George MacDonald
Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.
Archibald MacLeish
We are as great as our belief in human liberty – no greater. And our belief in human liberty is only ours when it is larger than ourselves.
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To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who know now they are truly brothers.
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What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.
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The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
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Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.
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Freedom is the right to one’s dignity as a man.
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A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man
Bernard Malamud, writer (1914-1986)
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
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A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
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I work with language. I love the flowers of afterthought.
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There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to – if there are no doors or windows – he walks through a wall.
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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
Malcolm X
You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.
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I just don’t believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.
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You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
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I don’t even call it violence when it’s in self defense; I call it intelligence.
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I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he’s wrong. Than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.
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You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
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‘If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.’
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A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
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I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.
A.A. Malee
Ah, kindness. What a simple way to tell another struggling soul that there is love to be found in the world.
David Malouf
I knew that the world around you is only uninteresting if you can’t see what is really going on. The place you come from is always the most exotic place you’ll ever encounter because it is the only place where you recognise how many secrets and mysteries there are in people’s lives.
David Mamet
Every fear hides a wish.
Nelson Mandela
Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation.
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Great anger and violence can never build a nation.
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After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
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There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
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Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.
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There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
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I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.
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There can be no greater gift than that of giving one’s time and energy to help others without expecting anything in return.
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Courageous people do not fear forgiving for the sake of peace.
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There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
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It’s so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build.
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A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones.
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I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
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A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
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For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
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It always seems impossible until it’s done.
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Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
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There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.
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May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.
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When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw.
Og Mandino
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
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Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.
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‘I’ve never heard anything about the resolutions of the Apostles, but good deal about their acts’.
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‘Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again’.
Alberto Manguel
Perhaps proof of how aleatory the concept of nationality is, lies in the fact that we must learn it before we can recognize it as such.
Steve Maraboli
A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.
______________________
I find the best way to love someone, is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.
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Start shaping your own day. Start walking your own walk. This journey is yours, take charge of it. Stop giving other people the power to shape your life.
Diego Maradona
My mother thinks I am the best. And I was raised to always believe what my mother tells me.
Karl Marlantes
When the peace treaty is signed, the war isn’t over for the veterans, or the family. It’s just starting.
Bob Marley
Reggae speaks of the suffering people of the earth through music.
______________________
Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.
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The problem is people are being hated when they are real, and being loved when they are fake.
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Money is numbers and numbers never end. It it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.
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Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.
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The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.
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One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.
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Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?
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The biggest coward of a man is to awaken the love of a woman without the intention of loving her.
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The people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off. Why should I?
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Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!
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If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.
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Some people feel the rain, others just get wet.
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Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!
Peter Marshall
May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.
Jonatan Mårtensson
Feelings are much like waves, we can’t stop them from coming but we can choose which one to surf.
José Martí, revolutionary and poet (1853-1895)
Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.
______________________
The first duty of a man is to think for himself.
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A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
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Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.
George R.R. Martin
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one. (From A Dance With Dragons)
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A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.
Steve Martin
Be so good they can’t ignore you.
Marvin the Martian (Loony Tunes)
‘Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!’
Groucho Marx
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
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Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Karl Marx
Labour in the white skin can never free itself as long as labour in the black skin is branded.
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History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
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The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
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Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.
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Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.
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In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
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‘Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor’.
– Das Kapital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 2, pg.49.
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From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
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Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.
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Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
Abraham Maslow
In any given moment, we are given two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.
John Mason
You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.
Dark brothers, first Australian race,
Soon you will take your rightful place
In the brotherhood long waited for,
Fringe-dwellers no more.
Sore, sore the tears you shed
When hope seemed folly and justice dead.
Was the long night weary? Look up, dark band,
The dawn is at hand.
Wendy Mass
The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn’t matter how others see you. (From Every Soul A Star)
Master Splinter
There is not a monster more dangerous than lack of compassion.
Willie Mays
I was very fortunate to play sports. All the anger in me went out. I had to do what I had to do. If you stay angry all the time, then you really don’t have a good life.
The Matrix
You have to understand … Most people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
– Morpheus
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Sooner or later you’re going to realize just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
– Morpheus
W. Somerset Maugham
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
John C. Maxwell
A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
______________________
You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
On the pavement
of my trampled soul
the steps of madmen
weave the prints of rude crude words.
– “1” (1913); translation from Patricia Blake (ed.) The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975) p. 53
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Tramp squares with rebellious treading!
Up heads! As proud peaks be seen!
In the second flood we are spreading
Every city on earth will be clean.
Vladimir Mayakovsky – “Our March” (1917); translation from C. M. Bowra (ed.) A Book of Russian Verse (London: Macmillan, 1943) p. 125.
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Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers’ homes.
Vladimir Mayakovsky – ‘Shrine or Factory?’ (1918); translation from Mikhail Anikst et al. (eds.) Soviet Commercial Design of the Twenties (New York: Abbeville Press, 1987) p. 15.
Rik Mayall
I had a very happy childhood, happy teenage years and I was famous by the time I was 22. A charmed life.
Mayan proverb
‘Nya b’a’n tu’n tjax tk’on chi’l toj twiy, ku’n b’e’x ch’ajila tu’n tx’yan’.
Which translates as: ‘It’s not wise to put a basket on your head as you will be eaten by a dog’, meaning [He who walks without looking will fall into trouble]
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Nya b’a’n tu’n twa’n toj chuj, ku’n b’e’x cy-elil chuj tc’u’ja.
(It is not good to eat in the bath or your stomach will grow that size).
Cormac McCarthy
You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.
John McCarthy
Self-righteousness has killed more people than smoking.
Paul McCartney
I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.
______________________
In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
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If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
Reba McEntire
To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.
David McCullough Jr
Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.
Christopher McDougall
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.
– from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
Greg McKeown
What if … we stopped celebrating busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?
Marshall McLuhan
As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of ‘do it yourself.’
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A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
Alexander McQueen
Give me time and I’ll give you a revolution.
Niccolò Machiavelli
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
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A prince must be prudent enough to know how to escape the bad reputation of those vices that would lose the state for him, and mus t protect himself from those that will not lose it for him, if this is possible; but if he cannot, he need not concern himself unduly if he ignores these less serious vices.
Margaret Mead
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Meatloaf (Marvin Lee Aday)
A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age!
(from the song, ‘Everything louder than everything else‘)
Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1819-1891)
‘Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed’.
Bernard Meltzer
‘Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it’.
H.L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
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I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.
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It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
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The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear – fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
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‘Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats’.
Maya Mendoza
No amount of security is worth the suffering of a mediocre life chained to a routine that has killed your dreams.
Michelangelo
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
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The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
James Michener
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
Peter Middlebrook
Pirates are the very essence of profit maximising entrepreneurs described in neoclassical economics. Yet, whilst films such as ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’ and ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ have gone a long way to popularise both pirates and outlaw behaviour, the truth of the matter is that piracy is illegal, and it kills.
John Stuart Mill
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
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If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
______________________
Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men. . . have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say, and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.
Henry Miller
The world is not to be put into order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
H. Milne P.
The ugliest thing that I have ever seen is a human being without compassion.
Yasmin Mogahed
Some hearts understand each other, even in silence.
Janelle Monae
Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless Embrace what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable. I didn’t have to become perfect because I’ve learned throughout my journey that perfection is the enemy of greatness.
Mongolian proverb
Do not scorn a weak cub; he may become a brutal tiger.
Michel de Montaigne
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
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Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
Lucy Maud Montgomery
I’m so glad we live in a world where there are Octobers.
Dwight L. Moody
Character is what a man is in the dark.
Rick Moody
I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.
John Morgridge
It is unfortunately true that our generation and that of your parents have left you with a big mess that will now be yours to clean up: wars, budget challenges, pollution, global warming, battles of health care, natural disasters. They’re all there for you. We’re willing those to you. Are you ready?
Alana Morissette
And I am fascinated by the spiritual man
I am humbled by his humble nature
What I wouldn’t give to find a soulmate
Someone else to catch this drift
Jim Morrison
A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.
______________________
Where’s your will to be weird?
______________________
I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown.
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Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.
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There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.
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I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments.
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Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.
______________________
‘Actually I don’t remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black-outs’.
______________________
‘Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself – and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That’s what real love amounts to – letting a person be what he really is’.
______________________
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
______________________
I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.
Toni Morrison
I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.
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If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
Dale T. Mortensen
Every great achievement is but a small peak in the mountain range of contribution.
Mother Teresa
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
______________________
Peace begins with a smile.
______________________
Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.
______________________
I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.
______________________
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
______________________
Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody. I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
______________________
Be faithful in small things, because it is in them that your strength lies.
Lucretia Mott (suffragist)
If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
______________________
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
______________________
Nevertheless the passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.
Muhammad
‘Even as the fingers o
Today, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly.
f the two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers.’
The Last Sermon, ninth day of Dhul Hijjah 10 A.H. (c 630 AD) at Mecca
Patrick Murphy (Alabama Softball)
Uncoachable kids become unemployable adults. Let your kids get used to someone being tough on them. It’s life, get over it.
Miyamoto Musashi
Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.
Gavin Nascimento
The cost of not following your heart is spending the rest of your life wishing you had. Don’t let fear or peer pressure determine your path. Be courageous, take risks, make mistakes, and realize that this is your life. The only person’s approval you are truly in need of, is your own.
Ogden Nash
Middle age is when you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you.
Native American proverbs
Be tolerant of those who are lost on their path. Conceit, Anger, Jealousy and Greed stem from a lost soul. Pray that they will find guidance.
______________________
We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
______________________
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.
Maajid Nawaz
In an open society, no idea can be above scrutiny, just as no people should be beneath dignity.
Dina Nayeri
It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks.
Pablo Neruda
Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.
______________________
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.
Simon Newcomb
‘Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment’.
Paul Newman
‘A man with no enemies is a man with no character.’
Howard W. Newton
The thoughtless are rarely wordless.
Huey Newton
The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.
Isaac Newton
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Reinhold Niebuhr
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Martin Niemöller
‘First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak out for me’.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
______________________
No artist tolerates reality.
______________________
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
______________________
Humour is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience.
______________________
‘Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed’.
______________________
‘It is more comfortable to follow one’s conscience than one’s reason: for it offers an excuse and alleviation if what we undertake miscarries–which is why there are always so many conscientious people and so few reasonable ones’.
______________________
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Nigerian proverb
In times of trouble, the wise build bridges and the foolish build walls.
(paraphrased in the movie, Black Panther. Original uses ‘dams’ instead of ‘walls’)
Earl Nightingale
Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.
______________________
All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.
St Nikolaos of Myra
The giver of every good and perfect gift has called upon us to mimic
His giving, by grace, through faith, and this is not of ourselves.
(The original St Nicholas from whom Santa Claus originates. St Nikolaos was a Greek Bishop, living in what is now Turkey. He would often secretly leave gifts for people. The most famous story of his gift-giving related to a father who couldn’t afford the dowry for his three daughters, which would mean they’d remain unmarried. Legend has it that St Nikolaos secretly threw three bags of gold coins through the window one night so that there would be enough dowry for each).
Anais Nin
Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
______________________
We write to taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospection.
______________________
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
______________________
The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
______________________
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
______________________
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
______________________
Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.
______________________
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
______________________
‘Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic’.
Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, volume 4, 1944-1947
______________________
‘And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom’.
______________________
‘Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age’.
______________________
‘You can not save people, you can only love them’.
Richard Nixon
When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Alfred Nobel
On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.
______________________
‘Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age’.
Andrew Nolan
Seek the truth or hide your head in the sand. Both require digging.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Dark brothers, first Australian race,
Soon you will take your rightful place
In the brotherhood long waited for,
Fringe-dwellers no more.
Sore, sore the tears you shed
When hope seemed folly and justice dead.
Was the long night weary? Look up, dark band,
The dawn is at hand.
Jacob Nordby
Blessed are the weird people – the poets, misfits, writers, mystics, heretics, painters and troubadours – for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.
Larry Norman
‘And moses bugged the pharoah – he bugged him
And he bugged him
Till he got his people free
He used real bugs … ‘
Henri Nouwen
If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.
______________________
Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.
______________________
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing… not healing, not curing… that is a friend who cares.
Lawrence Oates
I am just going outside and I may be sometime.
– reputedly, the last words of Lawrence Oates, member of the ill-fated Terra Nova Antarctic expedition which was led by Robert Falcon Scott. With supplies running dangerously low, Oates left the tent, muttering these words and headed into a blizzard. The temperate was -40o. For days prior to this, Oates was suffering from fatigue and frostbite, and was finding it difficult to continue on. It’s believed that Oates deliberately left the tent to sacrifice himself so the others could share the remaining supplies and so he wouldn’t be a burden. It was the day before his 32nd birthday.
Barack Obama
‘Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential’.
______________________
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Michelle Obama
Empower yourselves with a good education, then get out there and use that education to build a country worthy of your boundless promise.
Conan O’Brien
When all else fails there’s always delusion.
William of Occam (1285 – 1349?)
‘Plurality must never be posited without necessity’.
(Otherwise known as ‘Occam’s Razor’, the principle of parsimony, which means, the simplest solution is usually the best).
Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman), Wahpeton Santee Sioux
It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. Its appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way, it will in time disturb one’s spiritual balance. Therefore, children must early learn the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving.
Yoko Ono
Sometimes I am happy and sometimes not. I am, after all, a human being, you know. And I am glad that we are sometimes happy and sometimes not. You get your wisdom working by having different emotions.
______________________
Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90 … time is a concept that humans created.
______________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you’ll start to see a big difference in your life.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
Oprah
The only courage you ever need is the courage to fulfil the dreams of your own life.
W.L. Orme
If all the people in this world in which we live, were as selfish as a few of the people in this world in which we live, there would be no world in which to live.
P.J. O’Rourke
You’re not a baby boomer if you don’t have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate.
George Orwell
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ARE MORE
EQUAL THAN OTHERS
– Animal Farm, Ch. 10
______________________
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
______________________
Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
______________________
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
______________________
In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
______________________
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
______________________
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
______________________
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
______________________
Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than just ribbons?
______________________
‘No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.’
– Animal Farm, Ch. 10
______________________
‘Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past’.
______________________
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
______________________
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
______________________
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
______________________
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
______________________
The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.
______________________
In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
______________________
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
______________________
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
______________________
The essential job is to get people to recognize war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda.
______________________
Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
Osho (formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
If you suffer it is because of you, if you feel blissful it is because of you. Nobody else is responsible – only you and you along. You are your hell and your heaven too.
______________________
If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.
______________________
Experience life in all possible ways —
good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light,
summer-winter. Experience all the dualities.
Don’t be afraid of experience, because
the more experience you have, the more
mature you become.
Ozzy Osbourne
Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.
______________________
I got rabies shots for biting the head off a bat but that’s OK – the bat had to get Ozzy shots.
______________________
You gotta be really careful what you bite off. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. It’s a dangerous world.
______________________
And then I wanted to be a Beatle, but I ended up being in Black Sabbath!
Z.Z. Packer
Most writers would agree that fiction illuminates the greater truths of life in a way that living life does not.
Satchel Paige
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
Thomas Paine
Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
______________________
The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government.
______________________
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
Marcel Pagnol
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.
Chuck Palahniuk
If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognised.
______________________
You will always have some excuse not to live your life.
______________________
The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
______________________
It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
______________________
You realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past.
______________________
Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.
______________________
If we can forgive what’s been done to us… If we can forgive what we’ve done to others… If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being villains or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.
Pancho Villa
Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.
C. Northcote Parkinson
Institutions build their grandest monuments just before they crumble into irrelevance.
Rosa Parks
Each person must live their life as a model for others.
______________________
I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.
Blaise Pascal
Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.
______________________
Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.
______________________
Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.
______________________
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
______________________
Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
______________________
Nothing is as approved as mediocrity, the majority has established it and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
______________________
Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.
______________________
All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
______________________
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
______________________
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
______________________
‘Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves’.
Boris Pasternak
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
______________________
When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.
Louis Pasteur
In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.
Alan Paton
When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.
______________________
When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.
______________________
When I go up there, which is my intention, the Big Judge will say to me, ‘Where are your wounds’? and if I say I haven’t any, he will say, ‘Was there nothing to fight for’? I couldn’t face that question.
- from ‘Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful‘
Linus Pauling
I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: ‘Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.’ … The twenty-five percent is for error.
John Pavlovitz
Yes, it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, but sometimes you need to remind the darkness just how loud you can be.
Irene Peter
Today, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly.
Peter the Great
I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself.
Jordan Peterson
Remember that what you do not yet know is more important than what you already know.
Petrarch
Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure.
Peace Pilgrim
If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.
Pele
The first World Cup I remember was in the 1950 when I was 9 or 10 years old. My father was a soccer player, and there was a big party, and when Brazil lost to Uruguay, I saw my father crying.
______________________
Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.
______________________
Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
…the problem with words is that once spoken, they cannot find their way back to the speaker alone.
Pericles
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean that politics won’t take an interest in you.
Ross Perot
The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.
William Lyon Phelps
One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.
Pauline Phillips (Abigail Van Buren), created the ‘Dear Abby’ advice column in 1956
It is a sad commentary of our times when our young must seek advice and counsel from ‘Dear Abby’ instead of going to Mom and Dad.
Edith Piaf
I want to make people cry even when they don’t understand my words.
______________________
I want to make people cry even when they don’t understand my words.
______________________
Death does not exist.
______________________
Money? How did I lose it? I never did lose it. I just never knew where it went.
Pablo Picasso
Art washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life.
______________________
The meaning of life is to find your passion, the purpose of life is to give it away.
______________________
Only put off tomorrow what you are willing to die left undone.
Mary Pickford
Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
Jodi Picoult
You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
Edith Lovejoy Pierce
We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.
Pink Floyd
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!
– Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, from the album Wish You Were Here
______________________
‘we’re just two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl … ‘
from ‘Wish You Were Here.’
______________________
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.
– from ‘Comfortably Numb’, Pink Floyd’s The Wall
______________________
Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts
Hot ashes for trees
Hot air for a cool breeze
Cold comfort for change
Did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage
– Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Robert M. Pirsig
Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity.
Robert Plant
A daily blog would just about finish me off completely.
(Plant obviously hasn’t subscribed to Panda’s WOTD … one, because he hasn’t been finished off and two, because Panda’s daily word would complete his very being … word!)
Sylvia Plath
Indecision and reveries are the anesthetics of constructive action.
______________________
I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me.
______________________
Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.
______________________
If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.
______________________
Kiss me and you will see how important I am.
Plato
And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.
______________________
No-one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
______________________
Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
______________________
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
______________________
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
______________________
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
______________________
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
______________________
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.
______________________
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
______________________
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.
______________________
Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.
Plutarch
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
______________________
To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.
______________________
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
Edgar Allan Poe
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
______________________
Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.
______________________
Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
______________________
The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
______________________
Stupidity is a talent for misconception.
______________________
The scariest monster are those that lurk within our souls.
______________________
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.
______________________
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
______________________
‘He is noticeable for nothing in the world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for nothing’.
______________________
‘Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?’
______________________
‘I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it’.
Iggy Pop
Something I like to do a lot is just sit by water when there’s a current and just stare into the water. I don’t fish, I don’t hunt, I don’t scuba, I don’t spear, don’t boat, don’t play basketball or football – I excel at staring into space. I’m really good at that.
______________________
I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.
Alexander Pope
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Karl Popper
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
Antion Porchia
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
Natalie Portman
I don’t love studying. I hate studying. I like learning. Learning is beautiful.
Terry Pratchett
Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.
Elvis Presley
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
______________________
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away.
Rick Price
Every moment of your life is a second chance.
Vincent Price
A man who limits his interests, limits his life.
Princess Diana
Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.
Matthew Prior
Forbear to mention what thou canst not praise.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.
______________________
The great are only great because we are on our knees. Let us rise!
Marcel Proust
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.
______________________
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
______________________
Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
______________________
There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favourite book.
Alexander Pushkin
Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.