Past Quotes of the Week


August 2, 1999 I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to suck the marrow from the bones of life; to put to rout all that was not life, and not to come to the end of life, and discover that I had not lived. – Henry David Thoreau
August 9, 1999 Courage is fear that has said its prayers. – Anne Lamott
August 16, 1999 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers "Low, thou must," The youth replies, "I can!" – Ralph Waldo Emerson This quote is inscribed in Linville Caverns in Virginia, by a memorial to Virginian men who died in WWII.
August 23, 1999 I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life—and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do. – Georgia O'Keefe
August 30, 1999 ripple in still water where there is no pebble tossed nor wind to blow – Grateful Dead
September 6, 1999 Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of. – They Might Be Giants
September 13, 1999 A desire to be in charge of our won lives, a need for control is born in each of us. It is essential to our mental health, and our success, that we take control. – Robert F. Bennett
September 20, 1999 To be completely honest with oneself is the very best effort a human being can make. – Sigmund Freud
September 27, 1999 Your attitude has to get to the point where you say, "I'd rather be dead than live one more day stupid." – Augie Turak
October 4, 1999 How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five? – William Blake
October 11, 1999 Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must approve the homage of Reason rather than that of blindfolded Fear. – Thomas Jefferson
October 18, 1999 Yoda: Will [Luke] finish what he begins? Luke: I won't fail you. I'm not afraid. Yoda: You will be. You will be! – from The Empire Strikes Back, discussion of beginning the spiritual quest
October 25, 1999 Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. – The Buddha
November 1, 1999 To try and see more and better is not a matter of whim or curiosity or self-indulgence. To see or to perish is the very condition laid upon everything that makes up the universe. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
November 8, 1999 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. – Pink Floyd
Novembet 15, 1999 For as bat's eyes are to daylight, so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the most obvious of all. – Aristotle
November 22, 1999 The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying. – Robert Louis Stevenson
November 29, 1999 If God had a name, what would it be? And would you call it to His face if you were faced with Him in all His glory? What would you ask if you had just one question? If God had a face, what would it look like? And would you want to see if seeing meant that you would have to believe in things like heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets? – Words and music by Eric Bazilian; Sung by Joan Osborne
December 6, 1999 Life is short and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind. – From the blessing at St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC
December 13, 1999 Knight: What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able? I want knowledge: not faith, not supposition. I want God to stretch out His hand to me, reveal Himself and speak to me. Death: Perhaps no one is there. Knight: Then life is an outrageous horror....[My] life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering. But I will use my remaining time for one meaningful deed. – From Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal
December 20, 1999 I come to the office each morning and stay for long hours doing what has to be done to the best of my ability. And when you've done the best you can, you can't do any better. So when I go to sleep I turn everything over to the Lord and forget it. – Harry S. Truman
December 27, 1999 Give me a man in love; he knows what I mean. Give me one who yearns; give me one who is hungry; give me one far away in this desert, who is thirsty and sighs for the spring of the eternal country. Give me that sort of man; he knows what I mean. But if I speak to a cold man, he just does not know what I am talking about. – St. Augustine
January 3, 2000 If poetry were anything—like dropping an atom bomb—which anyone did, anyone could become a poet merely by doing the necessary anything; whatever that anything might or might not entail. But (as it happens) poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet's calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view) you've got to come out of the measurable doing universe and into the immeasurable house of being...and remember one thing only: that it's you—nobody else—who determines your destiny and decides your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you. – E.E. Cummings
January 10, 2000 Don't spend your time looking around for something you want that can't be found when you find out you can live without it and go along not thinking about it! I'll tell you something true. The bare necessities of life will come to you. – from Disney's The Jungle Book
January 17, 2000 A number of important quotes this week from philosophers of our time: Big Bird: "I guess it's better to be who you are. Turns out people like you best that way, anyway." Grover: "Anywhere I am is here. Anywhere I am not is there." Telly: "Don't worry, be happy. Or worry, and then be happy." Prairie Dawn: "Follow your dreams." Ernie: "Sometimes, you have to put down the duckie." Maria and Luis: "Very often, what you're looking for is right before your eyes." Bert: "It's okay to be boring." Elmo: "There is joy in everything." – brought to you by the letters S, K, and S
January 24, 2000 At some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something—and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life in self-surrender, had a goal. From that moment I have known what it means "not to look back," and "to take no thought for the morrow." – Dag Hammerskjold
January 31, 2000 I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. Lately I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock, but it would not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness. – Heinz Pagels, physicist and quantum mechanics researcher, before his death in a 1988 climbing accident
February 7, 2000 Two related quotes this week—the first from 1999, the second from 1892. Humans are far more skilled at recognizing patterns than in thinking through logical combinations, so we rely on this aptitude for almost all of our mental processes. Indeed, pattern recognition comprises the bulk of our neural circuitry. These faculties make up for the extremely slow speed of human neurons. We don't have time to think too many new thoughts when we are pressed to make a decision. The human brain relies on precomputing its analyses and storing them for future reference. We then use our pattern-recognition capability to recognize a situation as comparable to one we have thought about and then draw upon our previously considered conclusions. We are unable to think about matters that we have not thought through many times before. – Ray Kurzweil Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. – William James
February 14, 2000 When I look around at the people my age, the biggest thing I see is that their lives are full of regrets—not so much of the things they did, as of the things they didn't do. My life certainly hasn't been perfect, but it isn't full of regrets, and I ask myself: Why? It's because I took a leap of faith. I let go with the right hand, before I grabbed hold with the left. – Dave Gold
February 21, 2000 The Two-Headed Calf Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum. But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual. – Laura Gilpin
February 28, 2000 And Jesus was a sailor When He walked upon the water And He spent a long time watching From a lonely wooden tower And when He knew for certain Only drowning men could see Him He said "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them" But He Himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath Your wisdom like a stone. - Leonard Cohen
March 6, 2000 Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage. - Anais Nin
March 13, 2000 And perhaps the great day will come when a people, distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free will, "We break the sword," and will smash its entire military establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself unarmed when one has been the best armed, out of a height of feeling—that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither oneself nor one's neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear, does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared—this must some day become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth. - Nietzsche
March 20, 2000 If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. - Edgar Watson Howe
March 27, 2000 I thought I had reached a point in life where everything would be smooth. But it is not. It just gets more jagged and pitted and filled with turns that take you into the dark recesses of your mind. It never seems to get easy. - Sylvester Stallone
April 3, 2000 Here's a guaranteed way to convince someone—could be your best friend, or could be a total stranger—to convince him that you are a terribly insightful person. Say "You act like you've got it all together, like your life is pretty well under control and you've got all the bases covered. But deep down, you're carrying a tremendous number of problems and worries that you never show to the outside world." The person will stare at you as if you had looked directly into his soul. - Kenny Felder
April 10, 2000 I remember my childhood, and I think most people do, as a magical time. There was this vividness about life, and about the world, and about myself, and this awe quality about life. My parents were magical figures, especially my father. And then at some point that just disappears, and the world becomes in comparison flat and gray. It may be part of normal developmental process to come to terms with that, but I didn't. I was always hungry to get that magic back in my life, something genuine, something to bring back that vividness. - Fleet Maull
April 17, 2000 When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical. And all the birds in the trees, they'd be singing so happily, Joyfully, playfully watching me. But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible. Logical, responsible, practical. And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, Clinical, intellectual, cynical. There are times when all the world's asleep. The questions run too deep For such a simple man. Won't you please, please tell me what we've learned I know it sounds absurd, But please tell me who I am. - Supertramp
April 24, 2000 If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God! - Emerson
May 1, 2000 Doctor, my eyes have seen the years And the slow parade of fears without crying Now I want to understand I have done all that I could To see the evil and the good without hiding You must help me if you can Doctor, my eyes cannot see the sky Is this the price for having learned how not to cry? - Jackson Browne
May 8, 2000 Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. - William Wordsworth
May 15, 2000 He who made kittens put snakes in the grass. - Jethro Tull Each little snake that poisons, each little wasp that stings He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings. - Monty Python What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall? If design govern in a thing so small. - Robert Frost
May 22, 2000 Requiem Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea And the hunter home from the hill. - Robert Louis Stevenson
May 29, 2000 Man is a mystery. If you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery because I want to be a man. - Dostoevsky
June 5, 2000 Here I am, Lord I'm knocking at your place of business I know I ain't got no business here But you said if I ever got so low I was busted, You could be trusted. - Paul Simon
June 12, 2000 The surest way to lose truth is to pretend that one already wholly possesses it. - Gordon Allport
June 19, 2000 My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted. - Rabindranath Tagore
June 26, 2000 "The one thing that could give us some real basis for our living is to know for sure whether or not anything happens after we die. Why hasn't anyone tackled it seriously?" "Religions do. Philosophies do." "That isn't what I mean. The most serious questions in the world have been left to faith or speculation. It is time for scientists to cope with them, or admit that science is no more than pebble counting." - Robert Heinlein
July 3, 2000 To be acknowledged for who and what I am. No more, no less. Not for acclaim, not for approval. The simple truth of that recognition. This has been the elemental drive of my existence, and it must be achieved if I am to live or die with dignity. - Andrew the robot in the movie Bicentennial Man
July 17, 2000 The change of life is the time when you meet yourself at a crossroads and you decide whether to be honest or not before you die. - Katharine Butler Hathaway
July 31, 2000 Got a call from an old friend We used to be real close Said he couldn't go on the American way Closed the shop, sold the house, Bought a ticket to the West coast Now he gives them the stand-up routine in L.A. - Billy Joel
August 7, 2000 If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on. - Lou Holtz (football coach)
August 14, 2000 You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world. - Sheilah Graham
August 21, 2000 Speak to me, don't mislead me, the calm I feel means a storm is swelling; there's no telling where it starts or how it ends. Speak to me, why are you building this thick brick wall to defend me when your silence is my greatest fear? - Natalie Merchant (10,000 Maniacs)
August 28, 2000 Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. - Thomas Merton
September 4, 2000 The successful person is the individual who forms the habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do. - Donald Riggs
September 11, 2000 All understanding begins in wonder. - Goethe
September 18, 2000 I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in, and stops my mind from wandering where it will go... - Lennon/McCartney
September 25, 2000 You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. - Ray Bradbury
October 2, 2000 Figure out what your purpose is in life, what you really and truly want to do with your time and your life then be willing to sacrifice everything and then some to achieve it. If you are not willing to make the sacrifice, then keep searching. - Quintina Ragnacci
October 9, 2000 Any time you see someone more successful than you are, they are doing something that you aren't. - Malcolm X
October 16, 2000 I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals. My religiosity consists of a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we can comprehend of the knowable world. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. - Albert Einstein
October 23, 2000 If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. - G.K. Chesterton
October 30, 2000 We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle
November 6, 2000 My personal life is a postscript to my novels; it consists of the sentence: "And I mean it." I have always lived by the philosophy I present in my books. - Ayn Rand
November 13, 2000 This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. - Vladamir Nabokov
November 20, 2000 It is not flawed choice, flawed action, or even death itself which is the ultimate human dilemma. The gravest challenge to our hopes and dreams is the messy biological business-as-usual that is going on within us and without us at every hour of every day. - Camille Paglia
November 27, 2000 When my daughter was seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college, that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared back at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?" - Howard Ikemoto
December 4, 2000 Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good. - Ann Landers
December 11, 2000 Last July—I didn't tell you this yet—Nathan, my three year old drowned and was pulled from the pool without a heartbeat. My wife performed CPR and the paramedics were able to revive him but he spent two days in the hospital. It was the most scared I have ever been. I still have nightmares thinking about it. He is convinced that he saw God at the bottom of the pool, as it was the first thing he even mentioned when he snapped to concsiuousness the next morning. He was adamant that God saved his life. It is amazing what a three year old with faith will see, isn't it? If we take Jeremiah's words, "For I knew you when you were in the womb, and I formed you with my hands, and I have sanctified you", then I guess what makes children so unique is that the younger they are, the closer they are to being molded by God himself. I always hug him a bit tighter at night, he is still my little buddy. - From a letter my cousin sent me last month
December 25, 2000 ...yet the greater and wiser sort of them worship none of these, but adore one eternal, invisible, infinite, and incomprehensible Deity; as a Being that is far above all our apprehensions, that is spread over the whole Universe, not by His bulk, but by His power or virtue. - Sir Thomas More
January 8, 2001 Every man persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, and is only convinced of his imbicility by length of time and frequency of experiment. - Samuel Johnson
January 15, 2001 Sometimes as I walk along the beach, I find myself becoming jealous of those who find a quiet happiness in such simple moments in life. And when I find myself reaching out but failing to grasp these same simple pleasures, I then become aware of a grim realization about people like myself and I feel pity. For it's a very sad person that has to practice to be happy. - James Childress
January 22, 2001 If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend 6 sharpening my ax. - Abraham Lincoln
January 29, 2001 Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses; we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author. - John Keats
February 12, 2001 If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing. - Zimbabwean Proverb
February 19, 2001 I am anxious after praise; I sometimes wish it were not so: I hate to think I spend my days Waiting for what I do not know. I even hope that when I'm dead The worms won't find me wholly vicious, But, as they masticate my head, Will smack their lips and cry "Delicious!" - W. Craddle
February 26, 2001 I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man. - John Ruskin
March 5, 2001 Usually when someone believes in a particular religion, his attitude becomes more and more a sharp angle pointing away from himself. In our way, the point of the angle is always toward ourselves. - Shenryu Suzuki
March 12, 2001 Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, The universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting. - Jorge Borges
March 19, 2001 One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore unpopular. - Carl Jung
March 26, 2001 Maybe one of these days I'll be able to give myself a gold star for being ordinary, and maybe one of these days I'll give myself a gold star for being extraordinary—for persisting. And maybe one day I won't need to have a star at all. - Sue Bender
April 2, 2001 Friends don't let friends live ordinary lives. - Martin W. Brossman
April 9, 2001 To be uncertain is uncomfortable, but to be certain is ridiculous. - Chinese proverb
April 16, 2001 There were cultures that believed that the Earth is supported on the back of a giant turtle, or that the afterlife consists of fighting bloody battles all day and getting drunk all night, or that a statue they themselves had just carved was a god. But from the God's-eye perspective, your and my conceptualizations of God and the universe look just as silly as theirs: no more, and no less. - Augie Turak
April 23, 2001 Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. - Antonie de Saint-Exupery
April 30, 2001 Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?'" - Martin Buber
May 7, 2001 All I ever wanted was to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? - Herman Hesse
May 14, 2001 What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then? - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
May 21, 2001 Life—When 80 My newborn baby tumbles from my lap and toddles off to school returning with a tall youth, and their child brings me a shawl. - Zetta Benson Peterson
May 28, 2001 Education does not mean teaching people to know what they don't know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. - John Ruskin
June 4, 2001 Offenhouse: "You've got it all wrong. <Money> has never been about possessions. It's about power." Picard: "Power to do what?" Offenhouse: "To control your life—your destiny." Picard: "That kind of control is an illusion" - From the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Neutral Zone"
June 11, 2001 It's a hell of a lot easier to outgrow a desire than to satisfy it. - Augie Turak
June 18, 2001 No matter who you are, no matter how good an athlete you are, we're creatures of habit. The better your habits are, the better they'll be in pressure situations. - Wayne Gretzky, explaining why athletes such as himself, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan spend so much time relentlessly practicing basic moves
June 25, 2001 Does there exist anyone who is capable of devoting his energies to humaneness for a single day? Surely such people exist, but I have never come across them. - Confucius
July 2, 2001 The follower of this path has one thought, and this is the End of his determination. But many-branched and endless are the thoughts of the man who lacks determination. - The Bhagavad Gita
July 9, 2001 I'm not like other people. I don't like pain. It hurts me. - Daffy Duck We all fluctuate delicately between a subjective and objective view of the world, and this quandary is central to human nature. - Douglas Hofstadter
July 16, 2001 What good is being the best if it brings out the worst in you? - Rodney Dangerfield
July 23, 2001 We measure our gains out in luck and coincidence Lanterns to turn back the night And put our defeats down to chance or experience And try once again for the light Some wait for the waters of fortune to cover them Some just see the tides of ill chance running over them Some call on Jehovah, some cry out to Allah Some wait for the boats that still row to Valhallah Well, you should try to accept what the fates are unfolding While some say they're sure where the blame should be falling You look round for maybe a chance of forestalling But too soon its over and done And the man for all seasons is lost Behind the sun - Al Stewart
July 30, 2001 Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend; it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success. - Oscar Wilde
August 6, 2001 As I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say. I just watch what they do. - Andrew Carnegie
August 13, 2001 It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption. - Carl Jung
August 20, 2001 But here you are, in the ninth Two men out, and three men on Nowhere to look but inside Where we all respond to Pressure - Billy Joel
August 27, 2001 We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion. - Georg Hegel
September 3, 2001 Alice went on: "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don't much care where—" said Alice. "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat. "—so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough." - Lewis Carroll
September 10, 2001 It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
September 17, 2001 "I'd have characterized most American attitudes [before September 11] as being 'Leave me alone so I can get to work and earn money to buy me and my family nice things.' I don't think Americans were being callous (active) to the suffering of the world as much as oblivious (passive) to it. Life was a poppy dream of new economies and rising expectations...we were insulated from the world's grief. Yes it was sad, but it was someone else's sad. Shed a tear, make a donation, get back to work...I think that the poppy dream is over." "You say you want these perpetrators brought to justice. I say, there was no justice in what occured in New York City. Americans want revenge. And I am right there with them....We need to effectively colonize Afghanistan and Iraq. These lands are geographically difficult. High rolling hills, mountainous terrain with tiny villages sprinkled within. What then, would make more sense logistically? A full scale invasion or a couple of nuclear warheads? I fear we will end up choosing the latter of the two. But—I won't exactly shed a tear if those two places are turned once and for all into glass parking lots." "I know it's wrong to even think such, but in trying to get some handle on the tragedy, I did a quick calculation: How many people die in America every single day? Simple assumptions: average life span of 70 years, 210 million people, constant death rate. 8,200 people die in America every day. Even if 10,000 people died (and the last I've heard they're saying 5,000), it's just not that many. Not that what happened wasn't horrific, it was. But I find it very hard to get so upset about it. We all die. Americans seem to forget that." "One thing that I've been doing to try to see what Americans might wind up like is looking at how Israelis are now. How nice of them to say 'our hearts go out to you' instead of 'see, I told you so!'" "America keeps us Israelis on a leash, and without this we would show the Palestinians just how bonkers we [Israelis] are." "When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler. And when you think 'the people of Afghanistan' think 'the Jews in the concentration camps.' It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators....We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble with that scheme is, it's already been done. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that." "I heard today on the radio that stores were reporting across the nation that they were running low of 2 things: American flags and guns. I think that our challenge now is to live up to the values we claim and to refuse to become so like our enemies that no one could tell the difference." - From a variety of emails I've seen this week, mostly from my friends and family. Obviously, there is a wide variety of opinions here—and none of them reflects the opinion of the SKS as a whole, or even my personal opinions. It's also interesting to note that Mr. "glass parking lot" sent me a message a few days later saying "I wrote the things I wrote a few days ago out of my own anger and you know they really do not represent me once I think these things out. Please feel free to use any quotes from anything you like, but perhaps those words are not representative of my mind, and more importantly, my heart."
September 24, 2001 Gandhi was a Hindu who saw good in all religions. When he first met with Muslims he saw good in the religion of Islam and said, "I am a Hindu, but I am also a Muslim." Then he met a Christian and said, "I am a Hindu, and I am a Muslim, and I am a Christian." Finally he met Gora and he saw the good in positive Atheism. He said "I cannot be a believer and an Atheist at the same time, I will worship Truth." Later, Gandhi modified his statement and said, "God is Truth." And finally, shortly before his murder by a religious zealot, Gandhi made the ultimate observation and said, "Truth is God." - Lavanam
October 1, 2001 We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, "here and now" without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank. - José Ortega y Gasset
October 8, 2001 I've been taking all these philosophy courses, and we talk about what's true, what's important, what's good. Well, how do you teach people to be good? What's the point of knowing good if you don't keep trying to become a good person? - A student's comment to Professor Robert Coles, upon dropping out of Harvard
October 22, 2001 If I had to define what true civilization is, I would say it is a man's ability to step outside himself, his customs and everything else, and see what he is. And I think religion [in certain countries] became the opposite. - V.S. Naipaul, who last week was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature
October 29, 2001 I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in, and invite God and his Angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his Angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. - John Donne
November 5, 2001 There is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this <autobiography>; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility. - Ben Franklin
November 12, 2001 I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occured to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. - C.S. Lewis
November 19, 2001 "Daddy, I don't know if there is a God or not. I think I'm too young to make up my mind. But I think those men made up their minds too fast." - My daughter Mary, at seven years old, after a couple of Mormons came calling "Daddy, now I think there is a God. Because there was something special in the woods, and that's what I think God is." - Mary again, just a few weeks later, after a walk through the woods
November 26, 2001 Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to think that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us. - Carl Jung (italics added)
December 3, 2001 Truth is a stern and pitiless god. He exacts human sacrifices; he slays with jealous thunder every love which is unfaithful to him. He drives into madness those who cannot bear the full terror of his majestic frown. His whispers are fanged adders whose sting poisons trust and human fellowship. Only those who resolutely turn away from him escape his tyranny; only for them, the sun shines and flowers are gay. - Bertrand Russell
December 10, 2001 I'm sick as a dog. Fever, sore throat, very congested and weak. But it is Monday, and here I am. - Marty Soloman at the beginning of the day-long meditation that he does every Monday, no matter what.
December 17, 2001 I pray for wisdom. And when you pray for wisdom, you get your ass kicked. - Jim Carrey
December 24, 2001 Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. - Francis Church, New York Sun editor, 1897
December 31, 2001 Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended upon man. - Francis Spellman
January 7, 2002 All miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone. - Blaise Pascal
January 14, 2002 Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here-and-now intolerable, and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences: no excuses, no negativity. - Eckhart Tolle
January 21, 2002 The agony of life is uncertainty. The rationalization is that uncertainty is certain. - Richard Rose
January 28, 2002 Infinity. I'll tell you what infinity is. A frog lays eggs, eggs hatch into tadpoles, the tadpole grows back legs and becomes a frog and then lays its eggs again. Now that's a circle. It's infinity. Everything that is alive is infinity. We're infinity. A boy grows up makes a baby. We die when we get very old and the baby grows up and makes another baby. Even trees. - A 6-year-old boy named Ryan; quoted in the article "Out of the Mouths of Babes: Spiritual Awareness and the Gifted Child" by Catherine Harrison
February 4, 2002 Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain
February 11, 2002 My solution was to create smart-sounding answers using the skeptic's creed: "The simplest explanation is usually right." My experience tells me that in this complicated world the simplest explanation is usually dead wrong. But I've noticed that the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far more convincing than any complicated explanation could hope to be. - Scott Adams
February 18, 2002 No matter how many years you sit doing zazen, you will never become anything special. - Master Sawaki
February 25, 2002 Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand. - Baruch Spinoza
March 4, 2002 I went to see the doctor of philosophy With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee He never did marry or see a B-grade movie He graded my performance, he said he could see through me I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind Got my paper and I was free. - The Indigo Girls
March 11, 2002 Said Gimli, "It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise." "Yet seldom do they fail of their seed," said Legolas. "And that will lie in the dust and rot to spring up again in times and places unlooked-for. The deeds of Men will outlast us, Gimli." "And yet come to naught in the end but might-have-beens, I guess," said the Dwarf. "To that the Elves know not the answer," said Legolas. - J.R.R. Tolkien
March 18, 2002 God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, Go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. - Rainer Maria Rilke
March 25, 2002 The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and deeply felt good. - Ruth Benedict
April 1, 2002 A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am receiving. - Albert Einstein
April 8, 2002 Zen is like soap. First you wash with it, and then you wash off the soap. - Yamaoka Tesshu
April 15, 2002 They say that heaven is like TV A perfect little world that doesn't really need you And everything there is made of light And the days keep going by Strange angels, singing just for me Old stories, they're haunting me This is nothing Like I thought it would be. - Laurie Anderson
April 22, 2002 No man could demand from [Captain Nemo] an account of his actions. God, if he believed in one—his conscience, if he had one—were the sole judges to whom he was answerable. - Jules Verne, of course. This quote was shown to me by a high school student. To him, Nemo's unaccountability seemed to be the ultimate in freedom.
April 29, 2002 Every age but ours has had its model, its ideal. All of these have been given up by our culture; the saint, the hero, the gentleman, the knight, the mystic. About all we have left is the well-adjusted man without problems, a very pale and doubtful substitute. - Abraham Maslow
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