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A Collection of Quotes that Address Dignity and Humiliation

Poems and quotes from Linda M. Hartling

A Modest Mandela
What can one say
About a global hero
Who knows the world
Like a living book?
 
Who lives from her heart
Who gives her whole heart
Who sees the unknown good
In so-called “enemies.”
 
By transforming insecurity
Uniting us in diversity
Strengthening dignity
Bringing life to possibilities
 
She’s a modest Mandela
Who shines so bright
She glows
With the hope
 
She cultivates
A global garden
Germinating
Incubating
And radiating
Love!
―Linda Hartling, 13th May 2024, in Honor of Evelin Lindner’s 70th Birthday!

Commercialization of the Moon!!
I heard that this morning on the news
Commercialization of everything, and everything in a commercial!
When did life become a commercial?
When did media become a series of endless commercials?
When did we develop a tolerance for a series of endless commercials?
When did we as a society begin thinking that this was okay, that this was the way?
Who is making money that makes this okay?
The market elites have us beat
Everyone is competing for seats
Commercialization is profitable humiliation.
Commercialize or die economy!
― Linda Hartling, on February 24, 2024

The Speed of Dignity
Can it be?
That there is another speed
More humane than Western time
More loving than industrial time
More creative than academic time
More playful than sports time
More healing than medical time
More heroic than military time
More peaceful that war time Can it be?
Is this the speed of dignity?
― Linda Hartling, on October 29, 2023

Humiliation and fear of humiliation are powerful emotional incubators for the spread of misinformation
― Linda Hartling, on October 26, 2021. Full quote:
"Our MOST POWERFUL Protection is Prevention"
1. Cultivate a cogitosphere that values truth that generates trust… Find the reliable resources in your life.
2. Prevent humiliation and fear of humiliation that are powerful emotional incubators for the spread of misinformation.
3. Do everything we can to reduce inequality and injustice, encouraging 360 degrees of dignity, politically, socially, economically, and environmentally — dignism."

Who Gave Rain a Bad Name?
Linda's Poem of the Day, June 16, 2021

Was it you sun-worshipping cosmetic products?
Selling potions of hope as skin cancer rises.

Was it you sun-worshipping fashion industry?
Retailing pipelines of plastic apparel into our oceans.

Was it you sun-worshipping psychologies?
Diagnosing our depression as ecocide takes more lives.

Was it you sun-worshipping tourism?
Seducing legions seeking relief from degrading labor.

Was it you sun-worshipping leisure industries?
Venders of adventure at all costs.

Was it you sun-worshipping Jeeps and Range Rovers?
Running down habitat for egotistical entertainment.

Was it you sun-worshipping cruise lines?
Hoping we won’t notice we are on the Titanic.

Was it you sun-worshipping weather forecasters?
Chirping “good news,” but good news for whom?

Was it you sun-worshipping realtors?
Who see Earth’s property as private opportunity.

Was it you sun-worshipping landscapers?
Perpetuating lawns over gardens, views over trees.

Was it you sun-worshipping golfers?
Polluting streams for putting greens.

Was it you sun-worshipping wine merchants?
Suppling illusions of superiority by the sip.

Was it you sun-worshipping big agriculture?
Pumping insects with poisons, animals with antibiotics.

Was it you sun-worshipping timber traders?
Clear-cutting Douglas firs while raiding global forests.

Sadly, humanity monetized sun-loving!
But everyday I pray for rain,
So I can celebrate the shade, the shelter of green trees,
Everyday it rains I know Mother Earth is listening to me.

Can it be?
Linda's Poem of the Day, January 4, 2020
That there is another speed
More humane than Western time
More loving than industrial time
More creative than academic time
More joyful than sports time
More healing than medical time
More heroic than military time
More peaceful that war time
Can it be?
Is this the speed of dignity?

Seeds of Dignity
Linda's Poem of the Day, December 21, 2017
Glittering with possibilities,
May we carry these seeds,
Guided by wisdom and the wind,
Reforesting lives,
Replenishing the planet,
So all can breathe
Dignity.
"Poem of the Day" by Linda Hartling as a thank you to Kim Stafford for his gift of Earth Verses, shared with all who contributed to the 2017 Annual Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, Teachers College, Columbia University, December 7–8, 2017, co-sponsored by Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies and the Morton Deutsch – International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution.


Please click on the images to see them lager

Smoke Signs
Linda's Poem of the Day, Ocober 7, 2017
“Stakeholders”
“Cost-Benefit”
“Consumer”
“Social Capital”
“Economic growth” is all good.

These are the smoke signs
Telling us
We are listening to the indoctrinated
Economism, individualism, consumerism, dualism.

Dominators, overseers, and handmaidens of
Power through plunder
The modern day plague
Developing guilds and groupies of
Thought-pollution.

Remember to read the smoke signs.

Despair Repair
Linda's Poem of the Day, April 14, 2017
May you
Use your humiliation
To make you wise
To change the world
To save lives.

May you
Use your despair
To be aware
To deeply care
To renew and repair.

May you 
Use your pain
To extinguish shame
To create a new frame
To sing in the rain.

May you
Use your fear
To hold those dear
To be crystal clear
Like a white-tailed deer
Year after year.

Election Night Fright
Linda's Poem of the Day, November 7, 2016
Every night on the way to bed,
Visions of apocalypse dance through my head.
This is a man-made campaign of pain,
Generalized terror for political gain.

More Relating!
Linda's Poem of the Day, November 5, 2016, in the spirit of Francisco Gomes de Matos, inspired by the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign of Pain:
Not hating
Not baiting
Not rating
Not debating
Not inflating
Not berating
Not dictating
Not denigrating
Not litigating
Not instigating
Not calculating
Not castigating
Not ruminating
Not implicating
Not infiltrating
Not medicating
Not overstating
Not obfuscating
Not ventilating
Not escalating
Not exacerbating
Nor incriminating
Not manipulating
Not perpetrating
Not isolating
Not aggravating 
Not dominating
Not retaliating
Not alienating
Not depreciating
Not excoriating
Not debilitating
Not exaggerating
Not humiliating
Not incriminating
Not equivocating
Not intimidating
Not interrogating
Not invalidating
Not subordinating
Not segregating
Not incarcerating 
Not annihilating
More relating!

The 8 "Rs" of Replenishing
1. Revising
2. Reimagining
3. Repairing
4. Renewing
5. Refocusing
6. Recycling
7. Recalibrating
8. EnRiching
― Linda Hartling, written on September 30, 2014
...
Dominator Games
Measuring success by celebrity,
By wealth, power, prestige,
By limelight and notoriety.
By book tour and speaking engagements.

Even the women's movement can go off course,
Even the NAACP can offer a lifetime achievement award to a racist,
Even a Pink Ribbon can become a pink rip-off,
The deterioration of the commons is highly decorated.

Is this the future?
Does good work eventually devolve into dominator work?
Why are we seduced?
Why do the brightest minds with the best intentions get caught up?
When does going for gold become a golden cage?

Yet, we are deep resisters, insisters,
Brothers, sisters, and others,
Co-creating space for authenticity, humility, integrity,
Forging a new frontier of loving and living.
― Linda Hartling, written on May 18, 2014
...
Who we are:
We are not a cult; we are cultivating a culture of connection.
We are not building an ideology; we are building ideas.
― Linda M. Hartling, November 24, 2010.
...
A world without humiliation dignifies us all!
...
Dominators do not want to solve problems, they want to dominate. Therefore, they will not accept solutions.
...
For me, rather than thinking of human dignity as an individual, internal phenomena, I like to think of human dignity as a co-created experience. It is a experience developed through respectful connection (interpersonal, social, international, etc.) in which people feel known and valued, they feel that they matter... It is our responsibility to participate in the construction of this relational experience for all people.
― These are reflections sent to us by Linda Hartling on October 11, 2006.
...
The starting point for new economic possibilities may be emphasizing that relationships should lead rather than follow economic strategies.
...
Humiliation is a violation of unity in dignity and respect.
...
We, in the HumanDHS network, are developing a community that is not motivated by materialism in its various forms: economic, intellectual, power, or status. We are not building a cult of personality, but, as relational ecologists and social global artists, we engage in collaborative "thought farming" and build a sustainable community of collaborators, a relational permaculture of connection, a sustainable landscape of relationships and relational ecology, a dignicommunity.
...
We are human beings not human doings!
We, in the HumanDHS network, give up on doing, going, having and performing; instead we are moving toward being and being in relationships!
...
In our mutually dignifying community (dignicommunity), I like to think our values are NOT survival of the fittest, NOR survival of the fastest, but survival of the most prolifically patient and the most prolifically compassionate. That is, survival of the most lovingly understanding, people who share the courage to keep moving forward together, also in the face of overload. This is a radically relational reconfiguration of action in the world!
...
There's no learning in the comfort zone, and no comfort in the learning zone.
...
The orthodox way is to get ready, aim, and fire. We do it differently: we get ready, then we fire, and then learn and recalibrate.
...
Variations on Humiliation
by Linda Hartling, adapted from Francisco Gomes de Matos, 13th June 2012:
discrimination
degradation
dehumanization
devaluation
incrimination
demoralization
subjugation
intimidation
objectification
dislocation
deprivation
mortification
...
... we see a world where the people are tending to each other in the same way they tend to their beautiful gardens; where each person shines, radiantly, because they're being cared for and given everything they need in order to grow, thrive, and blossom in all their glory.
― from a friend.
...
The Buddhist call, "The Tool of Equanimity" (although there are many versions of this in other traditions): In Buddhism, equanimity (upekkhā) is one of the four immeasurables and is considered: Neither a thought nor an emotion, it is rather the steady conscious realization of reality's transience. It is the ground for wisdom and freedom and the protector of compassion and love. While some may think of equanimity as dry neutrality or cool aloofness, mature equanimity produces a radiance and warmth of being. The Buddha described a mind filled with equanimity as "abundant, exalted, immeasurable, without hostility and without ill-will."
...
When does self-sufficiency become selfish sufficiency?
― Linda Hartling on June 29, 2020.

Quotes collected by Linda M. Hartling
Linda Hartling and Rick Slaven have opened our first HumanDHS Dialogue Home in Oregon, USA! Please see their kind invitation, and see the pictures of the opening celebration on August 8, 2009 with all the quotes and messages decorating the walls of the house! See here some transcriptions:
...
See here a transcription of Bronson Alcott's Maxims on Education.
...
When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
― Cree prophecy.
...
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet (1803 ― 1882).
...
Objectivity is the subjectivity of the dominant group.
― Laura S. Brown.
...
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
― Marie Curie 1867-1934.
...
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
― George Bernard Shaw.
...
Dreams come a size too big, so that you can grow into them.
...
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
― Martha Graham (1894–1991), American modern dancer.
...
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.
― Native American Proverb, 2010-2011, National Wildlife Federation, Calendar, www.nwf.org.
...
Discussion is a exchange of knowledge; an argument is an exchange of ignorance.
― Robert Quillen, journalist, quoted in Associated Press.
Mark Singer adds: Love is an exchange of wisdom.
See also terms such as connected knowing (Belenky),listening into voice (Hartling)...
...
The Choice Is Life
The concept of anonymity today means to all of us the humility that comes with the willingness to serve without hope of gain or recognition or reward. If only all of human society could accept this concept of humility as we practice it in serving humanity; if only the willingness to serve was based on our concept of anonymity, instead of for reasons of pride or social distinction, how much richer would society become!
― Bernard Smith, former non-alcoholic trustee.
...
Humankind...be both!
― A bumpersticker, seen by Linda in April 2014.
...
The ethical discipline you bring to your life is the expression of your connection with life. To paraphrase a Zen saying: “Deep connection, deep ethics. Little connection, little ethics. No connection, no ethics.”
― Ken McLeod, Reflections on Silver River: Tokme Zongpo's Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva.
...
For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.”
― John F. Kennedy, 1962.
...
Late modern society is systematically based on immunization against social relations and leads to the repression of social relations. The inability of individuals to acknowledge social relations has become the illness of the century (the endemic disease of self-referentiality). The absence of social relations 'retaliates' by causing distress and disorientation for the self, which increasingly experiences isolation, poverty (in a vital sense), and a lack of support in everyday life. To emerge out of loneliness becomes an enormous enterprise — and often a hopeless one. When we become aware of all this, social change can begin.
― Pierpaolo Donati and Margaret S. Archer (2015). The Relational Subject. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page 14.

Your mind is a garden,
Your thoughts are the seeds,
You can grow flowers,
Or you can grow weeds.
― Poem found by Linda in April 2017.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
― Lao Tzu.

Pueblo Prayer:
Hold on to what is good,
Even if it's a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe,
Even if it's a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do,
Even if it's a long way from here.
Hold on to your life,
Even if it's easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand,
Even if someday I'll be gone away from you.

Like the trees, we keep doing what we can ― extend a leaf wherever there is light.
― Kim Stafford, 2017.

Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.
― John Lewis, 2018, Linda's favorite John Lewis quote for courage.

Torture
When they torture your mother
plant a tree
When they torture your father
plant a tree
When they torture your brother and your sister
plant a tree
When they assassinate your leaders
plant a tree
When they torture you too bad to talk
plant a tree.
When they begin to torture the trees and cut down the forest they have made
start another.
— Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist.

Seeking Human Kindness
His coat was too thin.
His shoes were for summer—
not this snowy wind sweeping
Harvard Square where he
gripped his cardboard sign:
Seeking Human Kindness.

I gave him $5, felt good
took his picture,
went my way.
Now I wonder — why not $100?
Why not $1000?
Why Not change my life
And follow him,
seeking human kindness at the source?
― Kim Stafford, 2018. Little Book for Common Good. Portland, OR: Little Infinities.

Citizen of Dark Times / Ciudadano de los tiempos sombríos
Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid.
Memorándum en la era del temor: No tengas miedo.

When things go wrong, do right.
Cuando las cosas van mal, haz el bien.

Set out by the half-light of the seeker.
Delineado por la penumbra del investigador.

The well-lit problem begins to heal.
El problema bien iluminado empieza a curarse.

Learn tropism toward the difficult.
Aprende el tropismo hacia lo difícil.

We have not arrived to explain, but to sing.
No hemos llegado para justificar, sino para cantar.

Young idealism ripens into an ethical life.
El mozo idealismo se perfecciona dentro de una vida ética.

Prune back regret to let faith grow.
Poda tus remordimientos para que crezca la fe.

When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down.
Cuando llegues al fondo, cava más abajo.

Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song.
La pena es la semilla del canto, la vergüenza la semilla de la canción.

Keep saying what you have not said.
Sigue diciendo lo que no has dicho.

Plunder your reticence.
Saquea tu reticencia.

Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.
El pájaro cantor guarda una ramita, su única arma es una canción.
― Kim Stafford, 2019, traducción Efraín Diaz-Horna.

War Words Teach Us: We Need Spoken Remedies for Peace
― This list was drafted by Kim Stafford and students, as we listened to the language all around us, October 2018.
A list of militaristic and other aggressive language in everyday speech for our consideration as we seek to use more friendly and inclusive ways of saying.

Words of Wisdom and Vision by Jean Baker Miller
– Miller, Jean Baker (1976/1986). Toward a New Psychology of Women. Boston: Beacon Press.

– Miller, Jean Baker, Judith V. Jordan, Irene P. Stiver, Maureen Walker, Janet L. Surrey, and Natalie S. Eldridge (1999). "Therapists' Authenticity." In Work in Progress No. 82. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

– Miller, Jean Baker (2002). "How Change Happens: Controlling Images, Mutuality and Power." In Work in Progress, No. 96. Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Paper Series.

We're "in the business" of change—change for the better.  That's our goal.  Another word for change for the better is growth. (2002)

It is obvious that all of living and all of development takes place only in relationships. (1976)

How do we conceive of a society organized so that it permits both the development and the mutuality of all people? (1976)

The close study of an oppressed group reveals that a dominant group inevitably describes a subordinate group falsely in terms derived from its own systems of thought. (1976)

The dominant group, thus, legitimizes the unequal relationship and incorporates it into society's guiding concepts...It becomes "normal" to treat others destructively and to derogate them, to obscure the truth of what you are doing, by creating false explanations, and to oppose actions toward equality. (1976)

Authenticity and subordination are totally incompatible. (1976)

Authenticity is ever-evolving, not achieved at any one moment — it is a person’s ongoing ability to represent herself in relationships more fully. (1999)

As soon as a group attains dominance it tends inevitably to produce a situation of conflict and it also, simultaneously, seeks to suppress conflict. (1976)

The truth would seem to be much simpler: that the only thing women lack is practice in the "real world"; this, plus the opportunity to practice and the lifelong belief that one has the right to do so. (1976)

Growth-fostering relationships empower all people in them. They are defined by:
1) A sense of zest or well-being that comes from connecting with another person(s);
2) An increased ability and motivation to take action in the relationship as well as in others situations;
3) Increased knowledge of oneself and the other person(s) and the relationship;
4) An increased sense of worth;
5) A desire for more connection beyond the particular one.
(1989)

All relationships encompass conflict...The best conflicts are those that lead to more and better connection. (1976)

Even now, we can recognize that women's psychological strengths are not perceived as such by the dominant group. (1976)

The attempt at authenticity requires a clear and direct risk. (1976)

Adults have been well schooled in suppressing conflict but not in conducting conflict. (1976)

Dominant groups tend to characterize even subordinates' initial small resistance to dominant control as demands for an excessive amount of power. (1976)

Tragic confusion arises because subordinates absorb a large part of the untruths created by the dominants. (1976)

Michael Britton
Caring more for others than we have can do wonders for the state of our own happiness in life.
– Michael Britton, 2012.

Evelin Lindner
We are blind to our blindness.
...
Wringing our hands just slows us down from pushing up our sleeves!
...
Pessimism is a luxury we can afford only in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence
― Evelin Lindner & Jo Linser, Auschwitz survivor, 2004.
...
Optimism is never as needed as much as in times of pessimism.
― Evelin Lindner, 2011.
...
Perpetrators become more violent through violent actions; bystanders become more passive as they watch suffering without taking action.
― Evelin Lindner, in Emotion and Conflict, p. 29.
...
Human rights must serve human dignity.
Rights, in general, must serve dignity.
A focus on rights can destroy dignity.
A focus on rights can trigger humiliation.
Dignity comes before rights.
...
Rather than seeking control, we should be seeking flow.
...
The world is too small for walls and too small for wars.
...
Big paradigm shifts cannot be formulated as “small changes” within the old paradigm.
...
A house is a home only if you fill it with loving relationships. A house can also be a prison.
A home cannot be bought. A home has to be built and nurtured everyday.
...
Today, community, love without reason, and beauty are the words which describe my core life orientation and experience. My religion is love, humility, and awe in the face of a universe too large for us to fathom.

Quotes Collected by Evelin Lindner

The difference between a pessimist and an optimist? The pessimist says "things couldn't be worse." The optimist: "of course they could."
― Miki Kashtan, in a personal communication, May 30, 2018.
...
It takes courage not to be discouraged... I am a realist, not an idealist... Nothing new ever happened before... make law not war...
― Ben Ferencz, in What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know at 97: At 97, Ben Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive and he has a far-reaching message for today’s world, correspondent Lesley Stahl, CBS News, 7th May 2017:
At 97, Ben Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive and he has a far-reaching message for today’s world Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of 1M+ people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz.
The officers were part of units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists, Gypsies and Jews.
Ferencz believes "war makes murderers out of otherwise decent people" and has spent his life working to deter war and war crimes. CBS 60 Minutes. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this program.
...
Things are much too bad for pessimism.
― Dee Hock.
...
Humility is Grace ― Humiliation is Disgrace
― Victor Zurbel, 2004.
...
There is a time for pessimism, that is, for considering worst-case scenarios in order to appropriately prepare for them. This does not mean one should not be hopeful, but only that one should be prepared for adverse outcomes rather than blithely assume that all will turn out well. Rather than being naively (indiscriminately) optimistic or pessimistic, it is better to be strategically optimistic and pessimistic.
― Seymour Epstein, 2005.
...
Building walls creates an illusion of safety; walls can become prisons.
("The world is too small for walls" was a message written on the Berlin wall after the fall of the wall. Thank you, dear Linda, for making us aware!)
...
I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew. The truth has shed so much of itself in me that I can no longer call myself a man, a woman...
― Fourteenth century Persian Sufi poet Hafiz.
...
Outwitted:
He drew a circle that shut me out ―
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
― Edwin Markham, Oregon poet laureate (1923–1940)
...
When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
― Cree prophecy.
...
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. or: No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We have to learn to see the world anew.
― Albert Einstein.
...
Creativity is the residue of time wasted.
― Albert Einstein.
...
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
― Buckminster Fuller may have been expressed this insight in different forms during his lifetime. It appears in Daniel Quinn's book Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure (1999) on page 137.
This quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website. See also the figure called Socrates in the 1980 book Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, and his saying: "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
...
Build a system in parallel to the existing system then switch the good parts over, and leave the bad behind.
― Buckminster Fuller. Douglas Cunliffe wrote on 16th February 2014 in a personal communication: "In the mid-1970's, I was an undergraduate in European History at the University of Victoria, here, where my father was Chairman of the BOG at the time. I went to see Buckminster Fuller give a lecture in his last years, a frail old man on the auditorium stage. Afterward, I went up on stage and asked him the very question: how do you effect sustainable and positive change in a society? His response was key to my wanderings to date: "build a system in parallel to the existing system then switch the good parts over, and leave the bad behind."
...
We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
― R. Buckminster Fuller in "The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In," by Elizabeth Barlow in New York Magazine, 30 March 1970, p. 30. We thank Douglas Cunliffe for forwarding this quote to us from M. Amon Twyman (BSc, MSc Hons, DPhil), a philosopher interested in the impact of technology on society and the human condition. Amon was a co-founder of the UK Transhumanist Association (now known as Humanity+ UK), and went on to establish Zero State and the WAVE research institute.
...
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
― Margaret Mead (1901―1978).
...
People ask me, "Why are we here?" We are here to complete the final step in the evolutionary process, the simple step that has eluded humanity for thousands of years: Treat everyone around you with human dignity.
― Philip S. Berg.
...
You are not required to complete the task [of tikkun olam, healing the world]; neither are you allowed to lay it down. You don't measure your individual contribution against the totality of the task. You measure your contribution against the totality of your life.
― attributed to Rabbi Tarfon (as written in the Talmud) We work for the unseen harvest. ― Irwin Abram.
...
Message from the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo
On July 14, 2004, Evelin picked a "message from the Emperor, or Empress," after placing a coin, at the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo
The piece of paper that I received entailed the following personal message:
"Never turn aside from the road that your convictions tell you to follow, whatever obstacles you must surmount on the way. Be true to yourself."
The piece of paper entailed also a poem by Empress Shoken:
Cut, if need be, through thick briars,
Knots and brambles, tangled thorns,
For the path that's yours to follow
Must be trodden to the end.
(Shigeritaru ubara karatachi haraitemo
Fumubaki michi wa yukubekari keri)
The paper commented this poem as follows:
Omikuji (Poem-Drawing):
This poem was composed, in the traditional 31-syllable form, by either the Emperor Meiji or the Empress Shoken. It is hoped that the poem's message will have particular meaning for you.
The paper explained, furthermore, the poetry of the Emperor Meiji and the Empress Shoken:
The Emperor Meiji was especially fond of composing poems in the traditional waka (31-syllable) form, and left a collection of 100,00 of them to his people. The Empress Shoken joined the Emperor in this art, and is said to have composed 30,000 herself. Many of these Imperial poems, such as the present one, express explicit or implicit ethical admonitions in the Shinto tradition.

None of us can be free until we all are free!
― Saying that circulates in various versions.

You alone can do it, but you cannot do it alone.
― Saying that circulates in various versions. We thank David Bargal for reminding us of this quote!

Connect before you correct.
― Roberta Wall. We thank Karen Hirsch for telling us about this great quote!

Antonio Gramsci
Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will.
― Antonio Gramsci, (1891–1937), an Italian writer, politician and political theorist. We thank Tim Jackson for drawing our attention to this quote.
...
I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
― Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison.

Wringing your hands just slows you down from pushing up your sleeves!
― Proverb.

The person who says "it cannot be done" should not interrupt the person doing it.
― Chinese Proverb. We thank Christine Locher for making us aware of this quote. Jingyi Dong kindly attempted to find out more about this saying, and she shared with us the following on 13th February 2015: "I have searched on www.baidu.com, a Chinese search engine, and found some other people who express their doubt. They cannot find a Chinese equivalent to this proverb. Someone mentions “己(self)所不(not)欲(like)，勿(not)施(apply)于(to)人(others)”, meaning “you should not impose upon others what you do not like”. Someone has translated the proverb that you mention word by word, like this: “说(claim)某(some)事(thing)不(not)能(can)做(do)的人(the person who)不(not)应该(should)干扰(interrupt)别(other)人(people)去做(to do)。” On 16th February, Jingyi kindly added: "I asked one of my friends. He said it might be derived from such a proverb: “成事(accomplishment)不足(inadequate), 败事(failure)有余(surplus)”. This proverb may be used to criticize one who is not only incapable of any achievements, but also frustrates those who have the potential to succeed. Obviously, the English version is softer."
Xuan Zhang kindly contributed on 24th February 2015: 说某事不能做的人不应该干扰别人去做.

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
― Chinese proverb, reference Barbara Bailey Reinhold, Ed.D. (1996). Toxic Work: How to Overcome Stress Overload, and Burnout and Revitalize your Career. New York: Plume, p. 97. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote.

Chinese Proverb
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
― Chinese Proverb. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Seymour Epstein
There is a time for pessimism, that is, for considering worst-case scenarios in order to appropriately prepare for them. This does not mean one should not be hopeful, but only that one should be prepared for adverse outcomes rather than blithely assume that all will turn out well. Rather than being naively (indiscriminately) optimistic or pessimistic, it is better to be strategically optimistic and pessimistic.
― Seymour Epstein, 2005.

Eric Hoffer
In times of change, the learners inherit the world, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
― Eric Hoffer.

Persian Sufi poet Hafiz
I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew. The truth has shed so much of itself in me that I can no longer call myself a man, a woman...
― Fourteenth century Persian Sufi poet Hafiz.

Margaret Mead
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
― Margaret Mead.
...
Peace no longer is an unobtainable ideal but a necessary condition of continued human existence.
― Margaret Mead. We thank Jill Strauss for making us aware of this quote.

Eleanor Roosevelt
We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together, or we are going to learn to live together and if we are going to live together, we will have to talk!
― Eleanor Roosevelt.
...
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
― Eleanor Roosevelt.
...
For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
― Eleanor Roosevelt
...
Clare Boothe Luce noted that ER [Eleanor Roosevelt] was among the world’s “best loved women” for many reasons, but above all: “No woman has ever so comforted the distressed – or distressed the comfortable.”
― Thank you, dear Linda Hartling, for making us aware of this quote! Clare Booth Luce (1903 – 1987 diplomat, playwright, journalist and politician.

Franklin Roosevelt
If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.
― Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32nd American President (1933-1945). We thank Tony Jenkins for making us aware of this quote.
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Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of a private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
― Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), in ‘Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies’, April 29, 1938.
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Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.
― Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Max Planck
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and other Papers, translated by Frank Gaynor (Philosophical Library, New York, 1949), pp. 33–34.
This idea is often summarized as "Science progresses one funeral at a time."
...
I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.
― Max Planck, as quoted in The Observer (25 January 1931).

Javier Perez de Cuellar
The measure of civilization/society is how they treat their weakest members.
― H.E. Javier Perez de Cuellar.
...
Let all bear in mind that a society is judged not so much by the standards attained by its more affluent and privileged members as by the quality of life which it is able to assure for its weakest members.
― H.E. Javier Perez de Cuellar.

Bob Fuller
Humiliation is the most important obstacle to a post-predatory era for humankind.
― Robert W. Fuller, President, Oberlin College, Author of All Rise.

Hubert Humphrey
The moral test of a government is how it treats those who are at the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadow of life, the sick and the needy, and the handicapped.
― Hubert Humphrey.

Donald C. Klein
"Appreciative Being" relates to life events via our human inherent capacity for experiencing awe and wonderment at being part of the universe.
― Donald C. Klein.

Rachel Carson
If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.
― Rachel Carson.
...
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
― Rachel Carson.
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It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
― Rachel Carson.

Swami Satchidananda
Once, we were fine. We were all one.
Then, we de-fined ourselves: this person is white, this one is black, this one is English, this one is Russian and this one is Chinese.
Now, it's time to re-fine ourselves, and once again see that we are all one. So we were fine, we de-fined, now we must re-fine.
― Swami Satchidananda.

Martin Luther King, Jr., minister, political activist (1929 – 1968)
I would suffer all the humiliation, all the torture, the absolute ostracism and even death, to prevent violence.
― Martin Luther King, Jr. This quote was kindly provided to us by Linda Hartling.
...
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by descending itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
― Martin Luther King, Jr.
...
Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites ― polar opposites ― so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. .....  What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
― A Testament of Hope:  The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., edited by James M. Washington. This quote comes from Martin Luther King Jr.  1967, SCLC presidential address. This quote was kindly provided to us by Linda Hartling.
...
I am sure that there are some things in our world to which we should never be adjusted. There are some things concerning which we must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry. We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.
― King's Challenge to the Nation's Social Scientists, APA Monitor Online, 30 (1, January 1999).
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We will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
― Martin Luther King, Jr., minister, political activist (1929-1968). This quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
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Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
― Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963 Western Michigan University Speech.
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We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action.
― Martin Luther King, Jr. Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, 1967.
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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
― Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Violence… seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than convert… it creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
― Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964.
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Longfellow said, 'In this world a man must either be an anvil or a hammer.' We must be hammers shaping a new society rather than anvils molded by the old.
― Martin Luther King Jr., Autobiography, p. 332. We thank Paul Chapell for making us aware of this quote.
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True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
― Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We thank Onaje Muid for this quote.
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The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.
― Martin Luther King Jr.
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People fail to get along because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don't know each other. They don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
― Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!
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The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.
― Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968). Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? New York, Harper and Row, 1967. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!
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Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
― Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!
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Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
― Martin Luther King Jr.
...
… I am convinced that men hate each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don't know each other, and they don't know each other because they don't communicate with each other, and they don't communicate with each other because they are separated from each other.
― Martin Luther King Jr., King Chapel, Cornell College Mount Vernon, Iowa, 15th October 1962. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote.

Arunduti Roy
For those of us who are on the wrong side of Empire, the humiliation is becoming unbearable. Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated. The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq ― mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods ― are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.
― Arunduti Roy, San Francisco, September 2004.

Garry Davis
"I have great news! It's one world and we're all on it!"
― Garry Davis, at the 2012 Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, Columbia University, New York City, December 6-7, 2012.

Albert Einstein
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
― Albert Einstein (1879–1955).
...
Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value.
― Albert Einstein.
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The world is dangerous not because of those who do harm, but because of those who look at it without doing anything.
― Albert Einstein.
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We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
or:
No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We have to learn to see the world anew.
― Albert Einstein.
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The intuituive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
― Albert Einstein. We thank Carol Routh and Yves Musoni for making us aware of this quote.
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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
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Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives.
― Albert Einstein. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.
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The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
― Albert Einstein. We thank Betty Reardon for making us aware of this quote.
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Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
― Albert Einstein.
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If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
― Albert Einstein. We thank Yves Musoni for making us aware of this quote.
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Die Majorität der Dummen ist unüberwindbar und für alle Zeiten gesichert. Der Schrecken ihrer Tyrannei ist indessen gemildert durch Mangel an Konsequenz.
― Albert Einstein.
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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
― Albert Einstein.
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"... appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."
― Albert Einstein, on his deathbed. We thank Garry Davis for making us aware of this quote.
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Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it'll spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
― Albert Einstein. We thank Yves Musoni for making us aware of this quote.
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Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.
― Albert Einstein.
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Only a life lived for others is a life worth living.
― Albert Einstein.
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The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
― Albert Einstein.

Buckminster Fuller
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
― Buckminster Fuller may have been expressed this insight in different forms during his lifetime. It appears in Daniel Quinn's book Beyond Civilization: Humanity's Next Great Adventure (1999) on page 137.
This quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

Ezra Taft Benson
Pride is concerned with who is right,
Humility is concerned with what is right.
― Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994). This quote was kindly provided by Kathryn Crawford, April 2005.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.
― Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207–1273), Persian poet of Afghanistan who later settled in Konia Turkey. This quote was kindly provided by Noor Akbar Khalil, April 2005.
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There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life.
There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine.
O traveler, if you are in search of That
Don't look outside, look inside yourself and seek That.
I am blasphemy and religion, pure and impure;
Old, young, and a small child.
If I die, don't say that he died.
Say he was dead, became alive, and was taken by the Beloved.
In the waters of purity, I melted like salt
Neither blasphemy, nor faith, nor conviction, nor doubt remained.
In the center of my heart a star has appeared
And all the seven heavens have become lost in it.
If you show patience, I'll rid you of this virtue.
If you fall asleep, I'll rub the sleep from your eyes.
If you become a mountain, I'll melt you in fire.
And if you become an ocean, I'll drink all your water.
You personify God's message.
You reflect the King's face.
There is nothing in the universe that you are not
Everything you want, look for it within yourself ―
you are that.
― Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207–1273), Persian poet of Afghanistan who later settled in Konia Turkey. We thank Latha Nrugham for this link: peacefulrivers.homestead.com/Rumipoetry3.html. And we thank Lasse Moer for this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9u8GpH9Oco. We thank Kamran Mofid for this link: www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Persian-Mystics-Jalaluddin-Rumi.pdf
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Out beyond the world of right doings and wrong doings, there is a field. I meet you there.
― Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
...
The Guest House
This being human is a guesthouse.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
― Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207–1273), Persian poet of Afghanistan who later settled in Konia Turkey. We thank Jacqueline Howell Wasilewski for making us aware of this poem.

Thich Nhat Hanh
Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is not the other person. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person. When we are armed with compassion and understanding, we fight not against other people, but against the tendency to invade, to dominate, and to exploit.
― Thich Nhat Hanh in Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames.

Mahatma Gandhi
It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.
― Mahatma Gandhi (1869 ― 1948).
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The essence of non-violence is found in the non-cooperation with all forms of humiliation.
— Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Myra Mendible for making us aware of this quote.
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There is no path to peace. Peace is the path. (NOT: If you want peace, prepare for war!)
― Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Fredrik Heffermehl for making us aware of this quote.
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I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
― Mahatma Gandhi
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The very right to live is only afforded to us if we fulfill our duty as citizens of the world. Nationalism is not the highest concept. The highest concept is a world community.
...
Unity of hearts is all that is necessary. If this cannot be had, all else is futile; if this is accomplished, nothing else is necessary.
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.
― Mahatma Gandhi in Non-Violence in Peace and War, Vol. 2, 1948.
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"What do I think of Western Civilization?" "I think it would be a good idea."
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.
― Arthur Schopenhauer.
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There are lots of causes I'm willing to die for ― but not one cause I'm willing to kill for.
― Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Arve Elvik for making us aware of this quote.
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You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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Those of us who have more than we need are trustees of our surplus for the benefit of those who have less than they need.
― Mahatma Gandhi, as referred to by Howard Richards, Joanna Swanger, and Alicia Cabezudo, 2011 .
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Because we repeal the rule that people only work when they are paid
Simultaneously we repeal the rule that to get food you need money to pay for it
Both rules are replaced by the restoration of the Hindu concept of dharma, i.e. duty.
― Mahatma Gandhi, as referred to by Howard Richards, Joanna Swanger, and Alicia Cabezudo, 2011.
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Hate the sin, love the sinner.
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles
― Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, from a letter written to him, see William Stafford.
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The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems
― Mohandas Gandhi, we than Glen Parker for making us aware of this quote.
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The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
― Mohandas Gandhi, found on the website of SERVAS. His quote underpins the motto of SERVAS: "Dream a little. Become a part of a community of global peace-seekers. Learn a new way of speaking, traveling and listening."
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There is no difference between East and West. There is a difference between traditional and modern.
― Mohandas K. Gandhi.
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What's the point of running so fast if we're running in the wrong direction?
― Mahatma Gandhi.
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If you do not find God in the next person you meet, it's a waste of time looking for him further.
― Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Gerdelin Bodvin for making us aware of this quote!
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The seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle.
― Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Rudolf J. Siebert for making us aware of this quote!
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We can certainly realize our full destiny and dignity only if we educate and train ourselves to be able to refrain from retaliation.
― Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra for making us aware of this quote!
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To forget how to dig the earth, and to tend the soil, is to forget ourselves.
― Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote!
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The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.
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I am therefore you are and you are therefore I am.
...
1. Politics without principles
2. Commerce without morality
3. Wealth without work
4. Education without character
5. Science without humanity
6. Pleasure without conscience
7. Worship without sacrifice
― Mahatma Gandhi. We thank Anthony Marsella for making us aware of this quote!

Ela Gandhi: 21 Key Principles of Gandhi's Philosophy
When Gandhiji left the shores of South Africa he left behind a powerful philosophy a tool that has been used by not only the leaders of the South African struggle for liberation but by many other leaders both in Africa and the world. Yet it is important to record that this is not a philosophy that applies only to the freedom fighters, but a philosophy of life applicable to all of humanity. Some of the salient features of that philosophy are being discussed here.
The transformation of Gandhiji from 1893-1914 records 21 key principles developed in South Africa.
In summary these are:
1. A negotiated settlement helps to build friendship, an adversarial procedure or violent confrontation leaves a permanent scar of enmity, difficult to erase.
2. Greater courage is required in nonviolent action than in violent action.
3. An important principle of nonviolent action is that it must be preceded by careful study of the situation, planning and training for the action decided upon. It is important to eliminate own weaknesses before embarking on strategic well considered action. Gandhiji emphasized the importance of clear awareness of and being ready for the consequences that may arise as a result of the action.
4. All action must be clear, and must identify with the aspirations of the poorest of the poor. Class differences must be eliminated for successful action.
5. Nonviolent activists must be prepared to accept that there is potential for goodness in all, including the most wicked and therefore there is no place for hate.
6. A nonviolent activist must be prepared to accept the dignity of labour and be prepared to do any task and accept all on an equal basis. Divisive tendencies such as consumerism, greed, prejudice and privilege has no place in this scheme of things.
7. There must be unqualified faith in people both fellow workers as well as opponents.
8. The belief in the essential unity of body mind and soul requires that activists maintain a healthy life style and remain fit physically as well as mentally and spiritually.
9. Meeting of basic needs is important and cannot wait until some remote liberation date; reconstruction work must begin alongside the liberation work.
10. The principle of forgiveness is an important part of nonviolent struggle.
11. Establishment of a good communication network is also an important element of the struggle.
12. Nonviolent struggle is not an easy route and requires commitment.
13. In order to maintain unity there is necessity for inter faith harmony to be constantly maintained because religion can be divisive.
14. An activist must only retain what he or she needs and make the rest available to the community. Gandhiji advocated a simple life but not a denial of essentials.
15. The need for complete faith in the process and the cause is necessary for there to be unity
16. At all times activists must remember that they are fighting the deed and not the doer. They must love the doer.
17. All these principles can only be imbibed through rigorous training.
18. In Gandhiji's ashram the activists daily chanted eleven vows to follow the nonviolent path or the path of ahimsa.
19. For Gandhiji an important element of the nonviolent struggle is the complete faith in the cause and the spiritual nature of the struggle.
20. But he believed that if all this meant leading a somber dull life then no one would be willing to join and therefore he advocated the setting aside of time for recreational activities.
21. In all the work there must be complete recognition of women's important role and the need for the improvement of the status of women.
― Ela Gandhi, Nonviolence ― The Gandhian Philosophy (forthcoming). We thank Ela Gandhi for giving us her permission to include this list here on 11th January 2013.

Vaclav Havel
I am not an optimist because I am not sure that everything ends well, nor am I a pessimist because I am not sure that everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart. Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have meaning. It is not an estimate of the state of the world. It is something that you either have or you dont, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you. It is a dimension of human existence.
― Vaclav Havel, Oslo Conference, The Anatomy of Hate, 1990.
...
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
― Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright, president. We thank Stephen Purdey and Becca Bass for making us aware of this quote.
...
Hope
by Vaclav Havel
Hope is a state of mind, not a state of the world
Either we have hope within us or we don’t.
Hope is not a prognostication—it’s an orientation of the spirit.
You can’t delegate that to anyone else.
Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy
when things are going well,
or the willingness to invest in enterprises
that are obviously headed for early success,
but rather an ability to work for something to succeed.
Hope is definitely NOT the same as optimism.
It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well,
but the certainty that something makes sense,
regardless of how it turns out.
It is hope, above all, that gives us strength to live
and to continually try new things,
even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.
In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing
to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily,
without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope.
― Vaclav Havel. We thank Becca Bass for making us aware of this poem.

Elie Wiesel
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to only by other human beings.
― Elie Wiesel, Romanian-born US writer.
...
In the word 'question', there is a beautiful word ― quest. I love that word. We are all partners in a quest. The essential questions have no answers. You are my question, and I am yours ― and then there is dialogue. The moment we have answers, there is dialogue. Questions unite people.
― Elie Wiesel. We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for making us aware of this quote.
...
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor never the tormented.
― Elie Wiesel. We thank Uli Spalthoff for finding this quote in humiliation-and-silence/.

Amin Maalouf
For the Americans, the English and some others, the English language is of course the language of identity. But for the rest of mankind, that is to say more than nine-tenth of our contemporaries, it cannot fill that role, and it would be dangerous to try to make it so unless we want to produce hordes of people who are unhinged and disoriented, with personalities that are unbalanced. No one should be forced to become a mental expatriate every time he opens a book, sits down in front of a screen, enters into a discussion or thinks. People ought to be able to make their own modernity instead of always feeling they are borrowing it from others.
― Amin Maalouf in On Identity (2000). Kindly provided to us by Bill Templer, Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna, Phitsanulok, Thailand.
...
Unprecedented challenges require unprecedented solutions.
― Amin Maalouf. We thank Federico Mayor for making us aware of this quote!

Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
― Edwin Hubbel Chapin.

Helen Keller
Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.
― Helen Keller.

Gifford Pinchot
The vast possibilities of our great future wil become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for our future.
― Gifford Pinchot.

Indira Gandhi
Wer die Faust ballt, kann nicht die Hand reichen.
[Those who make a fist, can't shake hands.]
― Indira Gandhi.

Franz Kafka
Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht.
[Paths come into being by walking them.]
― Franz Kafka.

Im Leben ist es wie beim Radfahren:
Kurz bevor es wie von selbst geht, scheint es uns am allerschwierigsten.
[In life, it is like with riding a bycicle: Just before it is easy, it appears to be impossible.]
― Anonymous.

Es gibt keinen Mut ohne Angst.
[There is no courage without fear.]
― Anonymous.

Anita Brookner
Humiliations, though ineradicable, must be repaired before they take root.
― Anita Brookner in Bay of Angels, 2001. This quote was kindly provided to us by Linda Hartling. Linda kindly writes (October 15, 2006): I think this sentence accurately captures the enduring impact of humiliation while emphasizing the urgency to repair these breaks in relationships. Like Brookner, I tend to believe that once a humiliation has occurred it cannot be completely erased. Without timely intervention, victims become marked or haunted by these experiences ― their humiliation takes root in their lives.
This quote lends additional support for Victoria Fontan's concept of "humiliation awareness." Perhaps humiliation awareness could not only reduce new incidents of humiliation, it could prevent humiliation from taking root in people's lives.

Alliance of Civilisations
Peoples who feel that they face persistent discrimination, humiliation, or marginalisation are reacting by asserting their identity more aggressively.
― Alliance of Civilisations report, 13th November, 2006.

Minds are like parachutes: They only work when they are open!
― Anonymous.

Victor Zurbel
Humility is grace ― humiliation is disgrace
― Victor Zurbel, 2004
...
To find that heart of compassion in brutal leaders and people in power situations is, I imagine, one of your greater challenges. Power by humiliation is an acquired disease, cultivated by thousands of years of pathological history. We need to find the antidote, which is compassion coupled with a firm, non-violen use of resistance and pressure.
― Victor Zurbel, November 30, 2006, in a personal message.

Swami Rama
Close your eyes and you will see clearly
Cease to listen and you will hear truth
Be silent and your heart will sing
Seek no contact and you will find union
Be still and you will move forward on the tide of the Spirit
Be gentle and you will need no strength
Be patient and you will achieve all things
Be humble and you will remain entire
― Swami Rama, seen in Victor Zurbel's house, mounted in a frame, November 6, 2010.

Jean Baker Miller, MD
Authenticity is ever-evolving, not achieved at any one momentit is a persons ongoing ability to represent herself in relationships more fully (1999).
― Jean Baker Miller
...
Authenticity and subordination are totally incompatible (1976).
― Jean Baker Miller
....
The attempt at authenticity requires a clear and direct risk (1976).
― Jean Baker Miller
...
What then is all this saying – and not saying? First that people have to participate in, and foster the development of other people, not once, in infancy, but all through life.  The quality and quantity of such participation may vary with each stage of life but the necessity exists because development always requires participation of others.  The very tendency to think of this activity as a static, almost one-shot (or one time period) phenomenon may indicate how far our culture has become removed from recognizing that this "need" exists at all times, not just when we are "dependent," but is a constant necessity in human development and human development is a necessity all through life.
― Jean Baker Miller, MD, (1976, October), Minutes ― Board of Overseers. Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College.
...
Jean Baker Miller emphasized the use of the term "sense of worth." She moved away from using "self-worth" because the word "self" tends to imply human separateness and disconnection, what she would describe as a "separate self model" of psychological development. Further, she would suggest that the "self" concept is still tied to Western notions of rugged individualism (see alsoCushman, P. (1995). Constructing the self, constructing America: A cultural history of psychotherapy. Garden City, NY: Da Capo Press). It seems that latest social neuroscience supports her early view that humans develop within a matrix of relationships throughout their lives, that we are always inter connected as human beings. Consequently, rather than self worth, she would say that people develop a "sense of worth" through participation in mutually empathic, mutually empowering relationships, that is, through participation in "growth-fostering relationships." Rather than using the word "self," she preferred the term "relational being." From her perspective, we are all relational beings, rather than separate selves.
― Linda Hartling, in a personal communication, July 27, 2011.

Seymour M. (Mike) Miller
My three-fold delineation of power: the taming of power to make it less onerous, the transfer of power to the less powerful and the transformation of power so that it is less demanding and, indeed, can be relational.
― Seymour M. (Mike) Miller, in a personal communication to Linda Hartling, June 10, 2011. See The Future of Inequality, 1970, second section of the book.
...
Everyone is smart in her or his way. The task is to learn how to tap into it and build on and from it.
― Seymour M. (Mike) Miller, in a personal communication to Linda Hartling, March 17, 2013.
...
Dialogue leads to dignity; dignity leads to dialogue.
― Seymour M. (Mike) Miller, in a personal communication to Linda Hartling, October 12, 2015.

Peace
It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.
― unknown.

Anthony J. Marsella
Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.
― Anthony J. Marsella ((2006). Justice in a Global Age: Becoming Counselors to the World. In Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 19 (2, June), 121-132, on page 131.
...
The Golden Rule ― Eleven Religions
"If you seek justice, choose for others what you would choose for yourself." (Baha'i)
"One should seek for others the happiness one derives for one's self."  (Buddhism)
"Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." (Christianity)
"What you do not want done to yourself, do not unto others."  (Confucianism)
"Do naught to others which if done to thee would cause pain."  (Hinduism)
"No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself." (Islam)
"We should . . . refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear   undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves."   (Jainism)
"What is hurtful to yourself, do not do to our fellow man." (Judaism)
"As thou deemest thyself, so deem others." (Sikkhism)
"To those who are good to me, I am also good; and to those who are not good to me, I am also good.  And thus all get to be good."  (Taoism)
"Do as you would be done by."  (Zoroastrianism)
― Anthony J. Marsella, 2002, adapted and expanded from Steven Blessman, December 2001, personal communication (January 31, 2011).
...
We do good, not because of a fear of an angry god, but because love, compassion, and empathy are inherent in our being because they promote life.
― Anthony J. Marsella (12th September 2012)
...
Bessie Anderson Stanley
Adapted from Bessie Anderson Stanley (1905) by Anthony Marsella (19th March 2014): To laugh often and love much, To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, To earn the appreciation of honest critics and 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 path, or a redeemed social condition, To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
― Anthony Marsella wrote on 19th March 2014: Monument inscription, Lincoln, Kansas. I found the quotation, as written, posted in a Quaker Meeting House. There are many versions – the words differ, but the sentiment and wisdom are the same.

Virginia Woolf
We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.
― Virginia Woolf, 1938.
...
Imaginative work is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; it is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but attached to all four corners of the earth.
― Virginia Woolf. We thank Linda Hartling for bringing this quote to us!

Buddha
Victory breeds hatred. The defeated live in pain.
Happily the peaceful live, giving up victory and defeat.
― Gautama Buddha.

"You can look back to the past, just don't stare!"
― Anonymous, related to us by Stephanie Heuer.

Ludwig Robert
To the eagle spoke the dove: where thinking ceases, there begins faith. Right, he replied, but with this difference, where you already believe, I still reason."
"Zu dem Adler sprach die Taube:
Wo das Denken aufhört, da beginnt der Glaube;
Recht, sprach jener, mit dem Unterschied jedoch,
Wo du glaubst, da denk' ich noch."
― Ludwig Robert, German poet. We thank Inge Danaher for making us aware of this quote. This poem was often quoted to her by her father, Peter Roehlen, as follows: "Beyond knowledge comes belief" and the eagle replied "yes, but where you already believe, I still know."

Black Elk
The thoughts of men... should rise high as eagles do.
― Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, quoted from Native Voices of Indian America Universe, by Native American tribal leaders, writers, scholars, and storytellers; with a foreword by W. Richard West, Jr., edited by Gerald McMaster and Clifford E. Trafzer, Washington, DC: Smithsonian National Museums of the American Indian, in association with National Geographic, 2004, p. 11.

Peter Roehlen
"Herr sei das Herz, der Verstand stehts Knecht, doch der tüchtigste Knecht, sei dem Herrn nur recht"
Translated: "Master be the heart, the mind always it's servant, however let only the most diligent servant be good enough for the master"
― Inge Danaher's father, Peter Roehlen.

Terri Swearingen
We are living on this planet as if we have another one to go to.
― Terri Swearingen; this quote is written in huge letters on a wall of qm, the Queensland Museum South Bank, in Brisbane, Australia, admired by Evelin on 10th August 2007.

Marshall McLuhan
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
― Marshall McLuhan; this quote is written in huge letters on a wall of qm, the Queensland Museum South Bank, in Brisbane, Australia, admired by Evelin on 10th August 2007.
...
Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.
― Marshall McLuhan

Wringing your hands just slows you down from pushing up your sleeves!
― Anonymous.

Abigail Van Buren
People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
― Abigail Van Buren.

Sydney J. Harris
There's no point in burying the hatchet if youre going to put up a marker on the site.
― Sydney J. Harris, journalist (1917-1986); this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

Every person should have a special cemetery lot in which to bury the faults of friends and loved ones.
― Anonymous; this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

Rabindranath Tagore
The winds of grace are always blowing. It is you that must raise your sails.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet, composer, philosopher (1861-1941); this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

John Hancock
A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life.
― John Hancock, politician, Revolutionary leader (1737-1793), this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

A man visits a Quaker meeting for the first time. After sitting in silence for several minutes, he turns to his neighbor and asks, "When does the service start?" to which his neighbor replies, "After the meeting."
― Anonymous, this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

Lewis L. Dunningham
The greatest force for making people bigger and better than they are now is the belief in your heart and mind that they have the infinite potential for growth. Even when they fail us, we are to continue to carry and express the mental image of what they may become. To have someone believe in you, even whey you fail is the most blessed and creative force in the universe.
― Lewis L. Dunningham, this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

Walt Whitman
Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.
― Walt Whitman, poet, journalist (1819-1892); this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

Julius and Augustus Hare
Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.
― Julius and Augustus Hare, British writers (1795-1855 and 1834-1903); this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.

Andrew Greeley
It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us. Perhaps the reason is that rich men are very clever at covering up what they do.
- Andrew Greeley (Chicago Sun-Times, February 18, 2001).

Harold Laski
A state divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.
― Harold Laski (1930).

Plutarch
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
― Plutarch ― Mestrius Plutarchus (c. 46 AD― 127 AD) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist.

Woodrow Wilson
I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.
― Woodrow Wilson.

James Baldwin
People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
― James Baldwin Biography ― Fiction Writer, Essayist, Social Critic, 1924-1987.
...
The moment we cease to hold each other
The moment we lose faith with one another
The sea engulfs us
And the light goes out
― James Baldwin. We thank Rita Anita Linger for making me aware of this quote.
...
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
― James Baldwin. We thank Carol Smaldino for making me aware of this quote.

Prayer
I asked for Strength.........
And God gave me Difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for Wisdom.........
And God gave me Problems to solve.
I asked for Prosperity.........
And God gave me Brain and Brawn to work.
I asked for Courage.........
And God gave me Danger to overcome.
I asked for Love.........
And God gave me Troubled people to help.
I asked for Favours.........
And God gave me Opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted
I received everything I needed
My Prayer has been answered.

Karl Jaspers
Was der Mensch ist, das ist er durch die Sache, die er zur seinen macht.
― Karl Jaspers.

It's far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism.
― see a discussion at http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/09/20.html
Det er for sent å være pessimist nå.
― Finn Tschudi forklarer at dette er tittelen på en bok som er et festskrift til fredsaktivisten Ole Kopreitan på hans 70 årsdag, redaktør Knut Tønsberg, Emilia forlag.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Peace is the opposite of security.
― "The Church and the People of the World," sermon delivered by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which
he delivered at the Ecumenical Conference of churches in Fano, on August 28, 1934. We thank Ralph Lentz for making us aware of this quote! See pictures from 2007 of his memorial in Breslau.
...
We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Worry is thought attached to the illusion of control.
― Anonymous.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.
― Unknown.

Jimi Hendrix
When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
― Jimi Hendrix.

Intelligence and humility are compatible as long as humility comes first.
― Unknown.

Joanna Harcourt-Smith
Humiliation is the disease, and dignity is the cure.
― Joanna Harcourt-Smith (listen to http://www.futureprimitive.org/GAIAlogues.html#latest).

Frank Barron
Never take a person's dignity: it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you.
― Frank Barron.

Kofi Annan
Whether its genocide or ethnic cleansing it always starts with humiliation of one individual.
― Kofi Anan in ‘It Sits On Your Conscience,’ Newsweek, Feb 9, 2008.

Richard Rorty
... [The liberal ironist] thinks that what unites her with the rest of the species is not a common language but just susceptibility to pain and in particular to that special sort of pain which the brutes do not share with the humans ― humiliation...
― Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 92.
...
Rorty does believe in moral progress, understood as development "in the direction of greater human solidarity... the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation ― the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of 'us'."
― Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 192.

It takes faith to leave the unfinished unfinished!
― related to us by Steve Kulich.

Upton Sinclair
It is difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
― Upton Sinclair.

Elik Elhanan
If indignity tears relationships apart, dignity can put them back together.
― Elik Elhanan, in "Learning to speak: I defeat my enemy when I make him my friend," Ode Magazine, May 2008 issue, p. 72. We thank Michael Nagler for making us aware of this quote.

Marcus Aurelius
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
― Marcus Aurelius.

Paulo Freire
No one educates anyone, and nobody is self educated; all of us learn from each other, mediated by the world we live in.
― Paulo Freire.
...
Eu sou um intelectual que não tem medo de ser amoroso, eu amo as gentes e amo o mundo. E é porque amo as pessoas e amo o mundo, que eu brigo para que a justiça social se implante antes da caridade.
Google Translator: I am an intellectual who is not afraid to be loving, I love people and love the world. And it is because I love people and love the world that I fight for social justice before charity.
― Paulo Freire. We thank Gabriela Saab for making us aware of this quote.
...
There are times when I fear that someone reading this... may think there is no more place among us for the dreamer and the believer in utopia. Yet what I have been saying up to now is not the stuff of inconsequential dreamers. It has to do with the very nature of men and women as makers and dreamers of history...
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001 paperback edition, page 41. We thank Michael Britton for making us aware of this quote.

Det er vondt å bli sint når ingen blir redd!
― Norwegian saying.

The arrogance of ignorance...
― Saying.

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.
― Saying.

Understand the differences, act on the commonalities!
― Saying.

It's not tolerance I'm asking for, it's respect!
― Niels van Quaquebeke, Daniel C. Henrich and Tilman Eckloff.

The nearest of neighbors are often the ones who get entangled in the longest of conflicts.
― Saying.

Diana Eck
Diversity is a fact. Pluralism is an accomplishment.
― Diana Eck.

Paul Grignon
Conventional economics is a rationalization for victimization through fraud.
― Paul Grignon, monetary theorist, offering a visionary shift in monetary thinking.

Frederic Bastiat
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
― Frederic Bastiat, 1801-1850, The Law. We thank Paul Grignon and Rodrigue Tremblay for this quote.

John Sherman
Those few who can understand the system (check book money and credit) will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors, that there will be little opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear it burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.
― John Sherman (1823-1900), US Republican Congressman, later Secretary of the Treasury, quoted by the Rothschild Brothers, London in a letter sent June 25th, 1863 to New York Bankers, Ikleheimer, Morton, and Gould seeking an alliance to create a private national bank in America. We thank Paul Grignon for this quote.

John H. Hotson
People today have more erroneous ideas about money than Victorians had about sex.
― John H. Hotson, professor emeritus of economics University of Waterloo, executive director, Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform. We thank Paul Grignon for this quote.

Frederick Douglass
Power concedes nothing without demand.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of the waters. This struggle may be both moral and physical, but it must be struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. And these wrongs will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
― Frederick Douglass, 1857. We thank Paul Grignon for this quote.

Aidan Davison
"...the verb sustaining holds open the actively normative questions that the idea of sustainability raises. We are required to probe: What truly sustains us? Why? And how do we know? Conversely, we must ask: What are we to sustain above all else?  Why? And how may we do so?"
― Aidan Davison, Technology and the Contested Meanings of Sustainability, 2001, p. 64.

Winston S. Churchill
...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on...
― Winston S. Churchill.
...
"Excellence is . . .
Caring more than others think is wise
Risking more than others think is safe
Dreaming more than others think is practical
Expecting more than others think is possible.
― Winston Churchill. We thank Cheryl Wells for making us aware of this quote.

Bertrand Russell
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
­ Bertrand Russell.

Rick Ingrasci
I really feel that our generation, the sixties generation, had made a breakthrough that was almost like a recidivist, that we went back and rediscovered what indigenous cultures have known for many, many years, which is that carnival and festivity and ritual and ways to experience communitas, which is really spontaneous love in community, is probably a part of how we're going to find our way out of the jam we're in, as a planet let's say.
― Rick Ingrasci, in his talk Joy, Social Intelligence & the Ethical Imagination, held at Commonweal on April 19th, 2007.

Brian Piergrossi
Love is the new religion of the 21st century You don’t have to be a highly educated person Or have any exceptional knowledge to understand it It comes from the intelligence of the heart Embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse of all human beings.
― Brian Piergrossi, in The Big Glow: Insights, Inspirations, Peace and Passion. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!

Carlos Santana
There is definitely enough love and resources to go around. I have wondered over the years when this could be realized and who would be the ones to do it. Today, I am convinced more than ever that this is the time and that we are the ones we have been waiting for – generations of conscious beings from all walks of life with the courage, communications, and know how to change the world for the better. We are the Architects of A New Dawn and this is what we came here to do.
— Carlos Santana, on http://architectsofanewdawn.com/. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955)
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French philospher and Jesuit priest. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!
...
All things that rise converge.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. We would like to thank Michael W. Fox for this inspirational quote!
...
Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote.
..
Nothing is so delicate and fugitive by its very nature as a beginning.
– Teilhard de Chardin.

Peter Block
The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole. The key is to identify how this transformation occurs.
― Peter Block, in Community: The Structure of Belonging. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!

Vimila Takar
The challenge awaiting us is to go much deeper as human beings, to abandon superficial prejudices and preferences, to expand understanding to a global scale, integrating the totality of living, and to become aware of the wholeness of which we are a manifestation."
― Vimala Thakar, in Spirituality & Social Action: A Holistic Approach. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!

Andrew Beath
Conscious activism is activism from the heart. It is composed of loving-kindness and requires nothing in return. If we love something, we want to help it thrive: redwood trees, rivers, and everyone's children. As our capacity for love appreciates, our world grows larger. As our connection with the living planet deepens, so does the place in our hearts from which we experience joy.
― Andrew Beath, in Navigating the Future: A Guide for Conscious Activism. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!

Pema Chodron
If you have a bird's-eye perspective on the Earth and you look down at all the conflicts that are happening, all you see are two sides of a story where both people think they are right. So the solutions have to come from a change of heart, from softening what is rigid within us.
― Pema Chodron, 1st American-born woman to be ordained as a bhiksuni in Tibetan Buddhism, in Practicing Peace in Times of War. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!
...
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
― Pema Chodron.

Plato
A person who achieves wealth and power by excluding justice and virtue will lose the health of her body. Life, in this case, is no longer endurable, although pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks. Is such a life worth living? The question itself is ridiculous.
― Plato.
...
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
― Plato. We thank Federico Hewson for making us aware of this quote.

Aristotle/Aristoteles (384–322 BCE)
What is the essence of life? To serve others and do good.
― Aristotle. We thank Kamran Mofid of always reminding me of Aristotle's saying.
...
Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
― Aristotle. We thank Atul Mehrotra for contributing with this quote.
...
...any one can get angry — that is easy... but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.
― Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 9. Translated by Sir William David Ross. Kichener, ON: Batoche, 1999.
Variant:
So also anybody can become angry — that is easy, and so it is to give and spend money; but to be angry with or give money to the right person, and to the right amount, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way — this is not within everybody's power and is not easy; so that to do these things properly is rare, praiseworthy, and noble.
― Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, 1109.a. Translated by Harris Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, 1934.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rest not. Life is sweeping by,
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime,
Leave behind to conquer time.
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We would like to thank the 2009 Hollyhock Summer Gathering for this inspirational quote!
...
Every Creature is a Word of God
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We would like to thak Michael W. Fox for making us aware of this quote.
...
To take what's made and then re-make it,
So that it never rigidifies,
Eternal living action works.
And what never was must become…”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from One and All. We thank Götz Werner for making us aware of this quote.
...
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
― Jiddu Krishnamurti.
...
Where the self is, the other is not.
In extension: Where the self is, love/truth/compassion/the immeasurable/the infinite/the sacred, is not.
(Evelin Lindner's extension: Where home is, the foreigner is not.)
― Jiddu Krishnamurti. See also: "What it means to be Human? Culture, Knowledge, Metaphysics of Brain," Interview with Professor Manas Mukul Das, former chairperson of the English Department at Allahabad University, Northern India, CEdR/academic: Culture Education Discussion Research Network, August 10, 2014. See also "Human Unity through Cultural Dialogue- Joseph Campbell, Tagore, Frithjof Schuon," CEdR/academic: Culture Education Discussion Research Network, August 8, 2014.

Ubiratan D'Ambrosio
Killing the dignity of individuals is the most subtle form of violence practiced in our societies.
― Ubiratan D'Ambrosio.

Leonardo Da Vinci
There are three classes of people: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.
― Leonardo da Vinci
...
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough, we must do.
― Leonardo da Vinci
...
Art is never finished, only abandoned.
― Leonardo da Vinci
...
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" Leonardo da Vinci 
― Leonardo da Vinci. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Dorothy Thompson
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
― Dorothy Thompson. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Kahlil Gibran
The great truths
that are above nature
do not pass from one human being to another
by means of ordinary speech.
Rather, 
they choose silence
as the path between souls.
― Kahlil Gibran. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this poem.

Nancy Harrisson
A friend is someone who reminds you of your song when you've temporarily forgotten it.
― Nancy Harrisson.

A.J. Muste
The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?
― A.J. Muste.

William Stafford
Every war has two losers.
(Every War Has Two Losers is a film that tells the story of how William Stafford (1914-1993) chose to answer the call to war. It is a story of confronting beliefs that swirl around war ― Isn't war inevitable? Even necessary? What about the enemy? Stafford refused to fight in World War Two and served four years in camps for conscientious objectors. Later he was the winner of the National Book Award for poetry. Director Haydn Reiss met Stafford in 1990 and later produced a one-hour documentary, William Stafford & Robert Bly: A Literary Friendship. That film chronicles the similarities and differences between these two close friends and great poets. Approaches to writing, teaching and the meaning of poetry are all explored in this lively and engaging film.)
...
You may win a war you are sorry to have started.
...
Creating the emergencies that justify emergency action.
...
A speech is something you say to distract attention from what you do not say.
...
The trouble about language is that people sometimes believe what you say, and you were only trying it out.
...
There are probably ways to live so as to shut out chances to be victimized. Those ways are probably worse than being a victim.
...
The sickness of lusting after justice.
...
...one trend is toward confrontation, vulgarity; another trend is toward social action against some of the results of vulgarity (prejudice, bullying, harassment). Confused people entangle themselves in both.
...
History is the lies people have agreed upon?
...
We dominate the world; for the future it is essential that we reach community, not supremacy.
...
We drown in ugliness. Art helps teach us to swim.
...
Lostness is a function of your assumptions about where you belong.
...
An individual's intellect and emotions should be like a good seismograph: sensitive enough to register what happens but strong enough not to be wrecked by the first little thing that happens.
...
...as a teacher I believe that if there is such a thing as the lowest person in the class, they deserve the same level reception and cordiality as anybody else.
...
Success may not mean you did right.
― William Stafford, in Stafford, Kim (Ed.). (2003). Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, p. 64.
...
Success does not mean you did right.
― William Stafford, Wixon, V., & Merchant, P. (2014). Sound of the ax: Aphorisms and poems by William Stafford. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. P. 74.
...
If I start in the stance of being the judge, the advocate of culture, the parental figure, I will have a hard time reaching into the spontaneous thoughts and feelings of the group.
― William Stafford, an Oregon pacifist, poet, and activist who became the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of these quotes that she gathered from:
Stafford, Kim (Ed.). (2003). Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War. Minneapolis: Milkweed Press.
Stafford, W., Merchant, P., & Wixon, V. (2003). The Answers Are Inside the Mountains: Meditations on the Writing life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Stafford, W. (2003). You Must Revise Your Life. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
...
Five Levels of Martial Arts
This story was told by Li Young Li at the "Snowdrift Dialogues" symposium in Oregon in February 2014, and re-told by Kim Stafford, the son of William Stafford:
1. Lowest level: If someone comes to you with ill will and the decision to attack you, you have to subdue them with physical force. But there is no security, because they will come back with their friends and overwhelm you.
2. Someone comes to you with ill will, but there is something about you that keeps them from attacking. So you have subdued them without needing to use physical force. But there is no security, because they will come back with their friends and overwhelm you.
3. Someone comes to you with ill will, but there is something about you that makes them want to speak with you first. And as you are speaking, gradually, together, you find common ground. So, you have both been subdued and there is some security.
4. Someone comes to you with ill will, but you know yourself so well and you are so calm, you are invisible. They do not even see you as a target. They walk past you.
5. Someone comes to you with ill will. You are so filled with the wisdom of the world – Li Young Li called it the dao – that you walk through the world strewing beautiful ideas, beautiful songs. You just strew beauty, you do not know whether it is coming from you or through you into the world. The only way to achieve the fifth level is through the practice of poetry and painting.
We thank Linda for telling us about Kim Stafford's talk: "Peace Poet William Stafford Centennial Celebration Talk by Kim Stafford (son)," taped by the Tualatin Valley Community TV on February 13, 2014 and published on 18 Feb 2014. In this talk, William Stafford's son Kim discusses his father's daily writing practice, and how this led to a life of compassion and witness. Kim is an award-winning essayist and poet. He has taught writing at Lewis and Clark College and other colleges and workshops locally and abroad for over 30 years.
...
An essay by Kim Stafford
In February of 2014, the William Stafford Symposium had to be cancelled because of snow. In spite of driving conditions, I put on my chains and crept about the city to gather the symposium participants who had come the farthest, and we convened in a house in SW Portland, where we sat by the fire and shared stories and ideas about William Stafford as writer and witness. We were Wendy Erd from Hanoi, Abayo Animashaun form Wisconsin, Keiko Shimada from Sapporo, Japan, Fred Marchant from Boston, and Li-Young Lee from Chicago. The snow flew by outside, the fire crackled, and we went once around the room. Among the stories that were shared, here is one:
Li-Young Lee: My wife said to me, "Li-Young, you need to be active, get out and do something. All you do is sit and read and write. Go." So I went to study martial arts. I have a friend who teaches, and I told him I wanted to learn. But my teacher said to me: "You do not need to study with me. You are already a poet.” “But I wish to learn the physical arts you might teach me." "You do not understand. It’s like this: 1. At the first level for the martial artist, an opponent comes to you with ill will, and with the decision to attack you. You must defeat this person with physical skill. But once you do this, there is no security. He may come back with his friends any time, and overwhelm you.
2. At the next level, an opponent comes to you with ill will, but there is something about you that makes him hesitate to attack you. He may then retreat, and so you have overcome him without needing physical force. But still there is no security, for he may come back with his friends and overwhelm you.
3. At the next level, an opponent comes to you with ill will, but there is something about you that leads him to engage you with words instead of blows, and in time you may be able to have a dialog, and come to understand one another, and ill will is dissipated. Then there is some safety.
3. At the fourth level, there is something about you that makes you invisible. If an opponent approaches, he can’t even see you. You are so calm, so self-possessed, you are not to be seen. No harm is done.
4, But at the fifth level, through long practice, you live in keeping with the Dao, and you move through the world strewing beauty before you. Is this coming from within you? Or is this beauty the Dao moving through you, strewing good wherever you go? You can’t tell. But know this, Li-Young: the only way to cultivate this ability is through the practice of poetry, or painting."
And, Li-Young says to us, I consider William Stafford the quintessential Level 5. He traveled through the world in this way, offering his poems, disarming others, in the way of the Dao.
This essay by Kim Stafford is reprinted by permission of the author from Returning the Horse: Poems in Conversation, by Abayo Animashaun & Kim Stafford (Portland: Little Infinities, 2018).

Practicing the Complex Yes, by Kim Stafford
When you disagree with a friend,
a stranger, or a foe, how do you
reply but not say simply No?
For No can stop the conversation
or turn it into argument or worse —
the conversation that must go on, as a river
must, a friendship, a troubled nation.
So may we practice the repertoire
of the complex yes:
Yes, and in what you say I see…
Yes, and at the same time…
Yes, and what if…?
Yes, I hear you, and how…?
Yes, and there's an old story…
Yes, and as the old song goes…
Yes, and as a child told me once…
Yes. Yes, tell me more. I want to understand…
and then I want to tell you how it is for me…
— Kim Stafford
Kim Stafford's note to us on August 4, 2017: "Please feel free to use my humble poem, which was based on a conversation with two mediator friends in Alaska, where we started with the recognition we must banish two words from our conversations with those who disagree: 'No' and 'But.' Instead, we proceed in the musical key of 'Yes' and 'And'..."

Thank you, dear Dr. Rajesh Dixit, for translating this poem into Hindi!


Please click on the picture above to see it larger

Elise Boulding
Listening is the beginning of peace.
― Elise Boulding. We thank Tony Jenkins for making us aware of this quote.
...
There is no time left for anything but to make peacework a dimension of our every waking activity.
― Elise Boulding.

Kenneth Boulding
Anybody who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
― Kenneth Boulding, United States, Congress (1973). Energy reorganization act of 1973: Hearings, Ninety-third Congress, first session, on H.R. 11510, p. 248.
...
All learning takes place through the orderly loss of information.
― Kenneth Boulding. We thank Mary Lee Morrison for making us aware of this quote.

Martin Niemöller
Poem (1976 version)
Original
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

Translation:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not protest;
I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
― Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), a prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor.

Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.
...
On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées.
(One withstands the invasion of armies; one does not withstand the invasion of ideas.)
― Victor Hugo (1802-1885), Histoire d'un Crime (History of a Crime), written 1852, published 1877.

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.
Si l'âme est laissée dans les ténèbres, les péchés seront commis. Le coupable n'est pas celui qui commet le péché, mais celui qui cause les ténèbres.
― Victo Hugo, Monseigneur Bienvenu in Les misérables, 1890, p. 30.

Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.
Mes amis, retenez ceci, il n’y a ni mauvaises herbes ni mauvais hommes. Il n’y a que de mauvais cultivateurs.
― Victor Hugo, in Les misérables, 1890, p. 311.

Oscar Wilde
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
― Oscar Wilde.

Andre Gide
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
― Andre Gide. We thank Zuzana Luckay for making us aware of this quote!

Pisces mortui solum cum flumine natant.
(Only dead fish go with the flow.)

Benjamin Franklin
Time lost is never found again.
...
Humility makes great men twice honorable.
― Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America (1706–1790).

Rachel Bagby
Nothing caresses your feet as the Earth.
― Rachel Bagby, Hollyhock, 2009.

Mark Twain
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear ― not absence of fear.
― Mark Twain, we thank Brian Ward for making us aware of this quote.
...
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
― Mark Twain, we thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote.
...
Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
― Mark Twain. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.
...
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
― Mark Twain.

Humility is the only certain defense against humiliation.
― Saying.

Thomas Merton
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
― Thomas Merton, American Catholic writer and Trappist monk (1915–1968).
...
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. We thank Linda for telling us about Kim Stafford's talk: "Peace Poet William Stafford Centennial Celebration Talk by Kim Stafford (son)": Tualatin Valley Community TV taped Kim Stafford's presentation on February 13, 2014. William Stafford's son Kim discusses his father's daily writing practice, and how this led to a life of compassion and witness. Kim is an award-winning essayist and poet. He has taught writing at Lewis and Clark College and other colleges and workshops locally and abroad for over 30 years. Published on 18 Feb 2014.
...
In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
― Thomas Merton, American Catholic writer and Trappist monk (1915–1968).

John Buchan
Without humility there can be no humanity.
― John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, Scottish novelist and Unionist politician and 15th Governor General of Canada (1875-1940).

George Arliss
Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.
― George Arliss, English actor (1868-1946).

Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable.
-Anonymous.

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin
Crisis may give rise to salvation.
― Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin.

Antonio Machado
Only a fool confuses value and price.
― Antonio Machado.

Barack H. Obama
We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning.
― Barack H. Obama, Cairo, June 4, 2009.

Emery Reves
There is no "first step" toward world government. World Government is the first step.
― Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace, 1945, 1904–1981.

Richard Sennett
Respect seems so fundamental to our experience of social relations and self that we ought to define more clearly what it is.
― Richard Sennett, Respect in a World of Inequality, 2003, p. 49. We thank Werner Schirmer for this quote.

H. Jackson Brown
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins ― not by strength but by perseverance.
― H. Jackson Brown.

Thomas Jefferson
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
...
Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.
― Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd President of the United States (1801-09)

André Gide
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
― Andre Gide.

Helen Keller
When one door of happiness closes, another opens but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
― Helen Keller.

Nelson Mandela
Only free people can negotiate.
― Nelson Mandela.
...
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.
― Nelson Mandela.
...
Unsere größte Angst ist die vor unserer eigenen Stärke.
Aber wer sind wir, das wir uns klein machen?
Lassen wir unser Licht leuchten, damit es auch andere ermutigt,
ihr eigenes Licht leuchten zu lassen.
― Nelson Mandela. We thank Rainer Sagawe for making us aware of this quote!
...
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
― Nelson Mandela. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote!
...
Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
― Nelson Mandela. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote!
...
It always seems impossible until it's done.
― Nelson Mandela.
...
No one is born hating another person... People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
― Nelson Mandela. We thank Steve De Quintal for making us aware of this quote!
...
As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.
― Nelson Mandela.

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die
― Buddha
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
― Nelson Mandela
or:
In fact, not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (1999)
Charles had once remarked that holding onto a resentment was like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.
― Anne Lamotte, Crooked Little Heart (1997)
Hanging on to a resentment, someone once said, is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill someone else.
― Alice May, Surviving Betrayal (1999)
Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
― Malachy McCourt (1998)
I think resentment is when you take the poison and wait for the other person to die.
― M.T. A Sponsorship Guide for 12-Step Programs (1995)
When we hang on to resentments, we poison ourselves. As compulsive overeaters, we cannot afford resentment, since it exacerbates our disease.
― Elizabeth L. Food for Thought: Daily Meditations for Overeaters (1992)

The "practices of a Hawaiian," and the "spirit and practice of aloha"
as explained by Princess Lehu'anani in the local library of Lahaina on Maui on 29th August 2009:
1. being aware of others and recognizing that there is value in everyone
2. developing a feeling for another's needs, having the sensitivity and awareness to assist without being asked
3. not pushing another down to pull yourself up
4. forgiving a person who has injured you, and then dropping the issue permanently

Ubuntu
Umunthu ngamunthu ngabantu. [A person is a person through other people.]
― Nguni proverb
...
Africans have this thing called UBUNTU. It is about the essence of being human, it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being able to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe that a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with with yours. When I dehumanise you, I inexorably dehumanise myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms and therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in belonging.
― Desmond Tutu Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, quoted from www.cyc-net.org/today2000/today000328.html. We thank Latha Nrugham for this link.
...
Yves Musoni (Goma, Congo, currently Nashville, Tennessee, USA) wrote on 21st June: "I love the logo design of the World Dignity University! I see ubuntu wisdom through it: "None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are." Desmond Tutu.

Bible
Do unto others as you would.....
― Latha Nrugham, connecting the message of Ubuntu with the message of the Bible.
...
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
― Bible, Proverbs Chapter 11 Verse 2
...
A brother wronged is more unyielding than a fortified city; disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel.
― New international version of the Bible. We thank Lasse Moer for making us aware.
A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.
― King James Version. We thank Lasse Moer for making us aware.

The Bhagvad Gita / Mahabharata
The Bhagvad Gita teaches us that real dignity is that which inherent and inalienable as it is within us, that which is today bestowed upon us by someone will also by taken away by someone because all that has a begining, also has an end.
― Latha Nrugham, connecting the message of Ubuntu with the message of the Bible. She wrote (23rd January 2011): "This is my understanding of the message of Bhagavad Gita, which has many facets. The same understanding, I think, underlies the Declaration of Human Rights and all the other UN charters on the fundamental equality of each and every human being. It is that level that we are all so equal and that equality is inalienable. I understood the Declaration of Human Rights as based in reality, not just to-be-aspired-for idealism, only after I understood the message of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. It is this inalienable 'I' that Ramana Maharishi says we should find out within ourselves: Ask yourself: 'Who am I?' Rest in the final answer."
― Bhagvad Gita.
...
Humiliation damages the social face that we are either given or construct and is accepted by others. Any change in this face which is undesired, is unpleasant, uncomfortable and then, leads to its undoing. All those who consider this as the only and real identity, see no further meaning in living if the change is not 'corrected', even by killing others, including own primary family members. An entire text of ancient India, Mahabharata, deals with humiliation consistently. There are several dialogues in it on forgiveness. The English translation of these verses is available on the web at sacred-texts.com
― Latha Nrugham, 24th February 2018.
...
You cannot see me with your terrestrial eyes, so I will give you a divine eye.
― Bhagavadgita (Chapter 11). We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Anthony J. Marsella
Show, by your actions, that you choose peace over war, freedom over oppression, voice over silence, service over self-interest, respect over advantage, cooperation over competition, action over passivity, diversity over uniformity, and justice over all.
― Anthony J. Marsella.

Thomas Paine
Independence is my happiness and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world…”
― Thomas Paine. We thank Garry Davis, who uses this quote at the beginning of his book My Country Is the World: The Adventures of a World Citizen, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1961.
...
The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.
― Thomas Paine. We thank Kamran Mofid for bringing this quote to us.

Albert Schweitzer
The human race must be converted to a fresh mental attitude if it is not to suffer extinction. A new renaissance, much greater than that in which we emerged from the Middle Ages, is absolutely essential. Are we going to draw from the spirit enough strength to create new conditions and turn our faces once again to civilization, or are we going to draw our inspiration from our surrounding and go down with them to ruin?
― Albert Schweitzer. We thank René Wadlow for making us aware of this quote.
...
Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
― Albert Schweitzer. We thank Michael W. Fox for making us aware of this quote.
...
The only thing of importance when we depart will be the traces of love we have left behind.
― Albert Schweitzer. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote.

Howard Zinn
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, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times, p. 208.
...
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.
― Howard Zinn.

The Golden Rule in Eleven Religions
“If you seek justice, choose for others what you would choose for yourself." (Baha’i)
“One should seek for others the happiness one derives for one’s self.” (Buddhism)
“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” (Christianity)
“What you do not want done to yourself, do not unto others.” (Confucianism)
“Do naught to others which if done to thee would cause pain.” (Hinduism)
“No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” (Islam)
“We should . . . refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves.” (Jainism)
“What is hurtful to yourself, do not do to our fellow man.” (Judaism)
“As thou deemest thyself, so deem others.” (Sikkhism)
“To those who are good to me, I am also good; and to those who are not good to me, I am also good. And thus all get to be good.” (Taoism)
“Do as you would be done by.” (Zoroastrianism)
― Anthony J. Marsella ― Adapted and Expanded from Steven Blessman, December, 2001.

Arthur Ashe
True heroism is unremarkable, sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others, whatever the cost.
― Arthur Ashe. We thank Chris Bennett for this quote.

Napoleon Bonaparte
In the long run, the sword is always beaten by the spirit.
― Napoleon Bonaparte.

Glen T. Martin
The Earth Constitution is the political form of love as well as justice. Equality and dignity are not exhausted by law, but they must be legislated and protected under law. Uniting the world under the principle of unity in diversity will help create the very transformation of consciousness that they desire.
― Glen T. Martin, in a personal communication, 14th February 2010.

Diogenes
We believe and think what we chose to think and believe.
― Diogenes. We thank Michael W. Fox for making us aware of this quote.

Henry David Thoreau
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
― Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist. We thank Michael W. Fox for making us aware of this quote.
...
Goodness is the only investment which never fails.
― Henry David Thoreau. We thank Ardian Adžanela for making us aware of this quote. He shared with us his own formulations: "If Goodness competition were as popular as sports, the world would enjoy much more Peace and Proseprity," and "If we compete in Goodness as much as we compete in sports, greediness, personal popularity, prestige and other things, we would see a much better world."
...
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
― Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist.

John Gilmore
The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
― John Gilmore, American computer science innovator, Libertarian, Internet activist, and one of the founders of Electronic Frontier Foundation. See also www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/.

Michael W. Fox
The Empathosphere is real, and it is through compassion's sympathetic resonance with the Earth and all who dwell therein that we may yet evolve, and give Life a chance before we extinguish the life and beauty of our planet Earth and become even less human than we are already with cloned animals and genetically engineered crops.
― Michael W. Fox, in a personal communication on March 11, 2010.

Andrew Masondo
Understand the differences; act on the commonalities.
― Andrew Masondo, African National Congress.

Celia Kitzinger
Feminist understandings of power have shifted from unitary notions of something bad when men have it and something good when women have it, towards recognition of its multiple levels of operation. Power is not something we have. but something we swim in, a matter of discourse and practice rather than quantity."
― Celia Kitzinger, "Feminism Psychology and the Paradox of Power," in Feminism and Psychology, Volume I, 1991.

Yoav Peck
The grass is always greener where you water it.
― Yoav Peck.

Rollo May
Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt.
― Rollo May. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

John Tarrant
Compassion is something that needs to be encouraged, like an endangered species, perhaps.
― John Tarrant. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Lao Tzu
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
― Lao Tzu. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Irwin Corey
If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
― Irwin Corey. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Mark Nepo
To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
― Mark Nepo. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Barbara De Angelis
You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
― Barbara De Angelis. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Ursula LeGuin
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
― Ursula LeGuin. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

J.E. Buckrose
Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded, it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again – this is the brave and happy life. – J.E. Buckrose, author (1868-1931). We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Emmet Fox
Bless a thing and it will bless you. Curse it and it will curse you. If you bless a situation, it has no power to hurt you.
– Emmet Fox, spiritual leader (1886-1951). We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Ambrose Redmoon
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
― Ambrose Redmoonv. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Robert Schuller
Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.
― Robert Schuller. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Hermann Hesse
It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.
― Hermann Hesse. We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Alexander Pope
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
– Alexander Pope, British poet (1688-1744). We thank Yoav Peck for making us aware of this quote.

Frederic Bastiat
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
― Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist. We thank Rodrigue Tremblay for this quote.

Steven Weinberg
I think that on balance the moral influence of religion has been awful. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.
― Steven Weinberg, 1979 Nobel Laureate in Physics. We thank Rodrigue Tremblay for this quote.

Henry Ford
It is well enough that people ... do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
― Henry Ford, American industrialist. We thank Rodrigue Tremblay for this quote.

Dave Ramsey
We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.
— Dave Ramsey. We thank Ardian Adžanela for this quote.

Diogenes
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world
― Diogenes (412-323 BCE), we thank Anthony Marsella for making us aware of this quote.

In women, courage is often mistaken for insanity
― Doctor in Iron Jawed Angels (2004 film about the American women's suffrage movement during the 1910s). We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote.

Thornton Wilder
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
― Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Albert Einstein
Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives.
― Albert Einstein. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Many Faiths, One Religion
― Rig Veda, Gandhi, Kant in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Immanuel Kant
The spirit of commerce, which is incompatible with war, sooner or later gains the upper hand in every state. As the power of money is perhaps the most dependable of all the powers (means) included under the state power, states see themselves forced, without any moral urge, to promote honorable peace and by mediation to prevent war wherever it threatens to break out.
― Immanuel Kant, in Perpetual Peace. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.
...
Everything has either a price or dignity.
― Immanuel Kant, in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, second edition, Immanuel Kant and Lewis White Beck, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1997, page 51, paragraph 3. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.
...
Love of ease does more harm than all the ills of life.
and
Children should be allowed to learn everything as if it were in play.
― Immanuel Kant and Annette Churton, in On Education, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003, pages 52-53, 67 (respectively). We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.
...
Eternal peace is no "empty idea, but a task which, gradually solved, steadily approaches its end."
― Immanuel Kant. We thank Margrethe Tingstad for making us aware of this quote.

Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener
There are two stories here and there is a quality of transcendence ― seeing beyond the 'Jewish Narrative' or the 'Palestinian Narrative' ― to a perspective that can humanize both sides and hear the 'other' story. A transcender after all has abandoned the exclusive quality of his or her narrative of origin.
― Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener (1999, CT USA). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

Samira Shaa'ban Srur Fadil
During the many years of my career as a Hebrew teacher for Palestinians in Gaza, and as an Arabic teacher for the Jews and foreigners at Ulpan Akiva in Israel, I have heard the same kinds of questions and comments expressed by both sides, showing how ignorant we are about one another. We know nothing about each other, in spite of being the children of sister Semitic languages and having the same cultural roots.
― Samira Shaa'ban Srur Fadil (1997, Palestinian Abraham Language School, Rimal, Gaza). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

Pat Speight
Story is the shortest distance between people.
― Pat Speight (Irish storyteller). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

George Eliot
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.
― George Eliot, Middlemarch. We thank Zuzana Luckay for making us aware of this quote.
...
It will never rain more roses. When we want more roses, we must plant more roses.
― George Eliot. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

Izzeldin Abuelaish
It is the future of the children that should spur both sides toward peace
― Izzeldin Abuelaish in I Shall not Hate. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

Ikenna Ezeibe
How can we have peace if we don't build relationships?
― Ikenna Ezeibe ― Abuja, Nigeria in Dialogue in Nigeria: Muslims & Christians Creating Their Future. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain!
― Anonymous. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

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 thank Kamran Mofid for this quote. See also 'Brexit, Trump and the Failure of Our Universities to Pursue Wisdom', by Kamran Mofid, Globalization for the Common Good, 26 November 2016.

Socrates
Socrates refused to be paid for his philosophical teachings. Just as charging for beauty, he argued, is prostitution, so it is that money cannot be exchanged for wisdom.
― "What Can the Ancient Greeks Do for Us? Lesson 2: The First Mention of Money in Classical Greece," by Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian, August 1, 2011. We thank Kamran Mofid for making us aware.
...
I am neither a citizen of Athens, nor of Greece, but of the world.
― Socrates.
...
Already Socrates deemed himself wise because ‘what I do not know I do not think I know’.
― Plato (399 BCE/1966). Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 1. Translated by Harold North Fowler. London: William Heinemann. Socrates went to a politician who had the reputation of wisdom, but after speaking with him, Socrates found out that this man was not as wise as he had supposed himself to be. Socrates thought to himself that he was wiser than this man, because ‘what I do not know I do not think I know’. See also the Dunning-Kruger cognitive bias that states that the most incompetent often are also the most confident, while the intelligent doubt their own abilities. Evelin Lindner in 2020: "During the first decades of my life, I overburdened family, friends, and peers by sharing my reflections with them without anticipating that many may misunderstand my description as prescription and feel threatened. Initially, I accepted their rejection and let it define me — sometimes I discounted my own abilities and views, sometimes I defended them too harshly, always striving to understand the Dunning-Kruger bias better. I slowly understood that both meek acceptance and harsh rejection worsen the situation as they multiply the socio-psychological damage of the cognitive bias. The scapegoat does not help the situation by self-hating nor by other-hating, including hating the self-haters or hating oneself for self-hating".
...
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
― The figure called Socrates in the 1980 book Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, and his saying. See also Buckminster Fuller, and his saying: You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Günter Grass
Truth exists nearly always in the plural.
― Günter Grass iIn a poem written for his Nobel Prize speech, December 7, 1999. We thank Donna Hicks for making us aware of this quote.

Kofi Annan
Let us remember that the most expensive peacekeeping operation costs far less than the cheapest war.
― Kofi Annan. We thank Sylvester Lahai for making us aware of this quote.

Gregory Baum
True dialogue takes place only among equals, for the master will listen only as long as his/her power remains intact, and the servant will limit his communication to which he/she cannot be punished.
― Gregory Baum. We thank Ashraf Salama and Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

William Blake
I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the Immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination
― William Blake, Jerusalem. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

The longest journey starts with a single step

Mitch Albom
Love is the only rational act.
Mitch Albom, American Author. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

M.C. Beaton
Religion is for those who believe in hell, and spiritual belief is for those who've been there.
M.C. Beaton. We thank Mark Singer and Pegge Patten for making us aware of this quote.

John Keats
Beauty is truth, truth beauty ― that is all you know, and all you need to know.
― John Keats. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Conflict is inevitable ― war is optional

Ardian Adžanela
One dignifying message a day keeps the clouds away.
― Ardian Adžanela, old proverb.

Solon
Justice will not come until those who are not hurt feel just as indignant as those who are hurt.
― Solon, c. 638 BC–558 BC, Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet.

Alexander Graham Bell
Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.
― Alexander Graham Bell. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Julia Butterfly Hill
We cannot have peace on the Earth unless we also have peace with the Earth.
― Julia Butterfly Hill. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this poem.

Edwin Markham
Outwitted:
He drew a circle that shut me out -―
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
― Edwin Markham, Oregon poet laureate, 1923-1940. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this poem.

Thank you, dear Dr. Rajesh Dixit, for translating this poem into Hindi!

Oscar Arias
The global arms trade, and its accompanying glut of military spending, continues to represent the single most significant perversion of worldwide priorities known today. It buttresses wars, criminal activity and ethnic violence; destabilises emerging democracies; inflates military budgets to the detriment of health care, education and basic infrastructure; and exaggerates global relationships of inequality and underdevelopment. Without massive and coordinated action, militarism will continue to be a scourge on our hopes for a more peaceful and just 21st century.
― Oscar Arias, Former President of Costa Rica Nobel Peace Laureate. We thank Colin Archer, General Secretary of the International Peace Bureau, for this quote!

King Hussein of Jordan
Nothing is more useless in developing a nation's economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development more than the financial burden of war.
― King Hussein of Jordan. We thank Colin Archer, General Secretary of the International Peace Bureau, for this quote!

Maya Angelou
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
― Maya Angelou. We thank Philipos Petros Gile for this quote!

John Dana
Finding our way to dignity, where we all belong.
― John Dana

Friedrich Nietzsche
What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.
― Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Gay Science, original title Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. We thank Jean-Marie Guéhenno for this quote.
...
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
― Friedrich Nietzsche. We thank Mark Singer for this quote.
...
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
― Friedrich Nietzsche.

Lila Watson
If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together...
― Lila Watson/Austrialian Aborginal Woman. We thank Onaje Muid for this quote.

Pablo Neruda
There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song ― but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
― Part of Pablo Neruda's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. We thank Eva Haller for this quote!

Amory Lovins
Markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.
― Amory Lovins.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.

Leadership is:
•  Caring more than others think is wise
•  Risking more than others think is safe
•  Dreaming more than others think is practical
•  Expecting more than others think is possible
― Detective James Shanahan, at the 2010 Workshop on Transforming Humiliation and Violent Conflict, Columbia University, New York, December 9-10, 2010.

Outwitted, by Edwin Markham
He drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
― Edwin Markham (1852-1940). We thank Linda Hartling for bringing this poem to us!

John Gardner
What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities, disguised as insoluble problems.
― John Gardner, former US Cabinet member and seminal thinker.

Carl Jung
We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
― Carl Gustav Jung. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.
...
What you resist, persists.
― Carl Gustav Jung.

James A. Joseph
We live between two worlds—an old order that is dying but not yet dead, and a new order that is conceived but not fully born.
― Ambassador James A. Joseph. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

William James
The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can change their lives by modifying their mental attitudes.
― William James, American psychologist and philosopher of the 19th century. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote! There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

Francisco Gomes de Matos:
One of the serious gaps in the preparation of researchers is TERMINOLOGY SCIENCE. Since we deal with concepts-terms, we should be minimally knowledgeable about the form-meaning-use of terms in our specific areas! FREQUENCY, too, is important (the DICTIONARIES OF FREQUENCY are being published, see the Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary American English, by Mark Davies and Dee Gardner, published by Routledge, 2010, and, also by the same publisher, Frequency Dictionary of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.)

When the words injustice and indignity entered written English:
Justice made itself visible in English from 1175
Injustice entered written English from 1350 (Humiliation, too!)
Dignity was born visually in English from 1150
Indignity made its written debut from 1575
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 15th January 2011. His source: The Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1997. Published by Random House, New York.
...
Mercy ― 1120; Pity ― 1175; Compassion -1300; Humaneness ― 1500; Sympathy ― 1560; Commiseration ― 1585.
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 24th March 2011, source: The Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1997. Published by Random House, New York,
...
Self-worth was coined in 1960, self-respect appeared in writing from 1650, self-regard 1585.
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 16th July 2011, source: The Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1997. Published by Random House, New York,
...
Cruelty (1175), Killing (1175), Butchering (1250), Slaughter (1250), Murder (1300), Atrocity (1525), Torture ( 1530), Brutality (1560), Massacre (1575), Terrorism (1785)
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 18th December 2011, source: The Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1997. Published by Random House, New York,
...
The more peacefully we communicate and the more humanizingly we interact, the more human dignity we will elevate and relational dignity will become a fact.
― Francisco Gomes de Matos' Plea for Communicative Dignity, epitaph in his chapter in The Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace, edited by Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (Springer, 2011)
...
Education is the power to appreciate life
― Brigham Young, epitaph in Francisco Gomes de Matos' chapter in The Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace, edited by Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (Springer, 2011)
...
Nonviolence is the greatest and most active force in the world. One cannot be passively nonviolent. One person who can express ahimsa in life exercises a force superior to all the force of brutality.
― Gandhi, epitaph in Francisco Gomes de Matos' chapter in The Psychological Components of Sustainable Peace, edited by Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman (Springer, 2011)

Let's never harm
Let's never hate
Let's never hurt
Let's never humiliate!
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 11th January 2011

Everybody let's respect
and Dignity we'll perfect
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 7th February 2011

As the concept of EQUALITY is central to DEMOCRACY,
so the concept of  DIGNITY is central to HUMANITY.
As the concept of SOLIDARITY is central to SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY,
so the concept of HUMILITY is central to TRANQUILITY
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 11th March 2011

The FDCAE says that DIGNITY is among the 5,000 most frequently used words in English.
•  The ADJECTIVES that cooccur with DIGNITY: human, great, personal, quiet, EQUAL, inherent
•  The VERBS most frequently used together with DIGNITY: treat, maintain, die, restore, lose, RESPECT, preserve, uphold, constitute
•  The NOUNS that collocate (hang out together with) DIGNITY: sense, RIGHT, person, honor, freedom, worth, grace, value, BEING
(Capitalization by Francisco Gomes de Matos)
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 16th May 2011

Roads of INdignity may lead us astray
but Roads of DIGNITY will show us the right way.
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 15th November 2011

The term dignilogue has been coined by Francisco Gomes de Matos, a peace linguist and Co-founder of the World Dignity University initiative. He created the following rhymed reflections (6th May 2012):
A new concept for Dignity Studies: DIGNILOGUE
Rhymed Reflections:
DIGNITY calls for human character elevation
DIGNITY also requires conduct amelioration
What about the improvement of communication?
The quality of our interactions we should elevate
For communicative dignity everywhere we should educate
If our daily dialogues we want to dignify
Our communicative intentions let´s edify
If creatively DIGNITY and DIALOGUE we integrate
through DIGNILOGUE we`ll be able to communicate
― Patrick Hogan, Editor of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language Sciences commented (14th May 2012):
"Hi! Thanks for your notes. It makes sense to combine a sense of dignity with dialogue.
Best wishes!
Yours, Patrick"

Let's change a world of knowledge platitude
into a world of dignity and wisdom plenitude!
― Francisco Gomes de Matos, 25th November 2016

Edward Sapir
Language is a great force of socialization, probably the greatest that exists.
― Edward Sapir, "Language", Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol.ix, 1933. We thank Francisco Gomes de Matos for making us aware of this quote.

Frank Pavone
This misunderstanding often causes people to criticize those whose individual or group ministry focuses on a specific issue exclusively . . . It is somewhat like accusing the Alcoholics Anonymous movement of not doing anything about the arms race . . . [and] it can tend to expect the impossible, and expect people and groups to use their already limited time and resources to address any number of issues, any one of which could easily require a lifetime of effort. . . . Yet there is a truth here which must be stressed: no person or group is free to be unconcerned about all the attacks on human dignity, nor are we free to ignore the interdependence of all the efforts on behalf of human life. There are numerous activities being carried out in defense of human dignity. There may not be room for all of them on our schedule, but we must make room for all of them in our heart.
― Frank Pavone, Director, Priests for Life. We thank Francisco Gomes de Matos for making us aware of this quote.

Dignity Quotes
― We thank Ardian Adžanela for making us aware of this site.

Gore Vidal
When Confucius was asked what would be the first thing he would do if he were to lead the state, he said, ‘rectify the language.’ Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action. Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. Words must be so twisted as to justify an empire that has now ceased to exist, much less make sense. Is rectification of our system possible for us?
– Gore Vidal, found on The Media Education Foundation.

Amin Malouf
A situation without precedent requires solutions without precedent.
― Amin Malouf. We thank Federico Mayor for this quote.

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
― William Ernest Henley, (1849–1903), an English poet, critic and editor. a poem that inspired Nelson Mandela.

The Tagalog term for "nonviolence," or alay dangal, means to "offer dignity"
― We thank Michael Nagler for making us aware of this connection! (The standardized form of Tagalog is commonly called Filipino.)

Anonymous protest poem 1764 or 1821
They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leave the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose
― Anonymous protest poem 1764 or 1821.

Vince Lombardi
I believe that good must be done not for a reward but for goodness itself, despite the rank ambitions that others pursue. I am inclined to believe that ambition is the death of true inspiration ― to be inspired, to live in the spirit ― that which is the intrinsic, creative source of the universe itself.
― Vincent L. Lombardi, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University, 11/16/09. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Robert Frost
I am not a teacher, I am an awakener.
― Robert Frost. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Paul Chappell
Anyone who thinks ending war is naive hasn't put enough thought into it. What's naive is to think that wars can continue and humanity will survive.
― Paul Chappell, from an interview in the April 2011 issue of The Sun Magazine.

Rav Philip S. Berg
People ask me, "Why are we here?" We are here to complete the final step in the evolutionary process, the simple step that has eluded humanity for thousands of years: Treat everyone around you with human dignity.
― Philip S. Berg. We thank Latha Nrugham for making us aware of this quote.

Rabbi Tarfon
You are not required to complete the task [of tikkun olam, healing the world]; neither are you allowed to lay it down.
You don't measure your individual contribution against the totality of the task. You measure your contribution against the totality of your life.
― attributed to Rabbi Tarfon (as written in the Talmud). We thank Helen Fox for making us aware of this quote.

Irwin Abrams
We work for the unseen harvest.
― Irwin Abrams, quoted in Susan G. Cannon, Think, Care, Act: Teaching for a Peaceful Future (Information Age Publishing, 2011).

Eli Sagan
The French Revolution has been going on for a hundred years before it started.
― We thank Michael Britton for sharing with us that Eli Sagan shared this sentence to him!

Henrik Ibsen
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
― Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906), a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. We thank Michael Holmboe for making us aware of this quote!

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
― Popularized by the Yiddish linguist Max Weinreich.

Mark Singer
Being "for peace" is not the same as being "anti-war"
Being "for peace" is not the same as Kant's being "for perpetual peace."
Kant might say that peace that is not based on love will not last.
― Mark Singer, 24th May 2011

Michael White
Every person who carries universal peace in their hearts represents an Imaginal cell. In every nation there are groups of these cells that have begun to cluster together to form an organ of peace.
― Michael White, with respect to what is happening to humanity. We thank Brigitte Volz and Scilla Elworthy for making us aware of this quote.

J. B. Lacordaires
Entre le fort et le faible c'est la liberté qui opprime et la loi qui affranchit. (Between the weak and the strong, between the rich and the poor, between the lord and the slave, it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free.)
― Jean-Baptiste Henri-Dominique Lacordaire (1802–1861). We thank Audun Øfsti for making us aware of this quote.

Isaiah Berlin
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance ― these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective… seldom predictable, at times incompatible.
― Isaiah Berlin, Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century. We thank S.M. Miller for making us aware of this quote.
...
Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.
― Isaiah Berlin, 1969, p. xlv. The 2017 documentary film Freedom for the Wolf by Rupert Russell takes its title from Isaiah Berlin. It is about the idea of freedom and how it is being hollowed out by the "wolves." Yet, people all over the globe – from Tunisian rappers to Indian comedians, from America's #BlackLivesMatter activists to Hong Kong's students – struggle to regain freedom for the "sheep." We thank Nicklas Viki for having made me aware of this film!

Edward Said
Equality or nothing.
― Edward Said. We thank Sam Bahour for making us aware of this quote.

Sam Bahour
Losing hope is not an option.
― Sam Bahour, Palestinian-American from Youngstown, Ohio, living and working in Palestine.

Romain Rolland
Quand l'ordre est injustice, le désordre est déjà un commencement de justice.
― Romain Rolland.

Helen Exley
Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labelled "this could change your life!"
― Helen Exley. We thank Margrethe Tingstad for making us aware of this quote!

Nordahl Grieg
Skaper vi menneskeverd, skaper vi fred.
― Nordahl Grieg. We thank Margrethe Tingstad for making us aware of this quote!

Einar Gerhardsen
Jeg har ikke bare et grunnsyn som holder i bunn og grunn, men også et gangsyn som skifter fra gang til gang. ― Einar Gerhardsen, quote taken from www.samtiden.no/. We thank Margrethe Tingstad for making us aware of this quote!

Sjur Bergan
Fundamental values must come from more than value added.
― Sjur Bergan, Council of Europe, Head of the Department of Higher Education and History Teaching

Those, who too hastily believe, stop asking and thinking.

John F. Kennedy
If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
― John F. Kennedy. We thank Brian Ward for making us aware of this quote.

Robert F. Kennedy
The Gross National Product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them. GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads. And if GNP includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
― Remarks of Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968. We thank Brian Ward for making us aware of this quote.

Thomas Aquinas
When you hear a statement, never ask: 'Who' made the statement? You should only ask: 'What" does the statement say? If it is good, if it is conducive to the welfare of all people without exception, then proceed to follow it even if it comes from a garbage man. If it is not good or it is conducive to the welfare of some but to the exclusion of others, then reject it even it comes from the king."11
― Thomas Aquinas, quoted from Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Press, 1995. We thank Charles Mercieca for making us aware of this quote that calls for the avoidance of what social psychology calls "reactive devaluation."

Nordahl Grieg
Vi er så få i dette landet, hver en fallen er en venn og bror. [We are so few in this country, each one who has fallen is a friend and brother.]
― Nordahl Grieg (1902-1943). Evelin Lindner (24th July 2011): "This saying is not just relevant for Norway. Everyone on this tiny planet Earth, in our entire human family, is a friend, a sister, and a brother!"

Ole Petter Ottersen
There is hope. I was struck by a statement by one of the young AUF leaders that narrowly escaped the massacre at Utøya: "If there can be so much hatred in one man, imagine how much compassion and love can be mustered in the entire Norwegian population."
― Ole Petter Ottersen, Rector of the University of Oslo, in a personal communication on 24th July 2011, after the horrific violence that shook Norway on 22nd July 2011; Stine Renate Håheim was the young leader who said: "Om én mann kan vise så mye hat, tenk hvor mye kjærlighet vi alle kan vise sammen."

Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra
We need agents of social change who can turn the tides of violence in favour of peace. It is a herculean task, but it is need of the hour. When I think about this, the great souls like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aung San, Martin Luther King Jr. come to my mind. The tragedy is that we have fossilized our religious systems, and forgot to follow the religious founders. We seldom remember Jesus's Love Thy Neighbour when facing our rivals, or Buddha's Middle Path by means of peace and non-violence, or Veda's Vasudhiava Kutumbakam (the whole world is one family), and the very meaning of Islam is peace.
― Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra, in reaction to the events of 22nd July 2011 in Oslo.

Julie Nelson
Climate change is changing not only our physical world, but also our intellectual, social, and moral worlds. We are realizing that our situation is profoundly unsafe, interdependent, and uncertain. ...
This essay suggests three major requirements: first, that we take action; second, that we work together; and third, that we focus on avoiding the worst, rather than obtaining the optimal.
― Julie A. Nelson, Ethics and the Economist: What Climate Change Demands of Us. GDAE Working Paper 11-02, by Julie A Nelson May 2011

Daniel Quinn
What we need are not new programs but new paradigms.
― Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael. We thank Howard Richards for making us aware of this quote.

Antoine de Saint Exupery
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
― Antoine de Saint Exupery. We thank Yves Musoni for making us aware of this quote.
...
One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
― Antoine de Saint Exupery. We thank Yves Musoni for making us aware of this quote.

Juan Gabriel Valdés
Any international intervention which seeks to supplant, rather than support and strengthen the domestic architecture is likely to fail, and possibly fuel more not less conflict.
― Juan Gabriel Valdés, The Evolution of Conflict and its Implications for Peacemaking Summary, Spring 2011, Rapporteur, Josie Lianna Kaye.

Jorge Luis Borges
The past is indestructible, sooner or later things turn up again. One of the things that turn up is a plan to destroy the past.
― Jorge Luis Borges. We thank Rita Anita Linger for making us aware of this quote.

Warren
Without the act (of committing to a point of view), our inquiry remains ghostly and impotent, but without the recognition of ambiguity, our knowledge degenerates into ideology and our acts so easily lead to systems of totalitarian oppression, irrational indifference, and human sorrow.
― Warren. We thank Patrick Gruczkun for making us aware of this quote.

Muriel A. Howard
Let us show "pathological optimism"!
― Muriel A. Howard, President of the American Association of State Colleges & Universities (AASCU), on 29th June 2011, at the conference "Reimagining Democracy," in Oslo, Norway.

Mette Lebech
Human dignity can be fostered, but not created.
One of the best ways of fostering it is through genuine dialogue, also in its organized forms, i.e. education, political discussions, participation in all societal activities. The creation of good structures in which human dignity can be fostered is a political task, which is never ending, just like household chores. Thus, there is not one way of doing it, but a multitude of adjustments that continually has to be performed. The core is kindness, i.e. the recognition of the fact that we are of the same kind.
― Mette Lebech, in a personal message, 10th August 2011.

Amartya Sen
The logic of the market must be restrained and supplemented by other logics, many of them non-commercial.
― Amartya Sen. We thank Howard Richards for making us aware of this quote.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
― An English language children's rhyme. It persuades the child victim of name-calling to ignore the taunt, to refrain from physical retaliation, and to remain calm and good-natured. The phrase is found at least as early as 1872, where it is presented as advice in Tappy's Chicks: and Other Links Between Nature and Human Nature, by Mrs. George Cupples. We thank Brian Ward fo rmaking us aware of this.
See Susanne Quinger and her version: "Stones will break my Bones … But Words will sink my Soul."

Worry is the misuse of imagination.
― We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

There is none so blind as those who will not see (none so deaf as those who will not hear).
― We thank Brian Ward fo rmaking us aware of this.
See also:
― Il n'est si mavais sours que chuis ch'oër ne voeilt, there is no person so deaf as the one who does not wish to hear.
― mid 14th-cent. Fr.
• Who is so deafe, or so blynde, as is hee, That wilfully will nother here nor see?
― 1546 J. Heywood Dialogue of Proverbs ii. ix. K4.
• I perceyve by thys geare, That none is so deaf, as who wyll not heare.
― c 1570 T. Ingelend Disobedient Child C2V.
• I have not interfered in this Trial one word, only in my Applications to you and Mr. Foxcraft, both of which turn a deaf Ear: for none so deaf as those who will not hear.
― 1766 in B. Franklin Papers (1969) XIII. 18.
• "Don't worry, Vicar. Of course you've got to be up at the parish church more than here. He ought to know that but there you are, there's none so deaf as him who won't listen."
― 1993 F. Secombe ‘Hello, Vicar!’ in Chronicles of a Vicar (1999) i. 8.

Be what you are ― and be that.
Anonymous. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Michel Foucault
Our greatest political problem is lack of imagination.
― Michel Foucault, as referred to by Howard Richards, Joanna Swanger, and Alicia Cabezudo.

We were always equals. Love makes people so.
― Return to Cranford, Part Two, Britain: BBC Films, 2010.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
― African Proverb.

Albert Camus
Live to the point of tears.
― Albert Camus. We thank Tonya Hammer for making us aware of this quote.

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

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
― Native American Proverb.

John Todd
Tomorrow is our permanent address.
― John Todd.

Honoré de Balzac
Finance, like time, devours its own children.
― Honoré de Balzac.

Amy Goodman
Go to where the silence is and say something.
― Amy Goodman, investigative journalist.

Leonard Cohen
There is a crack in everything-that's how the light gets in.
― Leonard Cohen. We thank Laura S. Brown for making us aware of this quote.

Warren Wagar
... the peace movement has tended to lose itself in narrow and doctrinaire byways. A movement whose only goal is peace (i.e. the absence of war) will never achieve it. One might as well start a happiness movement. Peace is the bliss and felicity that we may live to earn if we create a new world civilization; yet, in and of itself, it is nothing at all.
― W. Warren Wagar, Building the City of Man: Outilnes of a World Civilization (New York, 1971), p. 54. We thank Adriano Sverko for making us aware of this quote.

Lyn Beth Neylon
You are a human being. You have rights inherent in that reality. You have dignity and worth that exists prior to law.
― Lyn Beth Neylon. We thank Ardian Adžanela for sending us this quote.

Alan Bloom
It may well be that a society's greatest madness seems normal to itself.
― Alan Bloom. We thank Michael Wilson Fox for making us aware of this quote.

Edmund Burke
For evil to flourish, all that is needed is for good people to do nothing.
― Edmund Burke. We thank Michael Wilson Fox for making us aware of this quote.

Diogenes
We believe and think what we chose to think and believe.
― Diogenes. We thank Michael Wilson Fox for making us aware of this quote.

Bell Hooks
To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility.
― Bell Hooks, in Brené Brown (2011). Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.

Brené Brown
When looking at the attributes associated with masculinity, the researchers identified these as important attributes for men: emotional control, primacy of work, control over women, and pursuit of status.
― Brené Brown (2011). Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, p. 52.

Seamus Heaney
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
― Seamus Heaney. We thank Paul Raskin for making us aware of this poem.

The Fallen Elm
Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways
So thy old shadow must a tyrant be.
Thou'st heard the knave, abusing those in power
Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free.
― John Clare, describing the felling of the tree he loved, presumably by his landlord, that grew beside his home.

Isaac Newton
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
― Isaac Newton (1642-1727), mathematician and physicist. We thank Libby and Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote. There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

Carl Sagan
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known.
― Carl Sagan, scientist (1934-1996) in The Small Blue Dot. We thank Libby and Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote.
...
Knowledge is preferable to ignorance – better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring faith. If we create some cosmic purpose – then let us find ourselves a worthy goal!
― Carl Sagan.
...
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.
― Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, 1996, p. 29.

Desmond Tutu
Go forth and transform your personal relationships, your community, your world. We are all agents of transfiguration.
― Desmond Tutu (San Francisco, 06 March 2011). We thank Libby and Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote.

Max von Sydow
If you cross the bridge, I'll tell you my story.
― Max von Sydow in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011). We thank Libby and Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote. There are more quotes at traubman.igc.org/wisdom.htm, and you will find useful quotes at the top of each pages linked to traubman.igc.org/messages.htm.

The Beatles ― Lennon–McCartney
Tomorrow Never Knows
Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream,
It is not dying, it is not dying
Lay down all thought, surrender to the void,
Is it shining? Is it shining?
That you may see the meaning of within
It is being, it is being
Love is all and love is everyone
Is it knowing? Is it knowing?
That ignorance and hate may mourn the dead
It is believing, it is believing
But listen to the colour of your dreams
Is it not living, is it not living
Or play the game "Existence" to the end
Of the beginning, of the beginning
― The Beatles. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of these lyrics.

D. H. Lawrence
Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.
― D. H. Lawrence. We thank Michael Cohen and Stephen Ugwu for making us aware of this quote.

Homi Bhabha
It is from those who have suffered the sentence of history—subjugation, domination, diaspora, displacement—that we learn our most enduring lessons for living and thinking.
― Homi Bhabha. We thank Frederick Abraham for making us aware of this quote.

Derek Hook
. . . the phenomena of a 'white mask psychology' such as socially induced 'inferiority complexes', practices of 'lactification', the neurotic compulsion to be white, etc.—Fanon shows how what might otherwise be understood within a purely psychological framework is far better explained in political terms, that is, with reference to understandings of racialized power, colonial violence and cultural subordination.
― Derek Hook (2005). A critical psychology of the postcolonial. Theory and Psychology, 15 (4), 475-503, p. 481. We thank Frederick Abraham for making us aware of this quote.

John Gerard Ruggie
There has been a remarkable growth in transnational microeconomic links over the past thirty years or so, comprising markets and production facilities that are designated by the awkward term 'offshore'. . . In this offshore area, sourcing, production, and marketing are organized within 'global factories,' in some instances 'global offices,' and most recently the "global lab'—real-time transnational information flows being the raw material of all three. Financial transactions take place in various "Euro" facilities, which may be housed in Tokyo, New York, and European financial centers but which are considered to exist in an extranational realm. Cross-investment among the leading firms or other means of forging transnationalized changes increasingly are the norm. Trade is made up disproportionately of intrafirm transactions as opposed to the conventional arms-length exchange that is the staple of economic models and policy. And, the financial sector, which historically (and in theory) is assumed to follow and service the "real" sector, now dwarfs it completely. "To conclude, material changes may have awakened both a need and a desire for this broad transformation in the prevailing social episteme, which produced fundamentally new spatial forms. And entrepreneurial rulers could and did try to exploit those new images and ideas to advance their interests. Nevertheless, the breadth and depth of these changes argue, at the very least, in favor of a relative autonomy for the realm of social epistemology.
― John Gerard Ruggie (1993). Territoriality and beyond: Problematizing modernity in international relations. International Organization, 47(1), 139-174, pp. 141-160. We thank Frederick Abraham for making us aware of this quote.

Boaventura de Souza Santos
We have the right to be equal whenever difference diminishes us; we have the right to be different whenever equality decharacterizes us.
― Boaventura de Souza Santos. We thank Gabriela Saab for making us aware of this quote.
...
Temos formado conformistas incompetentes e precisamos de rebeldes competentes / We have formed incompetent conformists and what we need are competent rebels.
― Boaventura de Souza Santos. We thank Gabriela Saab for making us aware of this quote.

Rodney King
As far as having peace within myself, the one way I can do that is forgiving the people who have done wrong to me. It causes more stress to build up anger. Peace is more productive.
― Spencer Bailey, interviewing Rodney King for the New York Times Magazine.

Ernest Becker
Human beings are capable of the highest generosity and self-sacrifice. But they have to feel and believe that what they are doing is truly heroic, timeless, and supremely meaningful. The crisis of modern society is precisely that the youth no longer feel heroic in the plan for action that their culture has set up ... the problem of heroics is the central one of human life.
― Ernest Becker, Denial of Death.

Dr. Panagiotis (Takis) D. Ioannides
Poet/tess, you need both will and ordeal, if you aspire to heaven and not fade into non existence.
― Takis Ioannides, Student of this life…, 20th April 2012.
...
If you have a gifted mind and a soul endowed with strength, if you are conscious of what is moral and needs fathomless give life to your work, form the unformed, yet not with the expression of denial, but make your work self-luminous.
― Takis Ioannides, Student of this life…, 20th April 2012.
...
Humility is the self annihilation and simultaneous rebirth of the human soul in the fields of trials, in every step of its life.
― Takis Ioannides, Student of this life…, 12th April 2012.
...
Impassable are the hopes of mortals, without the power of values at the helm.
― Takis Ioannides, Student of this life…, 12th April 2012.
...
Planet Earth is so little that fits in the palm of a honest man.
― Plato. We thank Takis Ioannides for making us aware of this quote!
...
Dear Linda and Evelin:
Humility makes you great.
Respect makes you human.
Honesty makes you special.
Simplicity makes you unique.
Dignity makes you valuable.
― Takis Ioannides, Student of this life…, 14th July 2021.

DIGNITY ― The Definition of the well-educated human By Socrates (469b.C. ― 399 B.C.)
Athens, Greece, 4th December 2011
Approximately 2.500 years ago, my ancestor and teacher Socrates defined the well-educated man by saying, “the well-education is a matter of attitude…”.
Consequently he didn’t speak at all about the collecting of knowledge, but he considered as well-educated the humans who are skilled with the following:
• The man who is able to control any situation, but he is not controlled by situations.
• The man who faces all the events with braveness and logic.
• The man who is honest in his converses.
• The man who manages to face all bad events and any obnoxious human, amiably.
• The man who may control his appetence and delectations.
• The man who was never vanquished by his infelicities and collapses.
• The man who was never decayed by his victories and glories.
• The man who managed to “find” and “know” him-self.
As a conclusion on the above, as a student of life, I believe that the unity of faith in both the spiritual freedom of a man and his moral conscience, is mandatory. In others words, the meaning, the purpose and the constant practice, the constant daily struggle of the “athlete” man in the difficult arena of life, to conquer mentality of completeness and therefore the whole freedom, which will earn him the true meaning of life and the deep sense of solidarity with his fellows, is the most valuable safeguards for human existence and DIGNITY.
― Takis Ioannides, Student of this life…

Without a beginning, there is nothing to worry about the end.
― Buddhist Saying. We thank Rachel Aspögård for making us aware of this quote.

Dharma Bums
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge.
― Dharma Bums, On The Road. We thank Steve Sundberg for making us aware of this quote.

John Clare
Inclosure came and trampled on the grave
Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave …
And birds and trees and flowers without a name
All sighed when lawless law's enclosure came.
― Poet John Clare (1793–1864). We thank Kamran Mofid for making us aware. He wrote on 11th July 2012: "…Our environmental crisis could be said to have begun with the enclosures. The current era of greed, privatisation and the seizure of public assets was foreshadowed by them.."

Milan Kundera
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.
― Milan Kundera. We thank Deepak Tripathi for making us aware of this quote, he uses it in his book Imperial Designs War, Humiliation and the Making of History, Potomac Books, 2012.

Maya Angelou
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
― Maya Angelou, distinguished black American activist and writer. We thank Deepak Tripathi for making us aware of this quote, he uses it in his book Imperial Designs War, Humiliation and the Making of History, Potomac Books, 2012.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Insanity in individuals is something rare––but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
― Friedrich Nietzsche. We thank Deepak Tripathi for making us aware of this quote, he uses it in his book Imperial Designs War, Humiliation and the Making of History, Potomac Books, 2012.

Malcolm X
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
― Malcolm X

Bob Dylan
Dignity:
Fat man lookin' in a blade of steel
Thin man lookin' at his last meal
Hollow man lookin' in a cottonfield
For dignity
Wise man lookin' in a blade of grass
Young man lookin' in the shadows that pass
Poor man lookin' through painted glass
For dignity
... read more at www.bobdylan.com.
― Bob Dylan. We thank Uli Spalthoff for making us aware.

Hugh Mann
Education is a paradox. It informs and conforms us with facts, but it also immerses and rehearses us with minutiae. Enlightened but benighted, and filled with the helium of higher education, our head is in the sky, and our feet barely touch the ground. What should we do? We should treat this heady intoxication with brevity, simplicity, clarity, and humility, since education is not pontification, fabrication, or polysyllabification, but public communication for and with all people ― past, present, and future.
― Hugh Mann. We thank Francisco Gomes de Matos for making us aware of this quote.

Don't steal the earth from your children.
― Maori proverb. We thank Nina Witoszek for making us aware of this quote. She wrote (4th August 2012): "I think this is better put than Brundtland Report."

Thomas Berry
The human community and the natural world will go forward as a single, sacred community or we will both perish.
– Thomas Berry.
...
Earth is a community of subjects, not a collection of objects.
– Thomas Berry.

Veien blir til mens man går.
(The road manifests while one is walking.)
― Norwegian proverb.

Steve Running
Until we change the globals economic paradigm, there will be no action on global warming.
― Steve Running, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his research on global climate change. We thank Merle Lefkoff for sharing Steve Running's words with us (on August 25, 2012).

Mark Singer
The "whetstone for virtue" is the development of the type of good that is not dialectical to good/evil ― otherwise "good" becomes impure ― like the evil it opposes.
― Mark Singer (8th September 2012).

Mai-Bente Bonnevie
David Bohm, fysikeren, praktiserte i flere år før sin død en dialogmetode der SAMTALEN handler om å dele erfaringer og innsikt, ydmykt ― åpent, uten å skulle vinne. Gleden er den utvidete forståelse, og synergien er stor når ingen kappes om å være flinkest eller sterkest.
― Mai-Bente Bonnevie in Omsorg nr. 1/2004.

Mai-Bente Bonnevie
Bortenfor ordene: Jeg ønsker å overskride det kjente og bringe fram det jeg ikke husker men som jeg gjenkjenner når bildene tar form. Jeg drives av den berøringsmulighet som ligger i materialet ― som er bortenfor ordene.
― Mai-Bente Bonnevie in "Bortenfor ordene," Stemmen, 2012 pp. 16-19.

John Dewey
Achievement comes to denote the sort of thing that a well-planned machine can do better than a human being can, and the main effect of education, the achieving of a life of rich significance, drops by the wayside.
― John Dewey, Democracy and Education, 1915. We thank Mai-Bente Bonnevie for making us aware of this quote.

Rabindranath Tagore
History has come to a stage when the moral man, the complete man, is more and more giving way, almost wihout knowing it, to make room for the ... commercial man, the man of limited purpose.
This process, aided by the wonderful progress in science, is assuming gigantic proportion and power, causing the upset of man's moral balance, obscuring his human side under the shadow of soul-less organization.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, 1917. We thank Mai-Bente Bonnevie for making us aware of this quote.
...
The darkness of egoism which will have to be destroyed is the egoism of the Nation. The ideal of India is against the intense consciousness of the separateness of one's own people from others, which inevitably leads to ceaseless conflicts. There my prayer is 'let India stand for the co-operation of all the people of the world.
― Rabindranath Tagore.

Mai-Bente Bonnevie
Taking the shame out of humiliation strengthens the dignity of all of us.
The Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network removes shame from humiliation.
― Mai-Bente Bonnevie, during the 19th Annual HumanDHS Conference in Oslo in 2012. Mai-Bente Bonnevie wrote on 25th September 2012: "Shame can keep one down as a victim for lifetime, it becomes a burden and in this way is not an experience to gather insight and strength from. It holds you from spiritually and existential development. Important to look into but then to look forward."

Steve Biko
The biggest weapon in the hands of the oppressors is the minds of the oppressed.
― Steve Biko.

Taro Gold
Make your spirit flexible, and nothing will ever bend you out of shape.
― Wisdom by Taro Gold.

Caroline Amollo
Humanity: cannot be contained in what is seen, that is, in gender, race or skin but in what is unseen ― love, tolerance and peace.
― Caroline Amollo, October 25, 2012, Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Sustainable Post-Disaster Reconstruction, University of Massachusetts, Boston. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote.

Natasha Popova
Knowledge is what you have. Wisdom is what you do with it.
― Natasha Popova. We thank Juliana Veloen for making us aware of this quote.

Nina Turner
The only race that matters is the human race.
― Nina Turner, Ohio State Senator, District 25. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote.

Virginia Woolf
As a woman I have no country.
As a woman I want no country.
As a woman, my country is the whole world.
― Virginia Woolf. We thank Susan Donnellan for making us aware of this quote.

Robert Boehler
We have two choices: to strive for power with one another or power over one another.
― Robert Boehler. We thank Garry Davis for making us aware of Robert's work.

Arne Næss
There are no murderers, there are only people who have murdered.
― Arne Næss, in the 2003 Annual Conference of the Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies network in Paris, France.

Mahatma Gandhi
Hate the sin, love the sinner.
― Mahatma Gandhi.

Don't hate the player, hate the game!
― Saying.

Adyashanti
Whatever you resist you become.
If you resist anger, you are always angry.
If you resist sadness, you are always sad.
If you resist suffering, you are always suffering.
If you resist confusion, you are always confused.
We think that we resist certain states because
They are there, but actually
They are there because we resist them.
― Adyashanti.

Es kann nicht sein, was nicht sein darf.
― Sprichwort.

Unter den Blinden ist der Einäugige König.
― Sprichwort.

If you have come to help me then you are wasting your time.
But if you have come because your liberation is bound with mine
Then let us work together.
― Aboriginal Saying. We thank Roger Dennis for making us aware of Robert's work.

Woman to Woman
No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself
No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself...
See more here.
― Words by Rabbi Sofer and Carolyn McDade; music by Carolyn McDade. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this song.

Jennifer Michael Hecht
Holiday shopping fulfills "an ancient need to gather and tithe, and serves as a modern-day ritual of renewal."
― Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht.

John Zerzan
Clocks make time scarce and life short.
― John Zerzan. We thank Charles Eisenstein for making us aware of Robert's work.

Rene Wadlow
An affirmation of human oneness: I am a member of the human family; I am a citizen of the world. My destiny is bound to that of all my fellow human beings. The achievements of women and men throughout the ages are our heritage. Thus what we jointly create is our gift to future generations. May our use of the earth preserve and protect Nature for future generations.
― Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens.

So kam ich unter die Deutschen, Friedrich Hölderlin
Ich erwartete nicht viel und war gefasst noch weniger zu finden. ― aber wie anders erging es mir …
Barbaren von Alters her, durch Fleiß und Wissenschaft, ja selbst durch Religion barbarisch geworden. ― tief unfähig gegen göttlichen Gefühls. ― eine Schande für jede gut geartete Seele. ― ich sag´s nicht gern´, doch tu ich's, weil es die Wahrheit ist:
Ich kann kein Volk mir vorstellen, das zerrissener wär´... Handwerker sah ich, aber― keine Menschen. Junge und Alte, arme und reiche, aber― keine Menschen.
Ich kann kein Volk mir vorstellen, das zerrissener wär'... Arme und Beine und alle Glieder liegen zerstückelt umher, während langsam dem Leib das Blut des Lebens auszufließen droht.
Es ist auf Erden alles unvollkommen. Es ist das alte Lied der Deutschen ...
Ach, wenn diesen Gottverlassenen nur einer mal sagen würde, dass bei ihnen alles so unvollkommen ist, weil das, was sie tun, ohne Liebe geschieht.
― Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion, 1798.

Friedrich Kellner
Friedrich Kellner kept a secret diary in Nazi Germany from 1939-1945. It was published in 2011. He writes, secretly, while living in Nazi Germany, in 1941:

Wenn man die heutigen Verhältnisse [1941 in Nazi Deutschland] überblickt, kommt einem das Gefühl der Wehmut bei dem Gedanken, daß seit 1933 die große Mehrzahl aller geistigen Führer, voran die Hochschulprofessoren, mit Sack und Pack sich der neuen politischen Richtung verschrieben und alles beiseite schoben, für das sie früher eintraten und lehrten. Fast alle legten ihren eigenen Willen, ihr eigenes Denken ab und verherrlichten in hündischer, charakterloser Weise das, was ihnen von der Partei vorgeschrieben worden ist. Was soll ein einfacher Mensch von Gelehrten und Wissenschaftlern sagen, die nicht mehr wagen, ihrem besseren Wissen Ausdruck zu geben? Was wird die übrige Welt über die von der (Nazi)-Politik zerfressene deutsche Wissenschaft denken?

Translated into English by Evelin Lindner: If we consider the present conditions [in 1941 in Nazi Germany], a feeling of sadness flows from the thought that since 1933, the great majority of intellectual leaders, especially the university professors, without any hesitation, dedicated themselves to the new political direction and pushed asideeverything they previously advocated and taught. Almost all gave up their own will, their own thinking, and idolized, in a sycophantic, unprincipled way, what had been prescribed to them by the party. What can you say, as a simple man, about scholars and scientists who do not dare to speak up, even though they know better? What will the rest of the world be thinking about a German science that is corroded by (Nazi) politics?
― Friedrich Kellner (2011), Vernebelt, verdunkelt sind alle Hirne: Tagebücher 1939-1945, herausgegeben von Sascha Feuchert, Robert Martin Scott Kellner, Erwin Leibfried, Jörg Riecke und Markus Roth, Band 1, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, Seite 154. We thank Paul Lindner for making us aware of this quote.

Susan B. Anthony
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
― Susan B. Anthony. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Adrienne Rich
What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other's despair into hope? –
You yourself must change it. –
what would it feel like to know
your country was changing? –
You yourself must change it. –
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it means to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?
― Adrienne Rich, 1986, Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems by Adrienne Rich. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote.

Teilhard de Chardin
Nothing is so delicate and fugitive by its very nature as a beginning.
– Teilhard de Chardin. We thank Robert Koehler for making us aware of this quote.

Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.
-Anonymous

Science Quotes collected by Howard Richards (11th January 2013)

Modern science is a discovery as well as an invention. It was a discovery that nature generally acts regularly enough to be described by laws and even by mathematics; and it required invention to devise the techniques, abstractions, apparatus, and organization for exhibiting the regularities and securing their law-like descriptions." ― J.L. Heilbron in his Introduction as editor to The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. vii.
...
A definition of science: "a: knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method b: such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.
― Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
...
In general the sign of knowledge or ignorance is the ability to teach, and for this reason we hold that art rather than experience is scientific knowledge (epistemē); for the artists can teach, but the others cannot.
― Aristotle, Metaphysics, paragraph 1.98b
...
... [A] man knows a thing scientifically when he possesses a conviction arrived at in a certain way, and when the first principles on which that conviction rests are known to him with certainty—for unless he is more certain of his first principles than of the conclusion drawn from them he will only possess the knowledge in question accidentally.
― Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book 6, lines 1139b
...
Facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction: a made thing.
― Stephen Shapin, "A View of Scientific Thought," Science (1980) pp.1065-66 (interpreting the philosophy of Ludwik Fleck)
...
I want to make two points: first that science can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists and similar religious movements; and, secondly, that non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so, if this is the wish of their representatives.
― Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. London: Verso, 2002 P. viii.
...
There are several methodologies afloat in contemporary philosophy of science; but they are all very different from what used to be understood as "methodology" in the seventeenth or even eighteenth century. Then it was hoped that methodology would provide scientists with a mechanical book of rules for solving problems. This hope has now been given up: modern methodologies or "logics of discovery" consist merely of a set of (possibly not even tightly knit, let alone mechanical) rules for the appraisal of ready, articulated theories.
-Imre Lakatos, "History of Science and its Rational Reconstructions," PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Vol. 1970. pp. 91-136. p. 92.
...
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. It is for this reason that the critical thinking of the physicist cannot possibly be restricted to the examination of the concepts of his own specific field. He cannot proceed without examining critically a much more difficult problem, the problem of analyzing the nature of everyday thinking.
― Albert Einstein, "Physics and Reality," Daedalus Vol. 132 (2003) pp. 22-25. p. 23 (first published in 1936).
...
Consensus in academic philosophy of science today seems to indicate that there is no essential definition of science, and no unproblematic criterion of demarcation…. (i.e. criterion demarcating science from what is not science)
― R. Burke Johnson, "Toward a More Inclusive 'Scientific Research in Education'" Educational Researcher Vol. 38 (2009) pp. 449-457. p. 453.
...
One way to restore balance to the scientific virtues, or at least mitigate their vices, was to renegotiate the very definition of science.
― Adam C. English, "Science Cannot Stop without Science," Journal of the History of Ideas Vol 69 (2008) pp. 269-292. p. 287.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
― Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail. We thank Louise Sundararajan for making us aware of this quote.

Helen Keller
Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.
― Helen Keller. We thank Louise Sundararajan for making us aware of this quote.

Amos
Let justice roll down like mighty waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
― The Bible, Amos 5: 24. We thank Louise Sundararajan for making us aware of this quote.

The Dalai Lama
The Dalai LamaI believe in justice and truth, without which there would be no basis for human hope.
― The Dalai Lama. We thank Louise Sundararajan for making us aware of this quote.

A.J. Muste
The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?
― A.J. Muste.

Audre Lorde
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."
I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
― Audre Lorde. We thank Bernedette Muthien for making us aware.

Dag Hammarskjöld
"Dag Hammarskjöld summarised and publicly presented his confessions most impressively in the radio programme 'This I believe', broadcast in 1954, as Inge Lønning has described. Faith, Hammarskjöld then insisted, 'is a state of the mind and the soul'. And the belief he inherited was that no life was more satisfactory than one of selfless service to your country – or humanity. This service required a sacrifice of all personal interests, but likewise the courage to stand up unflinchingly for your convictions. (Falkman 2005: 58) In the same text that Hammarskjöld wrote for the radio, he translates the living of such convictions, the active practising of these values, into the word Love. Love, defined as an overflowing of thestrength that fills individuals living in true self-oblivion, as an unhesitant fulfilment of duty in an unreserved acceptance of life – whether it brings toil, suffering or happiness (Falkman 2005: 59)."
― Melber, Henning (2010). "Dag Hammarskjöld's zeitgemäße Betrachtungen – Reflections on Inge Lønning's Dag
Hammarskjöld Lecture," in Dag Hammarskjöld, The Ethics of Dag Hammarskjöld, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in cooperation withthe Dag Hammarskjöld Programme at Voksenåsen, page 39. We thank John Y. Jones for making us aware of this publication.

Dag Hammarskjöld
The Nansen Medal bears the words "Love of Man Is Practical Policy." These words seem especially fitting for Dr. van Heuven Goedhart; as editor, wartime resistance leader and United Nations official, he thrust the love of man into vigorous battle against indignity to man.
—Dag Hammarskjöld speaking on 2nd May 1958 in Geneva at a ceremony honoring Dr. van Heuven Goedhart, the first United NationCommissioner for Refugees, UN Archive. We thank John Y. Jones for making us aware of this quote. It is the entry text to the small Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Park at Voksenåsen in Oslo.

Corrie Ten Boom
The measure of a life is not its duration but its donation.
― Corrie Ten Boom

Louis Brandeis
We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
― Louis Brandeis. As quoted by Raymond Lonergan in Mr. Justice Brandeis, Great American (1941), p. 42. We thank Merle Lefkoff for making us aware of this publication.

Arun Gandhi: Gandhi's Peace Prayers
Very early in his life, Mohandas K. Gandhi began to appreciate the universality of religion. He described religions as highways leading to the same destination. As a mark of his respect for all religions and for all human beings, he incorporated the prayers and hymns of different faiths into his daily prayers. Not only did he observe this respect for all religions, but he influenced millions in India to do the same. All of the following passages have the underlying theme of Peace.
Bahai Peace Prayer:
Be generous in prosperity and thankful in adversity. Be fair in thy judgment and guarded in thy speech. Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness and a home to the stranger. Be eyes to the blind and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be a breath of life to the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart and a fruit upon the tree of humility.
Buddhist Peace Prayer:
May all beings 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 one another. May those who find themselves in a trackless, fearful wilderness -the children, the aged, the unprotected ― be guarded by beneficent celestials and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood.
Christian Peace Prayer:
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as the Children of God. But I say to you, love your enemy, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To those who strike you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from those who take away your cloak, do not withhold your coat, as well. Give to everyone who begs from you, and to those who take away your goods, do not ask them again. And as you wish that others would do unto you, do so unto them as well.
Hindu Peace Prayer:
I desire neither earthly kingdom, nor paradise; not even freedom from birth and death. I desire only the deliverance from grief of those afflicted by misery. Oh Lord, lead us from the unreal to the real; from darkness to light; from death to immortality. May there be peace in celestial regions. May there be peace on earth. May the waters be appeasing. May herbs be wholesome and may trees and plants bring peace to all. May all beneficent beings bring peace to us. May thy wisdom spread peace all through the world. May all things be a source of peace to all and to me. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. (Peace, Peace, Peace).
Islamic Peace Prayer:
We think of Thee, worship Thee, bow to Thee as the Creator of this Universe; we seek refuge in Thee, the Truth, our only support. Thou art the Ruler, the barge in this ocean of endless births and deaths. In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. Praise be to the Lord of the Universe who has created us and made us into tribes and nations. Give us wisdom that we may know each other and not despise each other. We trust in Thee, oh Allah, the One who heareth and knoweth all things. We shall abide by thy Peace. And, we shall remember the servants of God are those who walk on this earth in humility and, when we address them, we shall say Peace Unto Us All.
Jewish Peace Prayer:
Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that we may walk the paths of the Most High. And we shall beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation ― neither shall they learn war anymore. And none shall be afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts has spoken.
Native American Peace Prayer:
0, Great Spirit of our Ancestors, I raise my pipe to you. To your messengers the four winds, and to the Mother Earth who provides for your children. Give us the wisdom to teach our children to love, to respect and to be kind to each other so that they may grow with peace in mind. Let us learn to share all the good things that you provide for us on this earth.
Shinto Peace Prayer:
Although the people living across the ocean surrounding us are all our brothers and sisters, why, Oh Lord, is there trouble in this world? Why do the winds and the waves rise in the ocean surrounding us? I earnestly wish that the wind will soon blow away all the clouds hanging over the tops of the mountains.
Zoroastrian Peace Prayer:
Oh, Ahura Mazda! We pray to Thee to eradicate ail the misery in the world; let understanding triumph over ignorance, let generosity triumph over indifference, trust triumph over contempt and Truth triumph over falsehood.
― We thank Linda Hartling for bringing us these prayers from Arun Gandhi on 13th March 2013, after having joined him for his talk "Be the Change You Want to See in the World" at Marylhurst University, West Linn, OR, on February 25, 2013.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Practice radical humility. He (or she) who masters the art of humility cannot be humiliated...
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet (1803 ― 1882).
...
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson. We thank Nellie Deutsch for making us aware of this quote.
...
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson. We thank Ardian Adžanela for making us aware of this quote.
...
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
― Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, yet, perhaps it stems from Leo Rosten.

Thureood Marshall
In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
― Justice Thureood Marshall.

Kofi Annan
The idea that there is one people in possession of the truth, one answer to the world's ills, has done untold harm throughout history.
– Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General, in speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. Newsweek, 2001, p. 19. We thank Linda Hartling for bringing this quote to us!

Robert H. Lafitt
Surely death by algorithm is the ultimate indignity.
― "With Drone Warfare, America Approaches the Robo-Rubicon" by Robert H. Lafitt, and Patrick J. McCloskey, in The Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2013.

Henrik Ibsen
Evig eies kun det tapte. (Ewig besitzt man nur das Verlorene. )
― Henrik Ibsen, Brand. We thank Arild Smith-Christensen for making us aware of this quote.

Steve Jobs
The people that are crazy enough to think they can change the word are the people that actually do it.
― Steve Jobs. We thank Kjell Skyllstad for making us aware of this quote.

Yves Musoni
However long the tree trunk lies in water, it can never become a crocodile.
― We thank Yves Musoni for this quote.

Dakota proverb
We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.
― Dakota proverb. We thank Linda Hartling for bringing this quote to us!

Bernard Fontenelle
Ne prenez pas la vie au sérieux ; de toute façon, vous n'en sortirez pas vivant.
― Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657 – 1757), also called Bernard Le Bouyer de Fontenelle. We thank Ronèe Robinson for bringing this quote to us!

Dalai Lama
Human Dignity:
If we realize, "I am a human being. A human being can do anything," this determination, courage, and self-confidence are important sources of victory and success. Without will power and determination, even something that you might have achieved easily cannot be achieved. If you have will power and reasonable courage—not blind courage but courage without pride—even things that seemed impossible at a certain stage turn into being possible because of continuing effort inspired by that courage. Thus, determination is important.
How can this be developed? Not through machines, not by money, but by our own inner strength based on clear realization of the value of human beings, of human dignity. For, once we realize that a human being is much more than just material, much more than just money, we can feel the importance of human life, from which we can feel the importance of compassion and kindness.
Human beings by nature want happiness and do not want suffering. With that feeling everyone tries to achieve happiness and tries to get rid of suffering, and everyone has the basic right to do this. In this way, all here are the same, whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, Easterner or Westerner, believer or nonbeliever, and within believers whether Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and so on. Basically, from the viewpoint of real human value we are all the same.
― Dalai Lama, excerpted on April 19, 2013, from Kindness, Clarity, and Insight, Boston: Shambhala Publications and Snow Lion Publications, page 180. We thank Christina Clark for bringing this quote to us!
...
The Paradox of Our Age
Is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints We spend more, but we have less. We have bigger houses, but smaller families More conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees, but less sense More knowledge, but less judgement More experts, but more problems More medicines, but less wellness. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often We have learnt how to make a living, but not a life. We have added years to life, but not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back But have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour. We have conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted our soul. We've split the atom, but not our prejudice. We've higher incomes, but lower morals. We've become long on quantity but short on quality. These are the times of tall men, and short character; Steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare, More leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; Of fancier houses, but broken homes. It is a time when there is much in the show window, and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, And a time when you can choose, Either to make a difference .... or just hit, delete.
― His Holiness the Dalai Lama
...
The Paradox of Our Age
We have bigger houses but smaller families; More conveniences, but less time; We have more degrees, but less sense; More knowledge, but less judgment; More experts, but more problems; More medicines, but less healthiness; We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever but have less communication. We have become long on quantity, but short on quality. These are times of fast foods but slow digestion; Tall man but short character; Steep profits but shallow relationships. It's a time when there is much in the window, but nothing in the room.
― His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We thank Linda Hartling for sharing this quote with us!

Isamu Noguchi
We are a landscape of what we know.
― Isamu Noguchi. We thank Linda Hartling for bringing this quote to us!

Louis de Broglie
Machines that move on fossil fuels: on petrol, on coal or [on natural gas] and which convert into motion the potential energies accumulated during million of years, have given to our organism so vast an extension and so formidable a power, so disproportionate to its dimensions and strength. Now, in this excessively enlarge body, the spirit remains what it was, too small to fill it, too feeble to direct it. Let us add, this increased body awaits a supplement of the soul; the mechanical world demands a mysticism.
― Louis de Broglie, in Physics and Microphysics (1960), where he also refers to the philosopher Henry Bergson (1859― 1941). The last sentence is his quote from Bergson. We thank Sigurd Støren for bringing this quote to us!

Mother Teresa
Poverty doesn't only consist of being hungry for bread, but rather it is a tremendous hunger for human dignity.
― Mother Teresa, Her Essential Wisdom, edited by Carol Kelly-Gangi, published by Fall River Press, New York, 2006, p.31. We thank Francisco Gomes de Matos for making us aware of this quote.
...
We learn humility through accepting humiliations cheerfully.
― Mother Teresa, Her Essential Wisdom, edited by Carol Kelly-Gangi, published by Fall River Press, New York, 2006, p.62. We thank Francisco Gomes de Matos for making us aware of this quote.

Sa'di Shirazi
Human beings are like parts of a body
Created from the same essence.
When one part is hurt and in pain,
The others cannot remain in peace and be quiet.
If the misery of others leaves you indifferent
And with no feelings of sorrow,
You cannot be called a human being.
― Persian poet Sa'di Shirazi. We thank Kamran Mofid for this quote.

James R. Doty
Our poverty in the West is not that of the wallet but rather that of social connectedness.
― James R. Doty, M.D., Founder and Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. We thank Kamran Mofid for this quote.

Michael Ellner
Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religion destroys spirituality.
― Michael Ellner. We thank Anthony Marsella for making as aware of this quote.

The Choice Is Life
The concept of anonymity today means to all of us the humility that comes with the willingness to serve without hope of gaining recognition or reward. If only all of human society could accept this concept of humility as we practice it in serving humanity; if only the willingness to serve was based on our concept of anonymity, instead of for reasons of pride or social distinction, how much richer would society become!
― Bernard Smith (former non-alcoholic trustee). August 1953 issue of the AA Grapevine. This quote was kindly provided to us by Linda Hartling.

Saint Augustine
No one believes anything unless he first believes it to be believable"
― Saint Augustine. We thank Michael Harris Bond for making as aware of this quote.

Erich Fromm
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem that he has to solve.
― Erich Fromm, in Man for Himself, 1947, p. 3. We thank Michael Harris Bond for making as aware of this quote.

Shelley
Religion pervades intensely the whole frame of society, and is according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge…
― Shelley, The Cenci, 1819. We thank Michael Harris Bond for making as aware of this quote.

Agency without communion is solitary individualism; communion without agency is but a plain life anchored in conformity.
― We thank David Ho for this quote.

George Orwell
Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
― George Orwell.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Wer über gewisse Dinge den Verstand nicht verliert, der hat keinen zu verlieren.
― Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

Gene Knudsen Hoffman
An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.
― Gene Knudsen Hoffman. We thank Carol Amollo for making as aware of this quote. We also thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of the same quote, writing (July 12, 2014): "We spent a weekend with a group learning in her home, before she died in 2010."

Those who sow wind will reap whirlwind
Quia ventum seminabunt et turbinem metent.
Deutsch: Denn sie säen Wind und werden Ungewitter ernten.
English: For they sow the wind and reap a whirlwind.
― Hosea 8,7, Bible
Ii qui ventum seminat turbinem metet.
Deutsch: Wer Wind sät wird Sturm ernten.
English: Those who sow wind will reap whirlwind.
― Plebeius.

A. J. Muste
The problem after a war is the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?
― A. J. Muste.

Earth Charter
... peace is the wholeness created by right relationships with oneself, other persons, other cultures, other life, Earth, and the larger whole of which all are a part.
― Earth Charter. We thank Tony Jenkins for making us aware of this quote.

John Cotton Dana
Who dares to teach must never seize to learn.
― John Cotton Dana. We thank Natasha Johnson for making us aware of this quote.

Christine Marie Martin
Love is the meaning of life ― as long as it's a happy and healthy love.
― Christine Marie Martin, Philosopher. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Jeder neue Gegenstand wachsam erblickt erzeugt in uns ein neues Organ für seine Wahrnehmung. (Every object well comtemplated opens up a new organ of perception within us.)
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We thank Otto Scharmer for making us awaree of this quote.

Drop by drop the bucket is filled, moment by moment awareness is developed.
― Unknown. We thank Nellie Deutsch for making us aware of this quote.

Hildegard of Bingen
The earth is at the same time mother,
she is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind contains all moisture,
all verdancy, all germinating power.
It is in so many ways fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic raw materials for humankind,
but also the substance of Incarnation.
― Hildegard of Bingen

Pat Speight
A story is the shortest distance between people.
― Pat Speight. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

The soul's oldest memory is of union. The soul's deepest longing is for reunion.
― Dialogue in Nigeria: Muslims & Christian Creating Their Future (2010). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote.

Charles Eisenstein
What happens when the old story, the Story of Separation, is no longer sustainable? We must build a new one, based on the interbeing of the universe, all matter, and all people.
― "The New Story," by Charles Eisenstein, in The Intelligent Optimist, Nov/Dec, 2013. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote.

Lucretia Allinson
You may not think that the world needs you, but it does. For you are unique, like no one that has ever been before or will come after. No one can speak with your voice, say your piece, smile your smile, or shine your light. No one can take your place, for it is yours alone. If you are not there to shine your light, who knows how many travelers will lose their way as they try to pass by your empty place in the darkness?
― Lucretia Al linson.

Matsuo Bashō
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.
― Matsuo Bashō.

Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
― Voltaire. We thank Naseer Ganai for making us aware of this quote.

C.S. Lewis
Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
― C.S. Lewis. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

George Bernard Shaw
A reasonable person adapts to the world. An unreasonable person adapts the world to herself!
― George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright (1856–1950).
...
This is the true joy in life, being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
― George-Bernard Shaw; this quote was kindly provided to us by Yoav Peck, who gathered it from the "Character Counts" website.
...
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
― George Bernard Shaw.
...
We are made wise not by recollections of the past, but by our responsibility to the future.
― George Bernard Shaw. This quote was kindly provided by Anita Wenden, April 2005. ... Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw
...
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
― George Bernard Shaw. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote.
...
Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?
― George Bernard Shaw. We thank Kamran Mofid for this quote.

Alice Walker
Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you're just going to keep buying and selling things until there's nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.
― Alice Walker. We thank Douglas Cunliffe for sending this quote along, sent out by M. Amon Twyman (BSc, MSc Hons, DPhil), a philosopher interested in the impact of technology on society and the human condition. Amon was a co-founder of the UK Transhumanist Association (now known as Humanity+ UK), and went on to establish Zero State and the WAVE research institute.

Edward Morgan Forster
Only connect...
― Edward Morgan Forster, epigraph of his 1910 novel Howards End. Thanks to Dan Smith.

George Santayana
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past remembering that once it was all that was humanly possible.
― George Santayana. We thank Judith Glaser for making us aware of this quote.

David McCullough
The great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.
― David McCullough, Jr., 2012 Wellesley High School commencement address. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Abraham Lincoln
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander
― Abraham Lincoln

John Steinbeck
All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
― John Steinbeck

Horace Mann
Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.
― Horace Mann

Dorothy Thompson
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict – alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.
― Dorothy Thompson

Joel A. Barker
Usually the first problems you solve with the new paradigm are the ones that were unsolvable with the old paradigm.
― Joel A. Barker. We thank Douglas Cunliffe for sending this quote along, sent out by M. Amon Twyman (BSc, MSc Hons, DPhil), a philosopher interested in the impact of technology on society and the human condition. Amon was a co-founder of the UK Transhumanist Association (now known as Humanity+ UK), and went on to establish Zero State and the WAVE research institute.

Anaïs Nin
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are...
― Anaïs Nin, French-born author of Spanish, Cuban and Danish descent who became famous for her published journals which span more than sixty years.

Pyrrhus, King of Epirus
Another such victory and we will be lost!
― Pyrrhus, King of Epirus.

Bernard Werber, Attempt
Between
What I think
What I want to say
What I think I say
What I say
What you want to hear
What you think you hear
What you hear
What you want to understand
What you think you understand
What you understand
We have ten potential barriers to communication.
But let's try anyway...
― Bernard Werber, Attempt, from The Encyclopedia of Absolute and Relative Knowledge, 2000.

Libby & Len Traubman
To survive and thrive into an excellent future, our first step today is to protect the dignity of our assailant, our humiliator, our "other." What a paradox; what a life saver.
...
To dignify one another, listen in circles instead of shouting in squares. Listening-to-learn humanizes and dignifies both the speaker and the listener. The person with the will and skill to listen has the power to transform the relationship and re-direct history.
...
We finally begin to discover one another as human and equal, then to want the best not only for self but for the other equally. This is freedom from fear and loneliness, freedom to travel safely, collaborate, create, experience the ecstasy of human reunion – life beyond war.
― Libby & Len Traubman, Co-founders – Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue

Benjamin Barber
I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures, those who make it or those who don't. I divide the world into learners and non-learners.
― Benjamin Barber, American political theorist and author, known for his 1996 bestseller, Jihad vs. McWorld. Barber quote in The Reader's digest (1992) Vol 140, Nr 837-842. p. 159.

Anyway
People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you've got ANYWAY!
― We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for this wisdom!

Carl Sandburg
Nothing happens unless first a dream.
― Carl Sandburg. We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for this quote!

Tony Robbins
There's always a way―if you're committed.
― Tony Robbins. We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for this quote!

Peter Drucker
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
― Peter Drucker. We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for this quote!

Shel Silverstein
Anything is possible. Anything can be.
― Shel Silverstein. We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for this quote!

Booker T. Washington
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
― Booker T. Washington. We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for this quote!

Frank VanderSloot
Everything we do and everything we are impacts others – whether we want it to or not.
― Frank VanderSloot. We thank Gay Rosenblum-Kumar for this quote!

Piet Hein
The nobel art of losing face may one day save the human race and turn into eternal merit what weaker minds would call a disgrace.
― Piet Hein, poet and philosopher. We thank Jan Øberg for making us aware of this quote!

Charlotte Joko Beck
What tools do we need to use? Only one. We've all heard of it, yet we use it very seldom. It's called attention.
― Charlotte Joko Beck, The Fire of Attention, 2013. We thank Gerdelin Bodvin for making us aware of this quote!

Shunryu Suzuki
Renunciation is not giving up the things of the world, but accepting that they go away.
― Shunryu Suzuki. We thank Gerdelin Bodvin for making us aware of this quote!

As a man thinketh in his hear, so is he.
― Proverbs 23: 7. We thank Gerdelin Bodvin for bringing us this quote!

Henry David Thoreau
Go confidentially in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
― Henry David Thoreau. We thank Rita Anita Linger for making us aware of this quote!

S. Warren
Without the act (of committing to a point of view), our inquiry remains ghostly and impotent, but without the recognition of ambiguity, our knowledge degenerates into ideology and our acts so easily lead to systems of totalitarian oppression, irrational indifference, and human sorrow.
― S. Warren. We thank Patrick Gruczkun for making us aware of this quote!

Thich Nhat Hanh
TO RECONCILE conflicting parties, we must have the ability to understand the suffering of both sides. If we take sides, it is impossible to do the work of reconciliation. And humans want to take sides. That is why the situation gets worse and worse. Are there people who are still available to both sides? They need not do much. They need do only one thing: Go to one side and tell all about the suffering endured by the other side, and go to the other side and tell all about the suffering endured by this side. This is our chance for peace. But how many of us are able to do that?
― Thich Nhat Hanh Vietnamese Buddhist Monk. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

William Deresiewicz
So what is the alternative? Not charity, but justice. Not "concern," but outrage. Not giving 5 percent, but changing 100 percent.
― William Deresiewicz, in Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (New York: Free Press, 2014), page 143. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote.

Allan Bloom
The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.
― Allan David Bloom (1930 – 1992), philosopher, classicist, and academician.

Marianne Williamson
As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
― Marianne Williamson. We thank Tzofnat Peleg-Baker for making us aware of this quote.

George Armitage Miller
In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume it is true and try to imagine what it could be true of.
― George Armitage Miller.

Desiree Niemann
Become friends with people who aren’t your age. Hang out with people whose first language isn’t the same as yours. Get to know someone who doesn’t come from the same social class. This is how you see the world. This is how you grow.
― Desiree Niemann. We thank Christina Spännar for making us aware of this quote.

Dick Simon
There is no them, once you know them.
― Dick Simon, Businessman, Global traveler. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

William Butler Yeats
The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes.
― William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). We thank Nimrod Sheinman for making us aware of this quote.

Paulo Freire
People in communion liberate each other.
― Paulo Freire. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Anonymous
To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.
― Anonymous. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Henry David Thoreau
Things don't change; we do.
― Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Steve Kalishman
When the leaders get stuck and they're no longer able to effectively lead, that's when the people lead.
― Steve Kalishman, Director, Citizen Diplomacy Initiatives. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Daniel Barenboim
We have to learn to live together... side by side, but not back to back.
― Daniel Barenboim (Conductor, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, 2015). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Terry Pratchett
Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.
― Terry Pratchett, Pyramids.

Viktor E. Frankl
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
― Viktor E. Frankl. We thank Kimberly Eriksen for this quote!

UNESCO Constitution
Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.
― UNESCO Constitution. We thank Kimberly Eriksen for this quote!

Yiddish proverb
Man plans, God laughs.
― Yiddish proverb.

John Lennon
Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
― John Lennon.

David Mowarjarlie, an Aboriginal Elder
What’s important is beyond all understanding —that’s the first thing you must understand….
― An Aboriginal Elder in Oz—David Mowarjarlie.

David Tacey
Spirituality refers to our relationship with the sacredness of life, nature, and the universe, and this relationship is no longer felt to be confined to formal devotional practice or to institutional places of worship … spiritual development is the intrinsic human capacity and yearning to embed the self in something greater than the self. In contrast, religions are the cultural mechanisms that can provide rituals and beliefs to aid this process.
― David Tacey. We thank Hilarie Roseman for making us aware of Tacey's work!

Helen Keller
I cried when I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no legs.
― Helen Keller. We thank Johnson Mugaga for making us aware of this quote!

Piet Hein
The noble art of losing face – may some day save the human race – and turn into eternal merit – what weaker minds would call disgrace.
...
Peace is “co-existence – or no existence.”
― Piet Hein. We thank Jan Øberg for making us aware of these quotes!

Henry David Thoreau
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
― Henry David Thoreau, in Walking, 1862. We acknowledge Maria Popova for inspiring this quote and the folllowing five quotes.

Stuart Firestein
Thoroughly conscious ignorance: "The growth-value of remaining uncertain — in science, and, by extension, in life."
― Stuart Firestein, Ignorance: How It Drives Science, 2012, and his TED talk "The Pursuit of Ignorance," 2013.

Richard P. Feynman
The chief responsibility of a great scientist is to remain uncertain.
― Richard P. Feynman, in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, 1999.

Marcelo Gleiser
We strive toward knowledge, always more knowledge, but must understand that we are, and will remain, surrounded by mystery.
― Marcelo Gleiser, in The Island of Knowledge, 2014.

Jacob Bronowski
The assertion of dogma closes the mind and turns a nation, a civilization into a regiment of ghosts — obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.
― Jacob Bronowski, in the eleventh episode of the BBC series Ascent of Man, titled “Knowledge and Certainty," 1973.

Rainer Maria Rilke
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, in Briefe an einen jungen Dichter, 1929.

Marta Soniewicka
Act only as if you were to live infinite times the same life and if each of your acts was to repeat itself into infinity.
― Prof. Marta Soniewicka, Jagiellonian University, Poland. We thank Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote. Marta Soniewicka kindly wrote on 25th February 2015: "...the quotation ("Act only as if you were to live infinite times the same life and if each of your acts was to repeat itself into infinity") which you found in one of my papers on Friedrich Nietzsche is only a paraphrase of Nietzsche and expresses his idea of eternal recurrence which I am not the first one to interpret it in such a way (similar interpretations: e.g. G. Simmel). Nietzsche's words which I paraphrased are in original as follows: „Meine Lehre sagt: so leben, daß du wünschen mußt, wieder zu leben ist die Aufgabe — du wirst es jedenfalls!“ (Nietzsche: NF-1881,11[163]) The other source of this idea you can find in Nietazsche’s work entitled „Die fröhliche Wissenschaft“, paragraph 341. All the sources available online at: http://www.nietzschesource.org/."

St. Thomas Aquinas
He that seeks the good of the many seeks in consequence his own good.
― Thomas Aquinas.

Ubuntu: I am because we are.

Buddha
A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.
― Buddha. We thank Kamran Mofid for bringing this quote to us.

Willy Brandt
Die Globalisierung von Gefahren und Herausforderungen – Krieg, Chaos, Selbstzerstörung – erfordert eine Art "Weltinnenpolitik", die über den Horizon von Kirchtürmen, aber auch nationale Grenzen weit hinausreicht.
― Willy Brandt, Einleitung zum Nord-Süd-Bericht, 1980. We thank Ragnhild Nilsen for bringing this quote to us.

Paul Tillich
We have to build a better man before we can build a better society.
― Paul Tillich. We thank Kamran Mofid for bringing this quote to us.

José Hobday
We used to say you could tell if a person was an authentic native by whether or not she had a red heart. A red heart had to do with whether the heart had blood from being massaged by good works, especially sharing. Native people have never understood the value of money for its own sake...have never understood the value of work just to get ahead. Work was to provide what was needed to beautify the world. Work was to decorate. Native Americans have always felt that the key to forceful living is celebration. Celebrate everything. Your pot, your plate, your food, tribal heritage, rivers, trees — everything is to be celebrated, not owned and possessed. Division was at the heart of real trouble and a cause for lack of peace. The native tradition is always to seek harmony. If you have many needs and desires, harmony is not possible. For harmony you need movement, the rhythm to go with life. Part of the rhythm of life is supplied by the singing of people as well as by the singing of birds and the music of the winds. Some harmony is supplied by learning to live with the living and the dead.
― José Hobday, 1998/2002, Simple living: The Path to Joy and Freedom, New York: Continuum Publishing Company, p. 5. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote!
...
In the Native American traditions and in the lauguages I've known, we didn't have a word for work until we met Europeans. We have a word for living and work is part of living. Everything is living. We never divide life into work and play and recreation and rest. We live, which includes them all. We do what we need to do to live.
― José Hobday, 1998/2002, Simple living: The Path to Joy and Freedom, New York: Continuum Publishing Company, p. 42.

Persian poet Sa’di
Human beings are like parts of a body
Created from the same essence.
When one part is hurt and in pain,
The others cannot remain in peace and be quiet.
If the misery of others leaves you indifferent
And with no feelings of sorrow,
You cannot be called a human being.
― Abū-Muhammad Muslih al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, Saadi Shirazi, better known by his pen-name Saʿdī or simply Saadi (1210―1291/2). We thank Kamran Mofid for making us aware of this poem!

Maya Angelou
People will forget what you said and what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
― Maya Angelou. We thank Stevie Moffic for bringing this quote to us.

Michael Brannigan
You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind.
― A quote from Michael Brannigan's grandfather. Michael Brannigan holds the Pfaff Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Values at the College of Saint Rose, in Albany, New York. Personal communication, September 18, 2015.

Jan Øberg
Behind every refugee stands an arms trader.
― Jan Øberg, in a personal communication, 29th September 2015. It is a memorised quotation from about 20 years ago from Peter Nobel, human rights advocate, former Justice Ombudsmand, and Red Cross chief in Sweden.

William Ophuls
Applying the methods of the so-called hard sciences to human affairs, the rationalists demonstrated (to their satisfaction) that there was no epistemological stance from which to derive natural law or moral principle. Instead of a sentient universe charged with moral meaning, science found only a machine — dead matter to be exploited by economists and engineers to make us wealthier and more powerful, not better. And what does a machine governed by mathematical formulas and physical laws have to teach us about how we should live? Nothing.
― William Ophuls, Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011, pp. 21-22.

Harold Saunders
There are some things only governments can do, such as negotiating binding agreements. But there are some things that only citizens outside government can do, such as changing human relationships.
― Dr. Harold Saunders, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and Negotiator of the Camp David Accords. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

William Isaacs
Could we not allow ourselves the opportunity here and now to be together, to think together, in a way that goes beyond the pain and fog that we traditionally carry around... leading people past that natural defenses into genuine contact with one another?
― William Isaacs, in Dialogue: The Art of Thinking Together (2008). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

John Schaar
The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and their destination.
― John Schaar. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Tokaro Takamura
There is no road in front of me. I create a path behind me
― Tokaro Takamura. We thank Kazuyo Yamane and Mark Singer for making us aware of this quote!

Maya Angelou
We are all at once both a composition and a composer. We have the ability not only to compose the future of our own lives, but to help compose the future of everyone around us and the communities in which we live.
― Maya Angelou. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Gerry Adams
The days of humiliation, of second-class citizens and of inequality are over and gone forever.
― Gerry Adams (1948 – ) President, Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
Wohltätigkeit ist das Ersäufen des Rechts im Mistloch der Gnade. (Charity is the drowning of justice in the crap hole of clemency.)
― Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, 1783 Über Gesetzgebung und Kindermord.

Azar Nafisi
Only curiosity about the fate of others, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes, and the will to enter their world through the magic of imagination, creates this shock of recognition. Without this empathy there can be no genuine dialogue, and we as individuals and nations will remain isolated and alien, segregated and fragmented.
― Azar Nafisi, Iranian-American writer. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Damien Carrion
Mankind has reached a bridge that can only be crossed in unity.
― Damien Carrion. We thank Alexander Laszlo for making us aware of this quote!

Lilla Watson
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
― Lilla Watson, an aboriginal Australian woman. We thank Shirley Walters for making us aware of this quote!

Robert Muller
We ought:
• To see the world with global eyes
• To love the world with a global heart
• To understand the world with a global mind
• To merge with the world with a global spirit.
― Robert Muller, former UN Under-Secretary General. We thank Kamran Mofid for mentioning Muller in "What Might an Economy for the Common Good Look Like?" by Kamran Mofid, October 15, 2014.

John Paul Lederach
To lead into re-humanization while living in the midst of fragmentation we must envision the life school of wholeness that permits us to be fully human with each other (not apart), even with those we fear, while we seek the creative strategies that transcend division and violence found in our shared journey and future.
― John Paul Lederach. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Wendell Berry
We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.
― Wendell Berry. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Nossrat Peseschkian
If you work alone, you can only add. If you work with the others, you can multiply.
― Nossrat Peseschkian.

Winona LaDuke
In native American teachings, "we talk about this as the time when you've got to make a choice between two paths as a country. One path is well-worn, and it's scorched; the other is not well-worn, and it's green."
― Winona LaDuke.

Sheryl Oring
In the end, that’s what we all want: a chance to be heard. It is not only the act of speaking, but the act of listening that makes this possible.
― Sheryl Oring, Listening is the heart of democracy, San Francisco Chronicle, September 6, 2016. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Lee Ross
Central to wise reconciliation is expressing a vision of a shared future that includes and dignifies the other group, and offers them a livable, non-humiliating place in that future.
― Lee Ross, Stanford University Psychologist, Essence of Chapter 7 — Wisdom Applied in The Wisest One in the Room (2015). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Wole Soyinka
Culture humanizes, politics demonizes.
― Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka.

Siraj Khan
The way the world's landscape is changing, it would make complete sense to look at the human wrongs and human rights, with the same lens.
― Siraj Khan

Andre Gide
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
― Andre Gide (1869-1951) in The Counterfeiters.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
It is the ultimate task of our existence to achieve as much substance as possible for the concept of humanity in our person, both during the span of our life and beyond it, through the traces we leave by means of our vital activity. This can be fulfilled only by the linking of the self to the world to achieve the most general, most animated, and most unrestrained interplay. This alone is the yardstick by with each branch of human knowledge can be judged.
― Wilhelm von Humboldt, quoted by Michael R. Ott (2016). "Gathering the fragments of truth, reason, hope and redemption: Walter Benjamin’s critical theory of religion." In Heathwood Journal of Critical Theory, 1 (3, Reclaiming Walter Benjamin for Revolutionary Times), 28–60.

Walter Benjamin
Capitalism is probably the first instance of a cult that creates guilt, not atonement’,
― Walter Benjamin, 1921/1996, "Capitalism as religion." Translated by Rodney Livingstone. In Selected writings, volum 1, pp. 288–91. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

W.E.B. DuBois
The purpose of education is not to make men and women into doctors, lawyers and engineers; the purpose of education is to make doctors, lawyers and engineers into men and women.
― W.E.B. DuBois.

Celebrate Humanity Campaign 2002
You are my adversary, but you are not my enemy.
For your resistance gives me strength.
Your will gives me courage.
Your spirit ennobles me.
And though I aim to defeat you, should I succeed, I will not humiliate you.
Instead, I will honour you.
For without you, I am a lesser man.
― Celebrate Humanity Campaign 2002.

Robert Paxton
Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood, … in which a massed-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
― Robert Paxton (1932- ), American historian, in his book The Anatomy of Fascism, 2004. We thank Rodrigue Tremblay for making us aware of this quote!

Hannah Arendt
Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.
― Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-born, Jewish-American political theorist, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951. We thank Rodrigue Tremblay for making us aware of this quote!
...
In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.
― Arendt, Hannah (1969). On violence. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 85.

Awe
Living, perceiving, and identifying beyond one's own, exclusive, limited life experience, in a way that transcends boundaries and disconnection from each other and Earth, and includes all of humankind and creation – newly realized as interconnected, spiritual, holy, sacred, awe.
― Anonmous. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Brenda Ueland
We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and is more effective and learns more and does more good.
― Brenda Ueland (1891 – 1985). We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Eric Weiner
Culture is the sea we swim in – so pervasive, so all-consuming, that we fail to notice its existence until we step out of it.
― Eric Weiner. We thank Doaa Rashed for making us aware of this quote!

Benedict Carey
Most mass murderers instead belong to a rogue’s gallery of the disgruntled and aggrieved, whose anger and intentions wax and wane over time, eventually curdling into violence in the wake of some perceived humiliation.
― Benedict Carey, in Are Mass Murderers Insane? Usually Not, Researchers Say, in New York Times, November 8, 2017. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote!

Darrell Posey
Avoiding Extinction Via (Our) Cultural Diversity:
The integral (holistic) nature of knowledge systems has been shown to be linked to land and territory. Thus, it is impossible to discuss conservation of cultural and linguistic diversity without discussing the basic rights of local peoples and their self-determination and control over their own lands and resources. This, of course, makes future activities of linguistics, anthropologists, environmentalists, and others working with indigenous and local communities a profoundly political matter. And it implies that continued research into language and cultural diversity requires a more collaborative approach in which equitable partnerships evolve from mutual interest between researchers and local communities. The days of “our" studying “them” (with the added barb of “before they become extinct”) must be replaced with collaboration to conserve the biological, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the planet — before we all become extinct.”
— Darrell A. Posey; “Biological and Cultural Diversity: The Inextricable, Linked by Language and Politics.” We thank Jeffrey Warner for sending us this quote!

Najwa Zebian
These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.
— Najwa Zebian. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote!

John Muir
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
— John Muir. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote!

Bill Bennot
How we walk with the broken speaks louder than how we sit with the great.
— Bill Bennot. We thank Linda Hartling for making us aware of this quote!

Frederick Douglass
It is easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men.
— Frederick Douglass.

Ronan Bennett
Any fool can make war. Peace requires greater vision and courage.
— Ronan Bennett, 2003. We thank Kamran Mofid for making us aware of this quote!
'In place of satisfactory answers we have what is essentially a classic three-act Hollywood movie scenario: Act One, a terrible crime is committed, stirring the forces of good from their complacent slumber; Act Two, the good guys hunt down the bad guys and some of the minor ones get their just deserts; then, in Act Three, the chief of the bad guys is finally taken out. Problem solved, happy ending, roll credits. Remove Saddam and all will be well - this trope has become the Anglo-US "solution"'.

Pride goes before a fall
Deutsch: Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall.
Bedeutungen: Selbstüberschätzung und Arroganz führen zum Fall beziehungsweise Scheitern. Herkunft: aus dem Alten Testament der Bibel, im Buch der Sprüche Salomos, Kapitel 16, Vers 18, wo es heißt: "Hoffart kommt vor dem Sturz und Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall.“ (Einheitsübersetzung)
Francais: Il n’y a pas loin du Capitole à la Roche Tarpéïenne.
Norsk: hovmod står for fall.

The sound makes the music
Deutsch: Der Ton macht die Musik.
Francais: C’est le ton qui fait la musique.

To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.
— Anonymous. We thank Libby & Len Traubman for making us aware of this quote!

Martin Buber
The world can't be comprehended, but it can be embraced one person at a time.

Michael W. Fox
How best to live or not:
Bearing witness to the holocaust
Of the animals – their extinction
And their suffering we cause?
To feel their pain and helplessness
And to grieve their fate,
Be it on someone’s trophy wall –
Yet another species forever gone.
― Michael W. Fox, veterinarian and animal rights advocate.

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled.
― Unknown.

Antonio Gramsci
I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
― Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison.

John Maynard Keynes
The problem lies not so much in developing new ideas, but in escaping from old ones.
― John Maynard Keynes.

Donna Haraway
To be in love is to be worldly, to be in connection with significant otherness and signifying others, on many scales, in layers of locals and globals, in ramifying webs.
― Donna Haraway.

Mahatma Gandhi
First they ignore you,
then they ridicule you,
then they fight you,
then you win
― Mahatma Gandhi.

Arthur Schopenhauer
First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.
― Arthur Schopenhauer.

William Hutchinson Murray
Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!
― William Hutchinson Murray. We thank Helmy Abouleish for making us aware of this quote, in the SEKEM Vision and Mission 2057.

Edward Austin Gossage Robinson
"Capitalism: The nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all"?
The quotation fell within a chapter titled “Future Policy” which outlined different viewpoints regarding monopolies. Specifically, the passage below occurred in a discussion about individuals who opposed intervention against monopolies: "But by far the strongest resistance to drastic action comes from those who would say, if they sought at all to express their motives, that inequality of incomes is inevitable and even desirable in a world in which individual are born with unequal talents. You must leave the efficient man as well as the inefficient the motive to exert himself to the utmost. The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society."
― quoteinvestigator.com: 1941 (reprint 1948), Monopoly by E. A. G. Robinson (Edward Austin Gossage Robinson), Cambridge Economic Handbooks, Page 276, [Nisbet & Co. Ltd, London.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. (Questia; Verified on paper in 1948 reprint)

Henry Moore
There’s no retirement for an artist, it’s your way of living so there’s no end to it.
― The English artist and sculptor Henry Moore (1898–1986).

Thomas Merton
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
― The writer and poet Thomas Merton (1915–1968).

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.
― A wise Mexican proverb. We thank Jane Hilken for making us aware of this proverb.

Siegfried Sassoon
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
— Siegfried Sassoon, “Suicide In The Trenches.” See "Why Most Veterans Don’t Tell War Stories: A firsthand account of the horrors soldiers keep to themselves," by Benjamin Sledge, Medium, November 10, 2019.

Bonnie Selterman
Humans are flawed
Even if it’s not our fault
We have to behave as though it is.
— Bonnie Selterman, November 2019.

Grappling with Eco-Despair
Live like the crisis is urgent. Embrace the pain, but don’t stop there. Seek out a spiritual path to forge gratitude, compassion and acceptance, because operating out of denial, anger or fear only hurts us in the end... Feeling depressed about the crisis is actually a sane, healthy response. Yet as a culture, we pathologize depression as a personal failing, and as individuals, we avoid it...
— 'Apocalypse Got You Down? Maybe This Will Help: Searching for a cure for my climate crisis grief', by Cara Buckley, New York Times, November 17, 2019.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
— Stephen Covey.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
— Peter Drucker.

Thor Heyerdahl
Borders? I have never seen one, but I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.
— Thor Heyerdahl. We thank Rigmor Johnsen for making us aware of this quote.

Helpful criticism is about making the world better. Unhelpful criticism is about making yourself feel better.
— Anonymous.

Für den Lebensunterhalt zerstören wir unsere Lebensgrundlagen
Um unseren Lebensunterhalt zu verdienen, hacken wir den Lebensbaum ab

Lasse Moer
English: We can see the road, if we walk it.
Norsk: Vi kan se veien, hvis vi går den.
Deutsch: Wir können den Weg sehen, wenn wir ihn gehen.
Français: Nous pouvons voir la route, si nous la parcourons.
Español: Podemos ver el camino, si lo caminamos.
― Lasse Moer is a deep thinker and innovator. He is also the Chief Engineer for audiovisual technology at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University in Oslo, Norway. Please see his personal website.

Peace like a river, love like an ocean
― "Fundamentalist 'Christianity' is a Thief and a Liar, and We Need to Say So", by Joel Michael Herbert, Medium, July 27, 2018.

Pessimism of the intellect, and the optimism of the will.
― Maja Göpel, interviewed by Michael Krons in in "Phoenix persönlich: Unsere Welt neu denken: Eine Einladung", 27th June 2020.

Manbendra Nath Roy
Throughout history, any profound political and social change was preceded by a philosophical revolution, at least among a significant section of the population.
— Manbendra Nath Roy (1887–1954), humanist and political theorist from India, in The Future of Democracy, Lecture delivered at the University Institute Hall, Calcutta, on February 5th, 1950.

The country people around the farm say that until the nail is hit, it doesn’t believe in the hammer.
— We thank Linda Harting for sending us this quote! She adds this comment: "I take this to mean that it is easy not to believe in the danger until one is injured."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one's ability to persuade.
2. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.
3. Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.
4. I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.
5. Don't be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time.
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Roy T. Bennett
Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.
― Roy T. Bennett.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
Few are guilty, all are responsible...
Are we not often indifferent to suffering today? Are we at once “decent and sinister, pious and evil”?
― Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Amelia Earhart
Being alone is scary, but not as scary as feeling alone in a relationship.
― Amelia Earhart, aviation pioneer and author.

Armistead Maupin
Sooner or later, we have to venture beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us," he writes. "We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives."
― Maupin, Armistead (2017). Logical Family: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins.

Buddhist thinker Nagarjuna around 150–250 CE
'There is', means clinging to eternal substance,
'There is not' connotes the view of nihilism.
Thus in neither 'is' nor 'is not'
Is the dwelling place of those who know.
― Nagarjuna, The Fundamental Treatise on the Middle Way.
See Ricard, Matthieu, and Trinh Xuan Thuan (2000/2004). The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet. Translated by Ian Monk. New York: Crown. French original L'infini dans la paume de la main, Paris: Nil, 2000, p. 77.
...
The notion of catuṣkoṭi employed by Nagarjuna means that the dwelling place of those who know is between ‘is’ and ‘is not’. Catuṣkoṭi is a ‘four-cornered’ system of argumentation that involves the systematic examination of each of the 4 possibilities of a proposition, P: (1) P; that is being, (2) not P; that is not being, (3) P and not P; that is being and that is not being, and (4) not (P or not P); that is neither being nor that is not being. See also Priest, Graham (2018). The fifth corner of four: An essay on Buddhist metaphysics and the catuṣkoṭi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Marcus Aurelius
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
— Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor

Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it.
— The Aphorisms of Nicolas Gomez-Davila — “Escolios a Un Texto Implicito,” Translations made by Michael Gilleland, I, 70. We thank Michael Boyer for making us aware of this quote.

Niels Bohr
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

Werner Heisenberg
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Natural science, does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.

Søren Kierkegaard
One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical; for the paradox is the source of the thinker's passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
It has been said that in 1897, the physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, looked at all the advancements in electricity, astronomy, and biology of his age and that he concluded: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

Blaise Pascal
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

William Blake
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

A woman with untied hair suddenly enters
In Arabic: دارعة فارع
In Arabic with English letters: Faraa Daraa
Translation in English: A woman with untied hair suddenly enters

How Life Would Flourish
“Before I was six years old, my grandparents and my mother had taught me that if all the green things that grow were taken from the earth, there could be no life. If all the four-legged creatures were taken from the earth, there could be no life. If all the winged creatures were taken from the earth, there could be no life. If all our relatives who crawl and swim and live within the earth were taken away, there could be no life. But if all the human beings were taken away, life on earth would flourish. That is how insignificant we are.” — Russell Means, Oglala Lakota Nation (1939–2012)
— shared by Sherrida Woodley, Medium, March 28, 2021. We thank Michael Boyer for reminding us!

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Was die Erfahrung aber und die Geschichte lehren, ist dieses, daß Völker und Regierungen niemals etwas aus der Geschichte gelernt und nach Lehren, die aus derselben zu ziehen gewesen wären, gehandelt haben.
English: What experience and history teach is this — that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
— "Lectures on the Philosophy of History" (Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte), section III, "The History of the World," subsection 2, "The Nature of History," under point B, "What history teaches".

Eugene O’Neill
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
— Eugene O’Neill, the play The Iceman Cometh. It is spoken by the character Larry Slade in the opening scene of the play. 'The action takes place in downtown Manhattan ... and covers two days in the life of a motley assortment of anarchists, prostitutes, pimps, and war veterans, among a host of other 'lost souls' hiding behind pipe dreams and alcoholism to shield themselves from the terrorizing realities of modern-day life' (literariness.org).

Marc Pilisuk
Wars are products of a social order that plans for them and then accepts this planning as natural.
— Peace and conflict studies scholar Marc Pilisuk.

Khadija Dajani
There is no English equivalent to the Arabic word qaher. The dictionary says "anger" but it's not. It is when you take anger, place it on a low fire, add injustice, oppression, racism, dehumanization to it, and leave it to cook slowly for a century. And then you try to say it but no one hears you. So it sits in your heart. And settles in your cells. And it becomes your genetic imprint. And then moves through generations. And one day, you find yourself unable to breathe. It washes over you and demands to break out of you. You weep. And the cycle repeats.
— Khadija Dajani, a notable figure in the field of education and social activism, particularly recognized for her contributions to women's rights and community development in Palestine.


Quotes collected by Rodrigue Tremblay

"There is no subtler, no surer means  of  overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency... The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner, which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."  John Maynard Keynes(1883-1946). British economist, (in 'The Economic Consequences of the Peace', 1919, Ch. VI, pp. 235-236).

"The survivors of a generation that has been of military age during a bout of war will be shy, for the rest of their lives, of bringing a repetition of this tragic experience either upon themselves or upon their children, and... therefore the psychological resistance of any move towards the breaking of a peace... is likely to be prohibitively strong until a new generation ... has had time to grow up and to come into power." Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-1975), British historian, (in 'A Study of History', vol. 9, 1954).

"When every country turned to protect its own private interest, the world public interest went down the drain, and with it the private interests of all." Charles Kindleberger (1910-2003). American economic historian, (in his book 'The World Depression 129-1939', 1973).

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), British author, in his essay 'Adonis and the Alphabet', 1956.

"Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal." Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist, 1917.

"The world is a dangerous place to live—not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don't do anything about it." Albert Einstein (1879-1955). (As quoted in the book by Josep Maria Corredor "Conversations avec Pablo Casals", 1955)

"I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War... I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else." George F. Kennan (1904-2005). American diplomat and historian, (in The New York Times, May 2, 1998, about the U.S. expansion of NATO toward Russia.)

“While defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.“ John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), 35th U.S. President, 1961-1963, (in an important speech on Monday, June 10, 1963)

 

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Links

Culturoics.org
This is a database of words as found in the 15 million books scanned for the Google Books project. On the website one can check how often a chosen word or phrase appears in that set of books. Here is an example for "human dignity."
― We thank Uli Spalthoff for making us aware of this project.

Google Labs
Type in a word or phrase in one of seven languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian, Chinese) and see how its usage frequency has been changing throughout the past few centuries.

 

 

 

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