Sophy Burnham: Quote for October 9, 2011

To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.

-- Sophy Burnham

Categories: Sophy Burnham

Ansel Adams: Quote for October 8, 2011

Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit.

-- Ansel Adams

Categories: Ansel Adams

Immanuel Kant: Quote for October 7, 2011

Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity.

-- Immanuel Kant

Categories: Immanuel Kant

Jiddu Krishnamurti: Quote for October 6, 2011

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Categories: Jiddu Krishnamurti

Charlotte Forten Grimke: Quote for October 5, 2011

May those whose holy task it is,
To guide impulsive youth,
Fail not to cherish in their souls
A reverence for truth;
For teachings which the lips impart
Must have their source within the heart.

-- Charlotte Forten Grimke

Categories: Charlotte Forten Grimke

Abraham Maslow: Quote for October 4, 2011

The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.

-- Abraham Maslow

Categories: Abraham Maslow

Oscar Wilde: Quote for October 3, 2011

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is.

-- Oscar Wilde

Categories: Oscar Wilde

Joseph Goebbels: Quote for October 2, 2011

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

-- Joseph Goebbels

Categories: Joseph Goebbels

Paddy Chayefsky: Quote for October 1, 2011

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

-- Paddy Chayefsky

Categories: Paddy Chayefsky

Peter Kropotkin: Quote for September 30, 2011

The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror.

-- Peter Kropotkin

Categories: Peter Kropotkin

Victor Hugo: Quote for September 29, 2011

Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.

-- Victor Hugo

from: Les Misérables (Book 1862)

Categories: Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Edward Abbey: Quote for September 28, 2011

We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire—a crackpot machine—that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees.

-- Edward Abbey

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Thomas Paine: Quote for September 27, 2011

ome writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins ... Society is in every state a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

-- Thomas Paine

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Franz Kafka: Quote for September 26, 2011

The Revolution evaporates, & leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. The chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape.

-- Franz Kafka

Categories: Franz Kafka

Lydia Maria Child: Quote for September 25, 2011

Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.

-- Lydia Maria Child

Categories: Lydia Maria Child