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D
* "If we ourselves remain always angry and then sing world peace, it has little meaning. So first our individual self must learn peace. This we can practice. Then we can teach the rest of the world."
Dalai Lama* "As for future life, every person must judge for themself between conflicting vague possibilities." (*)
Charles Darwin* "The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts."
Charles Darwin* "The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication, in the hierarchy of our needs. Humor has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.
Sara Davidson* "The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past."
Robertson Davies* "What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time top stand and stare?
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.No time to turn at Beauty's glance
And watch her feet, how they can dance.No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare."
W.H. Davies* "Science offers the best answers to the meaning of life. Science offers you the privilege before you die of understanding why you were ever born in the first place."
Richard Dawkins* "The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale."
Richard Dawkins* "When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right."
Eugene Victor Debs* "Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."
Agnes De Mille* "The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination, but the combination is locked up in the safe."
Peter De Vries* "The fool who knows he is a fool is already wise; the fool who thinks he is wise is definitely a fool."
Dhammapada: 63* "It is easy to do that which is of real benefit to oneself, but it is difficult indeed to do that which is truly beneficial and good."
Dhammapada: 163* "If by renouncing a lesser happiness one attains to a happiness that is greater, then let the wise pursue that happiness which is greater."
Dhammapada: 290* "Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts."
Charles Dickens* "A loving heart is the truest wisdom."
Charles Dickens* "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way."
Charles Dickens* "Dissatisfaction with the world in which we live and determination to realise one that shall be better, are the prevailing characterisitics of the modern spirit."
Goldworthy Lowes Dickinson* "Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards."
R.A. Dickson* "If we want things to stay as they are, thing will have to change."
Giuseppe di Lampedusa* "Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage."
Benjamin Disraeli* "The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of man the country turns out."
Benjamin Disraeli* "The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity."
Benjamin Disraeli* "Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory."
Benjamin Disraeli* "I repeat . . . that all power is a trust--that we are accountable for its exercise--that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist."
Benjamin Disraeli* "The sense of existence is the greatest happiness."
Benjamin Disraeli* "No person is an island entire of itself; every man is a part of the main. Any person's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." (*)
John Donne* "There's nothing more precious in this world than the feeling of being wanted."
Diana Dors* "If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immorality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky* "If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky* "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle* "In the pursuit of happiness half the world is on the wrong scent. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. Happiness is really found in giving and in serving others."
Henry Drummond* "The people who influence you are people who believe in you."
Henry Drummond* "All empire is no more than power in trust."
John Dryden* "Happy the person, and happy they alone,
Those who can call today their own:
Those who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived
today." (*)
John Dryden* "One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long."
W.E.B. Du Bois* "The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities."
John Foster Dulles* "All generalizations are dangerous, even this one."
Alexandre Dumas* "One's work may be finished someday but one's education, never."
Alexandre Dumas* "The individual succumbs, but they do not die if they have left something to mankind." (*)
Will Durant* "So I should say that civilization begin with religion and stoicism: they end with scepticism and unbelief, and the undisciplined pursuit of individual pleasure. A civilization is born stoic and dies epicurean."
Will Durant* "Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years."
Will Durant* "One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."
Will Durant* "What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."
Bob Dylan
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* "History teaches us that people and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
Abba Eban* "For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."
Ecclesiastes i:18 (Bible)* "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the 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."
Ecclesiastes (Bible)* "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise."
Ecclesiastes (Bible)* "Seek not out the things that are too hard for thee, neither search the things that are above thy strength."
Ecclesiasticus 3:24-25 (Bible)* "It is a rare privilege to be born as a human being, as we happen to be. If we do not achieve enlightenment in this life, when do we expect to achieve it?"
Echu, Zen poet* "Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers."
Sir Arthur Eddington* "I ask you to look both ways. For the road to a knowledge of the stars leads through the atom; and important knowledge of the atom has been reached through the stars."
Sir Arthur Eddington* "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
Albert Einstein* "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is incomprehensible."
Albert Einstein* "As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists."
Albert Einstein* "The unleased power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."
Albert Einstein* "Try not to become a person of success but rather try to become a person of value." (*)
Albert Einstein* "The world is dangerous to live in, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and let them do so."
Albert Einstein* "The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self." (*)
Albert Einstein* "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."
Albert Einstein* "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
Albert Einstein* "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Albert Einstein* "Only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein* "Without the past the pursued future has no meaning."
Loren Eisley* "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* "What makes life dreary is want of motive."
George Eliot* "For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisted tombs."
George Eliot* "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"
George Eliot* "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."
George Eliot* "Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past."
T.S. Eliot (Burnt Norton)* "I've been freed from the self that pretends to be someone,
And in becoming no-one.
I begin to live.
It is worth while dying,
to find out what life is."
T.S. Eliot* "No one can beome really educated without having pursued some study in which they took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude."
T.S. Eliot* "Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in Knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
T.S. Eliot* "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."
T.S. Eliot* "Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm--but the harm does not interest them."
T.S. Eliot* "The young feel tired at the end of an action. The old at the beginning."
T.S. Eliot* "Life is livable because we know that whatever we go most of the people we meet will be restrained in their actions towards us by an almost instinctive network of taboos."
Havelock Ellis* "All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution."
Havelock Ellis* "The question put by a wise man is half the answer."
Jacob Emden, eighteenth-century rabbinic scholar* "Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment."
Ralph Waldo Emerson* "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathered easier because you lived; this is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson* "The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization."
Ralph Waldo Emerson* "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
Ralph Waldo Emerson* "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not."
Ralph Waldo Emerson* "Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and some absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays."
Ralph Waldo Emerson* "Knowledge in youth is wisdom in age."
English proverb* "Life is full of hazards, which experience neither bought nor taught will always enable us to foresee."
English proverb* "Who thinks to live must live to think,
Else mind and body lose their link."
English proverb* "Wisdom rides upon the ruins of folly."
English proverb* "Zeal without knowledge is the sister of folly."
English proverb* "Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen."
Epictetus* "There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."
Epictetus* "Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater."
Epictetus* "The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth."
Erasmus* "In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king."
Erasmus* "Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death."
Erik Erikson* "The quizzical expression of the monkey at the zoo comes from his wondering whether he is his brother's keeper, or his keeper's brother."
Evan Esar* "It is a sign of real genius that it remains unploit by success."
Martin Esslin* "A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe."
Euripides* "Whose neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future."
Euripides* "What we look for does not come to pass. God finds a way for what none foresaw."
Euripides* "The men who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that they themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illuminated by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven't time."
Melvin J. Evans
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* "Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is perceived in a situation previously considered disordered."
Haneef A. Fatmi & R.W. Young* "A person who experiences no genuine satisfaction in life does not want peace. People court war to escape meaninglessness and boredom to be relieved of fear and frustration."
Nels F.S. Ferre* "Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatable (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition to the development of our consciouness."
Paul Feyerabend* "In the face of the lack of direct mathematical demonstration, one must be careful and through to make sure of the point, and one should make a perpetual attempt to demonstrate as much of the formula as possible. Nevertheless, a very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven."
Richard Feynman* "I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that may be wrong. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose."
Richard Feynman* "If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it."
Immanuel Hermann von Fichie* "Twelve Things to Remember
1. The value of time.
2. The success of perseverance.
3. The pleasure of working.
4. The dignity of simplicity.
5. The worth of character.
6. The power of kindness.
7. The influence of example.
8. The obligation of duty.
9. The wisdom of economy.
10. The virtue of patience.
11. The improvement of talent.
12. The joy of originating."
Marshall Field* "Instead of trying so hard, as some of us do, to be happy, as if that were the sole purpose of life, I would, if I were a boy again, try still harder to deserve happiness."
James Thomas Fields* "If a person's education is finished, they are finished." (*)
E.A. Filene* "Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty."
John Finley* "The world is disgracefully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain."
Ronald Firbank* "Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that they should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen." (*)
H.A.L. Fisher* "Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification."
Martin H. Fisher* "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."
Edward Fitzgerald* "Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity."
R.I. Fitzhenry* "Human life is a sad show, undoubtedly: ugly, heavy and complex. Art has no other end, for people of feeling, than to conjure away the burden and bitterness."
Gustave Flaubert* "For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand."
James Elroy Flecker* "The human being who lives only for themselves finally reaps nothing but unhappiness. Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies. Don't put off the joy derivable from doing helpful, kindly things for others."
B.C. Forbes* "I believe that ruth is the glue that holds Governments together, not only our Government, but civilization itself."
Gerald Ford* "I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done."
Henry Ford* "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."
Henry Ford* "History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."
Henry Ford* "I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for--maybe even worth dying for. Something that energizes you, enthuses you, enables you to keep moving ahead. I can't tell you what it might be--that's for you to find, to choose, to love. I can just encourage you to start looking, and support you in the search."
Sister Ita Ford* "Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership."
E.M. Forster* "Two cheers for democracy; one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that."
E.M. Forster* "It's the worst thing that can ever happen to you in all your life, and you've got to mind it. . . . They'll come saying, 'Bear up--trust to time.' No, no; they're wrong. Mind it."
E.M. Forster* "Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him."
E.M. Forster* "She felt that those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy."
E.M. Forster* "It is always the minorities that hold the key of progress; it is always through those who are unafraid to be different that advance comes to the human race."
Raymond B. Fosdick* "In essence, the renaissance is simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters."
John Fowles* "Men love war because it allows them to look serious; because it is the only thing that stops women laughing at them."
John Fowles* "Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them--every day begin the task anew."
St. Francis of Sales* "Nothing is more fatal to health than an overcare of it."
Benjamin Franklin* "Do'st thou love life, then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of." ("Time is money.")
Benjamin Franklin* "Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training."
Anna Freud* "People should not strive to eliminate their complexes, but to get in accord with them; they are legitimately what directs their contacts with the world."
Sigmund Freud* "The great question which I have not been able to answer, despite my thiry years of research into the feminine soul, is 'what does a woman want?'"
Sigmund Freud* "Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life."
Sigmund Freud* "Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise."
Sigmund Freud* "Part of the American dream is to live long and die young."
Edgar Z. Friedenberg* "What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system."
Milton Friedman* "Technology . . . the knack of so arranging the world that we need not experience it."
Max Frisch* "The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel people to unfold their powers." (*)
Erich Fromm* "The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother and to become fully independent."
Erich Fromm* "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
Erich Fromm* "There is no meaning to life except the meaning people give their life by the unfolding of their powers." (*)
Erich Fromm* "Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."
Erich Fromm* "Americans are like a rich parent who wishes he knew how to give his child the hardships that made him rich." (*)
Robert Frost* "Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up."
Robert Frost* "The bible should be taught so early and so thoroughly that it sinks straight to the bottom of the mind where everything that comes along can settle on."
Northrop Frye* "The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book."
Northrop Frye* "The human landscape of the New World shows a conquest of nature by an intelligence that does not love it."
Northrop Frye* "We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about the 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless."
James W. Fulbright* "Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live."
Margaret Fuller* "Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it."
R. Buckminster Fuller* "The great end of life is not knowledge, but action."
Thomas Fuller* "If the wicked fourish, and thou suffer, be not discouraged. They are fatted for distruction: thou are dieted for health."
Thomas Fuller* "If we always live our lives with a view to the worst possible outcome of anything, then we will become a much diminished society. Every human endeavour has risk attached."
Frank Furedi
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