User Profile

In the Myers-Briggs personality inventory I am INTJ--the rarest type. I am fascinated by the big picture, by the rise and fall of civilizations, species and cultures. I accumulate books on philosophy faster than any other topic. I am agnostic; there is more than I could know, and not much that I can rule out. I am pansexual; body form is less important to me than awareness and sensuality. I am in my second of four years of study toward an ND, Naturopathic Doctor professional degree at www.ncnm.edu. I was born on the Pisces-Aquarious cusp. My life is rushing forward into an unknown future.

MAKES SENSE TO ME:

In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.
--Michael Jackson

Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
~ The Dalai Lama

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.
--C.S. Lewis

No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up.
--Lily Tomlin

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.
--Richard Bach

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
--Einstein

You don't live this long and not have tales to tell.
--Dolly Parton

What's encouraging about meditation is that even if we shut down, we can no longer shut down in ignorance. We see very clearly that we're closing off. That in itself begins to illuminate the darkness of ignorance.
--Pema Chodron

Easy reading is damned hard writing.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I'll be one pfennig poorer.
But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.
--Einstein

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
~ Japanese Proverb

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
~ Iris Murdoch

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
--Anais Nin

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
--Socrates

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is, What does a woman want?
--Sigmund Freud

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
--George Bernard Shaw

Be silent; for there is great danger that you will immediately vomit up what you have not digested.
--Epictetus

You may meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it.
-Carl Jung

Not all who wander are lost.
-JR Tolkein

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
--Albert Einstein

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
--William Gibbs McAdoo

It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.
It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
--Mark Twain

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
--Jean-Paul Sartre

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
--George Orwell

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
--Einstein

The down cycle is absolutely essential for spiritual realization. You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be failure. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure. In this world, which is to say on the level of form, everybody "fails" sooner or later, of course, and every achievement eventually comes to naught. All forms are impermanent.
--Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

Our lives begin to end about the time we become silent about things that matter.
--MLK

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a songbird will come.
— Chinese proverb

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.
--Richard Bach

Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little.
--Malcolm Gladwell

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not be desirous of having things done quickly. Do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.
--Confucius

Both the word "God" and the essence of the word, are emptiness. The form of emptiness which is emptiness having taken the form of form, is what you see and hear and feel right now, and what you taste and smell and think as you read this. Wait awhile, close your eyes, let your breathing stop three seconds or so, listen to the inside silence in the womb of the world, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, re-recognize then bliss you forgot, the emptiness and essence of ever having been and ever to be the golden eternity. This is the lesson you forgot.
--Jack Kerouac

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a large scale. The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.
--Rudolph Virchow

In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
--Bertrand Russell

Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.
--HG Wells

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
--George Orwell

The way you see people is the way you treat them and the way you treat them is what they become.
--Goethe

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.
--Blaise Pascal

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but
why on earth should that mean that it is not real?
-- Albus Dumbledore

A lot of people try to think up ideas. I'm not one.
I'd rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can't ignore.
--Robert Rauschenberg 1925-2008

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take: education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.
--Congressman Ron Paul

All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.
--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.
--Thomas Jefferson

Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.
--Sigmund Freud

Self-trust is the first secret to success.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

You don't need logic once you successfully mistake your own sick fantasy for wisdom.
--Kinky Friedman

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
--Edgar Allan Poe

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
--Mark Twain

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
--Kafka

The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
--Voltaire

If you live alone, whose feet will you wash?
--St. Basil

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations,
if you live near him.
--JRR Tolkien in The Hobbit

A saint is not ashamed of being despised, but saddened to see good counsel spurned. That life be brief does not depress him but avoidable suffering distresses him. He keeps his mind free of vain endeavors and embraces wisdom. By becoming one with the Great Unity the saint avoids the whirlpool of the mundane vanities.
--Wen-tzu

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
--Ayn Rand

Scratch any cynic, and you'll find a disappointed idealist.
--George Carlin

There is a thought in your mind right now. The longer you hold on to it, the more you dwell upon it, the more life you give to that thought. Give it enough life, and it will become real. So make sure the thought is indeed a great one.
--Ralph Marston

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought
which they seldom use.
--Kirkegaard

You have brains in your head, and feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
--Dr. Seuss

*The Wisdom of Excess*
Exuberance is Beauty.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defiled.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
--William Blake

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
--Russell Lowell, poet

And still, we’re the only nation that’s ever used nuclear atomic weapons on human beings. We did it twice. Hiroshima, Nagasaki. We did it.
—Rosie O'Donnell

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us form the terrors of the future.
--Frank Herbert

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

If you judge others you will have no time to love them.
--Mother Teresa

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
--Pablo Picasso

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.
--Kenneth Tynan

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
--Mark Twain

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"May you live in Interesting Times."
It is reported that this was the first of three ancient Chinese curses of increasing severity, the other two being:
May you come to the attention of those in authority.
May you find what you are looking for.

There's no shop that sells kindness; you must build it from within.
You can transplant hearts, but you cannot transplant a warm heart.
--Dalia Lama

Democracy is like love in this: It cannot be brought to life by others on command.
~ Sidney Hook

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
--Henry David Thoreau

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
--Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet

Look at your past. Your past has determined where you are at this moment. What you do today will determine where you are tomorrow. are you moving forward or standing still?
--Tom Hopkins

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
--Benjamin Franklin

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
--Orson Welles

Awareness, courage, and gentleness are the basic "weapons" of the warrior of the heart.
--John Wellwood

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
--Theodore Roosevelt

Normal's overrated.
--House

I am a passionate seeker after truth which is but another name for God.
--Gandhi

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
--John Dewey

Comedy = Tragedy + Time
--Ed Ohweiler

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Taken on the whole, I would believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time.
--Einstein

The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love; this act transcends thought, it transcends words. It is the daring plunge into the experience of union. To love somebody is not just a strong feeling--it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.
--Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Any road is bound to arrive somewhere if you follow it far enough.
--Patricia Wentworth

Courage can't see around corners, but goes around them anyway.
--Mignon McLaughlin

WILD GEESE (a poem)
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain
are moving over the landscapes
over the praries and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese
high in the clear blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are
no matter how lonely
the world offers itself to your imagination
calls to you like the wild geese
harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
--Mary Oliver

In a military dictatorship, it's hard to hold leaders accountable. You end up tortured and killed. In societies like ours failure to do it reflects lack of will.
-- Noam Chomsky 2007

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
--George Washington

It is because of the intimate relationship between mind and body, and the existence of special physiological centers within our body, that physical yoga exercises and the application of special meditative techniques aimed at training the mind can have positive effects on health.
--Dalai Lama



Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
--Harriet Beecher Stowe

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
-- the winner of a contest on defining PC

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy

Good timber does not grow with ease;
the stronger the wind, the stronger the trees.
--J. Willard Marriott

People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
--Agnes Repplier

Endurance is lost rapidly if one ceases to work at its maintenance.
--Bruce Lee

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
--Thomas Jefferson

Some people, when we talk about compassion and love, think it is a religious matter. Compassion is the universal religion.
--Dalai Lama

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
- Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin

I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.
--Albert Einstein

The reason that ego and love are not compatible comes down to this: you cannot take your ego into the unknown, where love wants to lead. If you follow love, your life will become uncertain, and the ego craves certainty.
--Deepak Chopra

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.
--Einstein

Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
--Edward Morgan Forster

If one's life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and finally, there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation.
--the Dalai Lama

Our country right or wrong is an evil motto - what if your country be in the wrong? It will only compound her injury. I wish to serve the republic with an honest and fearless criticism.
--Horace Greeley

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the SUPREME INTERNATIONAL CRIME differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
--Justice Robert H. Jackson, Nuremburg Trials 1946

To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.
--Agnes Martin

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

You gotta improvise on somethin' man, you can't just improvise on nothin'.
--Charles Mingus

Not only is life a bitch, but it is always having puppies.
--Adrienne Gusoff

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
--Henry David Thoreau

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
--Thomas Paine

Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience . . . Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.
--Nuremberg War Crime Tribunal (1950).

Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words.
Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions.
Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits.
Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character.
Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.
--author unknown

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth.... Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not..? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know.. it -- now.
--Patrick Henry, 1775

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
--Edmund Burke

If men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament.
--Gloria Steinem

If you haven't any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
--Bob Hope

You can't be mislead if you refuse to follow.
--Teresa Gryder

No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.
--Edward R. Murrow

Do not summon what you cannot banish.
--Wiccan wisdom

I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
--President George W. Bush

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
--Gilda Radner

When the mind realizes its absolute incapacity to know the unknown, it becomes silent.
--restatement from Krishnamurti, exact quote not known

When we have to do with an art, whose purpose is to save human life, any neglect to become master of it becomes a crime.
--Hahnemann

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