INTERESTING TIMES

Hello! I find now in November 2024 that I have only two friends who are actively posting here. If you are a thoughtful person who will write from time to time, will you be my friend? I'm not super-active but I'm also not going away.

My personal posts are mostly at the friends level. At the public level you'll get quotable quotes, an occasional rant about politics or religion, and links to new (to me) discoveries in medicine, science, religion and politics. I post notes from lectures I attend, though I keep many of them private. Only friends can comment but anybody can message.

I'm a licensed naturopathic doctor and herbalist living in Portland, Oregon. I'm an avid whitewater kayaker, and a militant agnostic. I am a yogini and a meditator with eclectic training. I am an American, born and raised, of a caucasian Euro-mutt family that has been on the continent since before the Union. I have lived in Europe and traveled to central and south America. I am a registered independent voter, and I truly am independent in my politics. I am a freethinker. I am a critical thinker and a scientist to my core, always searching for evidence that will help me update my theories about our culture, language, and future. I am a reader, not a fast one, but I do take in some of the interesting books of our time, and I have discovered some great podcasts.

QUOTE COLLECTION:

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
--Joseph Goldstein.

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.
~ Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian

The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours--on the wall--
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"
The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
-- G.K. Chesterton

Living a conscious life is extreme sport enough.
--Liz Sutherland, 2008

To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together.
--Unknown

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
**
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
**
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
--Howard Zinn

In the end, only three things matter:
how much you loved, how gently you lived,
and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.
--attributed to the Buddha,and paraphrased by many

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

The doctor of the future will give no medicine,
but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame,
in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.
--Thomas Edison

...The Edge...There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
---H.S. Thompson (Hells Angels)

No one has to do everything
but everyone has to do something.
--GreenDot

There is light somewhere.
It may not be much light
but it beats the darkness.
--Charles Bukowski

Being a geek is all about
being honest about what you enjoy and
not being afraid to demonstrated that affection.
It means never having to play it cool
about how much you like something.
It's basically a license to proudly emote
on a somewhat childish level
rather than behave like a supposed adult.
Being a geek is extremely liberating.
--Simon Pegg

I am always doing that which I cannot do,
in order that I may learn how to do it.
--Pablo Picasso

The problem's not that the truth is harsh but that liberation from ignorance is as painful as being born. Run after truth until you're breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, and hard one interspersed with drunken moments.
--Nagui Mahfouz

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
--G. K. Chesterton

If everyone throws a few shovels full of dirt
into the cogs of the Machine
then the Machine can't function.
--Dana Walker of Olympia

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be,
and you help them become what they are capable of being.
--Goethe

As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it’s only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it’s gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each.
--J. Michael Straczynski

Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.
--What the Dalai Lama said when asked what surprises him most

Perhaps the biggest obstacle anyone faces in the effort to understand death is that it's impossible for the unconscious mind to imagine an end to its own life.
--Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

In whatever tradition they occur, spiritual practices focuessed on an awareness of interbeing tend to have the intriguing psychological side effect of bringing significant earthly happiness to their most devoted practitioners, almost regardless of external circumstances.
--Martha Stout

Belts don't mean a thing. They just hold up your pants.
--Sensei Galvin

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he has learned in school.
--Albert Einstein

If you stopped loving someone, you never truly loved them in the first place.
--unknown

You can bend it and twist it... You can misuse and abuse it... But
even God cannot change the Truth.
--Michael Levy

Well EXCUSE ME for having enormous flaws that I never work on!
--Homer Simpson

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point
is to discover them.
--Galileo Galilei

The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may
deride it, but in the end; there it is.
---Winston Churchill

I only went out for a walk,
and finally concluded to stay out ‘til sundown,
for going out, I found, was really going in.
~John Muir

Love is manifest where there is an able vessel.
~Bhakti Narada Sutras

All growth is a leap in the dark,
a spontaneous unpremeditated act
without benefit of experience.
--Henry Miller

The most common way that people give up their power
is by thinking they don't have any.
--Alice Walker

The test of a first-rate intelligence
is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind
at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

Who we are never changes.
Who we think we are does.
--Mary S. Almanac

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
--Woody Allen

When you love, you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.
--Ernest Hemingway

Good lord willin' and the creek don't rise, I'll see y'all before long, and until then.....
--old Southern expression (and Hank Williams Sr)

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
--Robert A. Heinlein

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Once you have flown
you will walk the Earth
with your eyes turned skyward;
for there you have been,
there you long to return.
--Leonardo Da Vinci

Love is your response to your values in another person.
--Ayn Rand

Desperation is the raw material
of drastic change.
Only those who can leave behind
everything they have ever believed in
can hope to escape.
William S. Burroughs

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

When the situation is hopeless,
there's nothing to worry about.
--Edward Abbey

Nothing in life is quite so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
--Winston Churchill

Men, it has been well said, think in herds;
it will be seen that they go mad in herds,
while they only recover their senses slowly,
one by one.
--Charles MacKay, historian

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but an habit.
--Aristotle

Death twitches my ear. 'Live,' he says. 'I am coming.'"
--Virgil, Roman poet, c. 70 - 19 BC

The ego is not master in its own house.
--Sigmund Freud

There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced,
leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace,
to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge,
to a happy life here and now,
and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening.
And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centered on the body.
-- The Buddha, from the Satipatthana Sutta

What isn't yet still can become.
--German proverb

...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903, in Letters to a Young Poet

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
--Josh Billings

The 2 party system is as sane as
switching a light switch on and off endlessly
and expecting the blown out bulb to come on.
--unknown

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
-Hippocrates

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.
-Isak Dinesen

I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.
--Derrick Jensen

You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive
or sick enough to help sick people get well.
You only ever uplift from your position of strength & clarity & alignment.
--Abraham

Trust in Allah but tie up your camel.
--old Middle Eastern saying

Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation;
the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
--Mark 14:38

The road to health is paved with good intestines.
--unknown

Freedom always has been an expensive thing.
--MLK

Never get off the boat.
--Martin Sheen

Love does not divide, it mulitiplies.
--Robert Heinlein

Opportunity is missed by many
because it comes dressed in overalls
and looks like work.
--unknown

A fast no is better than a long maybe.
--Larry Cheng, venture capitalist

The greatest challenge to any thinker
is stating the problem
in a way that will allow a solution.
--Bertrand Russell

The curse of perfectionism is that
you're unhappy when you should be happy;
bitter when you should be thankful.
--Dr William Sparks

If my friends know one thing about me,
it's that i LOVE the smell of a freshly washed monkey.
--Ellen Degeneress

Expect nothing.
Live frugally on surprise.
--Alice Walker

The first one is given us free
By the second, we have become its slave.
--Goethe (Faust)

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
--Tacitus, roman philosopher

NAMASTE
I honor the place in you where Spirit lives
I honor the place in you which is
of Love, of Truth, of Light, of Peace,
when you are in that place in you,
and I am in that place in me,
then we are One.

Our listening creates a sanctuary
for the homeless parts within another person.
--Rachel Naomi Remen

It's not about the bike.
--Lance Armstrong

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
--Abraham Lincoln

The Democrats have moved to the right,
and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital.
--Bill Maher

Do not be too moral.
You cheat yourself out of much life so.
Be not simply good, be good for something.
--Henry David Thoreau

Do you not know that you
are the temple of God
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
If anyone defiles the temple of God
God will destroy him.
For the temple of God is holy,
which temple you are.
--1 CORINTHIANS 3:16

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things 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

Don't take me all out of texture.
I keep this shit mad real.
--Colleen Laffey

for fucking fuck's sake
wake the fuck up, see yourself
you are fucking YOU.
--ninja_stories

You don't have to take class,
you don't have to take tests,
all you have to take is the consequences.
--Bob Powell

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behaviors. Keep your behaviors positive because your behaviors become your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
--Gandhi

We can do no great things. Only small things with great love.
--Mother Teresa

What have future generations ever done for us?
--Groucho Marx

We can no longer wait for the storm to pass. We must learn to work in the rain.
--Peter Silas, CEO of Philips Petroleum

The worst-tempered people I've ever met
were the people who knew they were wrong.
--Wilson Mizner, playwright

Perfection is achieved,
not when there is nothing more to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupe

I do not take drugs, I am drugs.
--Salvador Dali

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

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

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

I have missed more than 9000 shots. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot--and I missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed.
--Michael Jordan

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
--John Muir

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

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

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

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

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

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
--Woody Allen

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


If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail.
--Abraham Maslow

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

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart
or burn down your house, you never can tell.
--Joan Crawford

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

The greatest possession is self-possession.
--Ethel Watts Mumford

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

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

Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.
--William Hazlitt

The average man does not want to be free.
He simply wants to be safe.
--H.L. Mencken

If you are bored with life, if you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things - you don't have enough goals.
--Lou Holtz

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
--Albert Einstein

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 have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
--Winston Churchill

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

DaHjaj ghaH QaQ jaj Daq Hegh!
(It is a good day to die!)

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

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
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:George_H._W._Bush#George_H.W._Bush_.22Atheist.22_Remark

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