Leo Tolstoy: Quote for April 30, 2011

You see, if you take pains and learn in order to get a reward, the work will seem hard; but when you work... if you love your work, you will find your reward in that.

-- Leo Tolstoy

Categories: Leo Tolstoy

George Carlin: Quote for April 29, 2011

I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death. What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch and you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities. You become a little baby, you go back into the womb, spend your last nine months floating... and you finish off as an orgasm.

-- George Carlin

Categories: George Carlin

John Stuart Mill: Quote for April 28, 2011

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

-- John Stuart Mill

Categories: John Stuart Mill

Ted Kaczynski: Quote for April 27, 2011

Our society tends to regard as a "sickness" any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a "cure" for a "sickness" and therefore as good.

-- Ted Kaczynski

from: Paragraph 155 - The Unabomber Manisto (1995)

Categories: Ted Kaczynski

Thomas Fuller: Quote for April 26, 2011

Let him who expects one class of society to prosper in the highest degree, while the other is in distress, try whether one side; of the face can smile while the other is pinched.

-- Thomas Fuller

Categories: Thomas Fuller

Doris Day: Quote for April 25, 2011

If it's true that men are such beasts, this must account for the fact that most women are animal lovers.

-- Doris Day

Categories: Doris Day

Jesus Christ: Quote for April 24, 2011

Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

-- Jesus Christ

from: King James Bible (1611)

Categories: Jesus Christ, King James Bible

Philip Schaff: Quote for April 23, 2011

Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander the Great, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of school, he spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, he set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times.

-- Philip Schaff

Categories: Philip Schaff, Jesus Christ

Napoleon Bonaparte: Quote for April 22, 2011

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

Categories: Napoleon Bonaparte, Jesus Christ

Denis Diderot: Quote for April 21, 2011

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

-- Denis Diderot

Categories: Denis Diderot

Annabella Sciorra: Quote for April 20, 2011

I think space exploration is very important. I think there is very intelligent life on Mars. I believe that Martians are spying on us from the bottom of the ocean.

-- Annabella Sciorra

Categories: Annabella Sciorra

Allen Ginsberg: Quote for April 19, 2011

Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.

-- Allen Ginsberg

Categories: Allen Ginsberg

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Quote for April 18, 2011

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

-- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Categories: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Gene Roddenberry: Quote for April 17, 2011

I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!

-- Gene Roddenberry

Categories: Gene Roddenberry

Marie Curie: Quote for April 16, 2011

Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.

Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.

-- Marie Curie

Categories: Marie Curie

Henry Kissinger: Quote for April 15, 2011

Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.

-- Henry Kissinger

Categories: Henry Kissinger

Hannah Arendt: Quote for April 14, 2011

No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.

-- Hannah Arendt

Categories: Hannah Arendt

William Butler Yeats: Quote for April 13, 2011

Men Improve With The YEARS

I am worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady's beauty
As though I had found in a book
A pictured beauty,
Pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet, and yet,
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When I had my burning youth!
But I grow old among dreams,
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams.

-- William Butler Yeats

Categories: William Butler Yeats

Kate Millet: Quote for April 12, 2011

And what is boredom? Perhaps the inability to find meaning, to complete a perception, to arrive at an understanding: partly grasped, but forever just out of reach. It is not lack of interest, but interest frustrated, cut off, imperfectly held. So says the Chronicle today. But for me it is the fear of emptiness.

-- Kate Millet

Categories: Kate Millet

Doctor Faustus: Quote for April 11, 2011

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Illium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!

-- Doctor Faustus

from: Doctor Faustus (1967)

Richard Burton acted as Doctor Faustus

Elizabeth Taylor appears in this clip acting as Helen of Troy.

From Christopher Marlowe's play: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.

Categories: Doctor Faustus, Richard Burton

Pat Robertson: Quote for April 10, 2011

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.

-- Pat Robertson

Categories: Pat Robertson

Marcus Tullius Cicero: Quote for April 9, 2011

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Categories: Marcus Tullius Cicero