John Stuart Mill: Quote for June 30, 2010

But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

-- John Stuart Mill

Categories: John Stuart Mill

Bill Cosby: Quote for June 29, 2010

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.

-- Bill Cosby

Categories: Bill Cosby

Swami Vivekanada: Quote for June 28, 2010

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is the way great spiritual giants are produced.

-- Swami Vivekanada

Categories: Swami Vivekanada

Mikhail Bakunin: Quote for June 27, 2010

The worker is in the position of a serf because this terrible threat of starvation which daily hangs over his head and over his family, will force him to accept any conditions imposed by the gainful calculations of the capitalist, the industrialist, the employer. . . .The worker always has the right to leave his employer, but has he the means to do so? No, he does it in order to sell himself to another employer. He is driven to it by the same hunger which forces him to sell himself to the first employer. Thus the worker's liberty . . . is only a theoretical freedom, lacking any means for its possible realization, and consequently it is only a fictitious liberty, an utter falsehood. The truth is that the whole life of the worker is simply a continuous and dismaying succession of terms of serfdom -- voluntary from the juridical point of view but compulsory from an economic sense -- broken up by momentarily brief interludes of freedom accompanied by starvation; in other words, it is real slavery.

-- Mikhail Bakunin

Categories: Mikhail Bakunin

Thomas Sowell: Quote for June 26, 2010

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

-- Thomas Sowell

Categories: Thomas Sowell

Nathaniel Hawthorne: Quote for June 25, 2010

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Categories: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Oscar Wilde: Quote for June 24, 2010

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

-- Oscar Wilde

Categories: Oscar Wilde

William Butler Yeats: Quote for June 23, 2010

It is most important that we should keep in this country a certain leisured class. I am of the opinion of the ancient Jewish book which says "there is no wisdom without leisure."

-- William Butler Yeats

Categories: William Butler Yeats

Jeremy Clarkson: Quote for June 22, 2010

The "public" seems to have bought into this belief that life can, and should, be run without risk, that all accidents are avoidable, and that death is something that only happens to people who eat meat and smoke.

-- Jeremy Clarkson

Categories: Jeremy Clarkson

E. M. Forster: Quote for June 21, 2010

Failure and success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.

-- E. M. Forster

Categories: E. M. Forster

Ruth Stone: Quote for June 20, 2010

If I heard a girl crying help
I would go to save her;
But you hardly ever hear those words.
Dear children, you must try to say
Something when you are in need.
Don’t confuse hunger with greed;
And don’t wait until you are dead.

-- Ruth Stone

Categories: Ruth Stone

Harvey Pekar: Quote for June 19, 2010

I'm an ordinary guy. I felt like people would find it easier to identify with me if I just showed myself as an average guy having experiences like everybody else has, but that nobody considers important enough to write about. There aren't too many people concerned with writing about mundane things. I didn't exactly have a lot of competition.

-- Harvey Pekar

Categories: Harvey Pekar

Abraham Lincoln: Quote for June 18, 2010

Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Categories: Abraham Lincoln

William Ernest Henley: Quote for June 17, 2010

Invictus

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

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

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

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-- William Ernest Henley

Categories: William Ernest Henley

Eric Hoffer: Quote for June 16, 2010

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

-- Eric Hoffer

Categories: Eric Hoffer

Jean Arp: Quote for June 15, 2010

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation ... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.

-- Jean Arp

Categories: Jean Arp

Sir Winston Churchill: Quote for June 14, 2010

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

-- Sir Winston Churchill

Categories: Sir Winston Churchill

Frederick Douglass: Quote for June 13, 2010

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

-- Frederick Douglass

Categories: Frederick Douglass

Maleva: Quote for June 12, 2010

The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own. But as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over, Bela my son. Now you will find peace.

-- Maleva

from: The Wolf Man (1941)

Maria Ouspenskaya acted as Maleva

Lon Chaney Jr. appears in this clip acting as Larry Talbot.

Categories: Maleva, Maria Ouspenskaya, The Wolf Man

Desmond Tutu: Quote for June 11, 2010

A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.

-- Desmond Tutu

Ubuntu is also a name for a popular Linux operating system.

Categories: Desmond Tutu

Brian Dyson: Quote for June 10, 2010

Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends, and spirit - and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls - family, health, friends, and spirit are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.

-- Brian Dyson

Categories: Brian Dyson

Charles Tilly: Quote for June 9, 2010

Going to war accelerated the move from indirect to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot pay for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues. Almost all war-making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat — including men — from reluctant citizens who have other uses for their resources.

-- Charles Tilly

Categories: Charles Tilly

Carl Jung: Quote for June 8, 2010

We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.

-- Carl Jung

Categories: Carl Jung

Marian Anderson: Quote for June 7, 2010

No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.

-- Marian Anderson

Categories: Marian Anderson