Words of Wisdom

Been awhile since I posted. Summers are hideously busy. Just to get back into things a little, here are some more quotations I've collected, many from A Word a Day messages.

1. There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher. -Henry van Dyke, poet (1852-1933)
2. There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. -G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936)
3. The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for centuries surely stands in a lonely place. -Gary Zukav, author (1942- )
4. Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. -Robert King Merton, sociologist (1910-2003)
5. We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us. -Robert Hayden, poet and educator (1913-1980)
6. As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more. -Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
7. A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. -Leo Rosten, author (1908-1997)
8. Words are things; and a small drop of ink / Falling like dew upon a thought, produces / That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. -Lord Byron, (1788-1824)
9. No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded. -Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978)
10. If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral. -Samuel P. Ginder, US navy captain
11. Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)
12. The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts. -Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677)
13. I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. -James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)
14. The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
15. Literature encourages tolerance - bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them also as possibilities. -Northrop Frye, writer (1912-1991)
16. True religion is the life we lead, not the creed we profess. -Louis Nizer, lawyer (1902-1994)
17. God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
18. Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799)
19. Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
20. Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. -Harry S. Truman, 33rd US president (1884-1972)
21. None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. -Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)
22. Force without wisdom falls of its own weight. -Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)
23. Those who put out the people's eyes, reproach them for their blindness. -John Milton, poet (1608-1674)
24. You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion. -Meister Eckhart, theologian (c. 1260-1327)
25. God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
26. Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore. -William Cowper, poet (1731-1800)
27. Grasp the subject, the words will follow. -Cato the Elder, statesman, soldier, and writer (234-149 BCE)
28. Loneliness... is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)
29. The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)
30. All restraints upon man's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree. -Lysander Spooner, lawyer (1808-1887)
31. It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time. -Mignon McLaughlin, author (1915-)
32. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet (1809-1892)
33. Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. -Graham Greene, novelist and journalist (1904-1991)
34. The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. -Stendal (Marie Henri Beyle), novelist (1783-1842)
35. Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government. -Jeremy Bentham, jurist and philosopher (1748-1832)
36. More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -Woody Allen, author actor, and filmmaker (1935- )
37. Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that! -Lewis Carroll, mathematician and writer (1832-1898)
38. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
39. The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)
40. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. -Thomas Pynchon, writer (1937- )
41. Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
42. Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. -Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (1920- )
43. The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they
44. bring, they carry them as silently away. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
45. Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance. -Henry David Thoreau,
46. naturalist and author (1817-1862)
47. One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters. -English Proverb
48. Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. -Carl Schurz, general and politician (1829-1906)