit in an outer hall listening to the chimes but never reaching high enough to strike your own. ~Angelo Patri

If you deny yourself commitment, what can you do with your life? ~Harvey Fierstein

When one saves one life he saves the earth. ~Talmud

Dying is as simple and painless as pulling hair out of a cup of milk. ~Talmud

Love and Relationships

Every act we perform today must reflect the kind of human relationships we are fighting to establish tomorrow. ~David Dellinger

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~the Dalai Lama

You cannot leave something until you love it. You are tied to things you don’t like. If you hate something, you will be drawn to it again and again (even though the person or form may change) until you love it. Once you love it, you are free from it. ~Sanaya Roman & Duane Packer

If your relationship with someone is based on your desire for them to change into something radically different, there’s no real closeness there, no real communication. ~Pat Califia

The most important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love. ~Saint Teresa of Avila

The longer you are not in a relationship, the more intimacy deprived you become. The more intimacy deprived you become, the more vulnerable you are to the type of person that can set you off. ~Terence Gorski

If you truly love something with all your heart, set it free,
If it comes back to you it is yours for life,
But if it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with.

When you’re in love you don’t count the days, you savor the moments. ~Unknown

When you’re hurting another person, past a certain point you’re cracking them open and whatever’s inside them gets all over you. So you should kinda check out whether you want that to happen. ~Pat Califia

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get. ~Confucius

Friends are God’s apology for relatives. ~Hugh Kingsmill

Love yourself and be awake – today, tomorrow, always. First establish yourself in the way, then teach others, and so defeat sorrow. To straighten the crooked you must first do a harder thing – straighten yourself. You are the only master. Who else? Subdue yourself, and discover your master. ~Buddha

…It’s not always kind to be gentle and soft, there’s a genuine violence softness and weakness visit on people. Sometimes self-interest is the most generous thing you can be. Failing in love isn’t the same as not loving. It doesn’t let you off the hook, it doesn’t mean… You’re free to not love. ~Unknown

That’s how you know you’ve found someone really special, when you can just shut the ^@%$ up and enjoy the comfortable silence. ~Pulp Fiction

It is… love who makes the mortar And it’s love who stacked these stones And it’s love who made the stage here Although it looks like we’re alone ~David Wilcox

What do you do when your lover is your best friend and you share it all? ~Kevin Inman

When your intention is to transfer loving energy there is no way you can fail… because in the subtle realms intention is action. ~Leonard Laskow

A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway. ~Fr. Jerome Cummings

Politics

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time, which is just long enough to be president of the United States. ~Spike Milligan

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Let America realize that self-scrutiny is not treason. Self-examination is not disloyalty. ~Richard Cardinal Cushing

Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. ~Josef Stalin

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The love of one’s country is a natural thing. But why should love stop at the border. ~Pablo Casals

I shall never agree to making liberty synonymous with political liberty. What you call libery, I call liberties; and what I call the struggle for liberty is nothing but the steady, vital growth and pursuit of the very conception of liberty. He who possesses liberty as moething already achieved possesses it dead and soulless; for the essence of the idea of liberty is that it continue to develop steadily as men pursue it and make it part of their being. Anyone who stops and says, ‘Now I have it,’ shows that he has lost it. It is exactly this tendency to stop dead when a certain given amount of liberty has been aquired that is characteristic of the political state. ~Henrik Ibsen; letter to a friend 1871

If history teaches us anything it is simply this: every revolution carries within the seeds of its own destruction. ~Unknown

The old terms must be invented with new meaning and given new explanations. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer what they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. This is what the politicians will not understand; and that is why I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions- external revolutions, political revolutions, etc. But that is only dabbling. What is really needed is a revolution of the human spirit. ~Henrik Ibsen; letter to a friend 1870

Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish. ~Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. ~Confucius

Power

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~Albert Camus

He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty. ~Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching

You are only as powerful as that which you stand. ~Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul

Responsibility without power is a really bad deal. ~Pat Califia

When warriors feel afraid they lack something, it is only because they are forgetful. They have forgotten how capable they truly are. ~Mercedes Lackey, The Silver Gryphon

The best laid plot can injure its maker, and often a man’s perfidy will rebound on himself. ~Jean de la Fontaine

Religion and Spirituality

It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. ~Mark Twain, commenting on the Bible

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. ~Rabindranath Tagore

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress. ~Tennessee Williams

Religion is the opium of the people. ~Karl Marx

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. ~Frank Lloyd Wright

I am God…I am a poor righteous teacher of almighty Allah and by his will I am here to awaken the original in these prisons…Black original man is asleep…This is your chool of self-awareness. Wake up black man, melt these falls? You ask me, a tangible god, to do an intangible feat? Mysterious intangible gods do mysterious intangible deeds. There is nothing mysterious about me. Tangible gods do tangible deeds. ~Miguel Pinero, Short Eyes

The Golden Rule exists in Every Faith: Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.
(Appeared in Dear Abby 6/4/00 and is in the 1999 Old Farmer’s Almanac)
Brahmanism: This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5:1517)
Buddhism: Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful. (Udana-Varga 5:1)
Confucianism: Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. (Analects 15:23)
Christianity: All things whatsoever ye would that man should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
Islam: No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself. (Sunnah)
Judaism: What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowman. That is the entire law; all the ress is commentary. (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
Taoism: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss. (T’ai Shang Kan Yin P’ien)
Zoroastrianism: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself. (Dadistan-I-Dinik 94:5)

Sexuality and Gender

We don’t really understand what it’s like to be French. How can we? We don’t understand what it’s like to be black. Straight people don’t understand what it’s like to be queer. Don’t try to be something which you are not. ~K.D. Lang

This transition is not about rejecting lesbianism or rejecting women. I know that’s hard to see sometimes. I love women, and I love women’s bodies – I think they’re beautiful and that all the work that feminism has done to validate a range of women’s body types is very valuable. ~Pat Califia

The scars are a way of reminding me that the past is real. They are honorable. ~Pat Califia

It’s the first thing people ask: is it a boy? Is it a girl? Well – what the fuck! Why should you care? It’s a baby! Give it a rest, it’s five minutes old! ~Pat Califia

This is one of the reasons we need to transition: people can’t validate an identity they can’t see. ~Pat Califia

A woman is never free to bear a child unless she is also free to abort it. ~Marion Zimmer Bradley, Priestess of Avalon

The home does not rest on the ground, but on the women. ~Mexican Proverb

Time

The world is calling, it’s now or neverland. ~Jonathan Larson, “30/90″ Tick, Tick…Boom!

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go. ~Robert Frost

I used to believe in forever, but forever is too good to be true. ~A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Who forces time is pushed back by time; who yields to time finds time on his side. ~Talmud

It has been left to our generation to discover that you can move heaven and earth to save five minutes and then not have the faintest idea what to do with them when you have saved them. ~C.E.M Joad

The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering. ~Lao Tsu

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself ~Andy Warhol.

Ordinary people merely think how they shall spend their time, a man of talent tries to use it. ~Arthur Schopenhauer

Time: all things consume it, love alone makes use of it. ~Paul Claudel

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sow; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war; and a time of peace. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 from the Bible (King James Version) Attributed to King Solomon