12/22/09

Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about. -Trey Parker and Matt Stone

12/21/09

Little by little, one travels far. -J. R. R. Tolkien

12/17/09

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. -Robertson Davies

12/16/09

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate. -Albert Schweitzer

12/15/09

We begin to see that the completion of an important project has every right to be dignified by a natural grieving process. Something that required the best of you has ended. You will miss it. -Anne Wilson Schaef

12/11/09

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment. -Robert Benchley

12/10/09

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with. -John Locke

12/09/09

To be able under all circumstances to practice five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness. -Confucius

12/08/09

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace. -John Lennon

12/07/09

Reading a book is like rewriting it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms. -Angela Carter

12/03/09

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending. -Fred Rogers

12/02/09

One may go a long way after one is tired. -French Proverb

12/01/09

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. -Abraham Flexner

11/30/09

In poetry the pen is not so much a recording instrument—I don't want to play secretary to my own internal life—but I think of the pen as an instrument of discovery. -Billy Collins

11/26/09

Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy. -Jacques Maritain

11/25/09

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy. -Jim Rohn

11/24/09

Take what you can use and let the rest go by. -Ken Kesey

11/23/09

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. -

11/20/09

Perfection is a road, not a destination. Every time I live, I get an education. -Burk Hudson

11/19/09

Books written out of fire give me a great deal of pleasure. You get the sense that the world for these writers could not have continued if the book hadn't been written. When you come across a book like that it is a privilege. -Hisham Matar

11/06/09

The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal. -Karl Menninger

11/05/09

Endeavor to be always patient of the faults and imperfections of others for thou has many faults and imperfections of thine own that require forbearance. If thou are not able to make thyself that which thou wishest, how canst thou expect to mold another in conformity to thy will? -Thomas_à_Kempis

11/04/09

To hurry pain is to leave a classroom still in session. To prolong pain is to remain seated in a vacated classroom and miss the next lesson. -Yahia Lababidi

11/03/09

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. -Bertrand Russell

10/30/09

We are all given one thing by which our lives are measured, one determination. Mine are the stories which can change or not change the world. It doesn't matter which as long as I continue to tell the stories....I learned a thousand stories before I took my first thousand steps. They are all I have. It's all I can do - Sherman Alexie

10/29/09

In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. -Marcel Proust

10/28/09

The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have advanced mankind and have enriched the world. -Emma Goldman

10/27/09

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow. -Friedrich Nietzsche

10/26/09

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. -Frank Zappa

10/23/09

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination. -Carl Jung

10/22/09

On a lazy Saturday morning when you're lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, there is a space where fantasy and reality become one. Are you awake, or are you dreaming? You see people and things; some are familiar; some are strange. You talk, you feel, but you move without walking; you fly without wings. Your mind and your body exist, but on separate planes. Time stands still. For me, this is the feeling I have when ideas come. -Lynn Johnston

10/21/09

To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy--and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful. -Robert A. Heinlein

10/20/09

Some things have to be believed to be seen. -Ralph Hodgson

10/19/09

The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest. -Thomas Moore

10/16/09

If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation. -Xenophon

10/14/09

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge. -Daniel J. Boorstin

10/13/09

Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good. -Eric Hoffer

10/01/09

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! -Michael Landon

09/30/09

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. -Christopher Reeve

09/29/09

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb. -Winston Churchill

09/28/09

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. -Eli Khamarov

09/24/09

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty...This is my highest and best use as a human. -Ben Stein

Genius makes its observations in short-hand; talent writes them out at length. -Christian Nestell Bovee

09/22/09

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again. -Og Mandino

09/21/09

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. -Fyodor Dostoevsky

09/16/09

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause -- there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. -Joss Whedon

09/11/09

Writing eases my suffering... writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence. -Gao Xingjian

09/10/09

I used to think that people who regarded everyone benignly were a mite simple or oblivious or just plain lax--until I tried it myself. Then I realized that they made it only look easy. Even the Berditchever Rebbe, revered as a man who could strike a rock and bring forth a stream, was continually honing his intentions. "Until I remove the thread of hatred from my heart," he said of his daily meditations, "I am, in my own eyes, as if I did not exist." -Marc Barasch

09/08/09

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. -Clarence Darrow

Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies. -John Dryden

09/03/09

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei

09/02/09

Language is not merely a means of expression and communication; it is an instrument of experiencing, thinking, and feeling ... Our ideas and experiences are not independent of language; they are all integral parts of the same pattern, the warp and woof of the same texture. We do not first have thoughts, ideas, feelings, and then put them into a verbal framework. We think in words, by means of words. Language and experience are inextricably interwoven, and the awareness of one awakens the other. Words and idioms are as indispensible to our thoughts and experiences as are colors and tints to a painting. —William Chomsky

09/01/09

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a flame to be kindled. -Plutarch

08/31/09

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. -Rabbinical Saying

08/27/09

A book is...the chariot that bears the human soul. -Emily Dickinson

08/26/09

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers. -Charles W. Eliot

08/25/09

The good writer masters grammar in order to control his words, and meaning is his target. -Ken Macrorie

08/21/09

Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as as apprentice studies the master. -William Faulkner

08/20/09

Books may well be the only true magic. -Alice Hoffman

08/19/09

Genius unexerted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. -Henry Ward Beecher

08/18/09

In a world that is constantly changing, there is no one subject or set of subjects that will serve you for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn. -John Naisbitt

08/17/09

One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider. -Damon Runyon

08/14/09

We ought to think we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree. -Pablo Casals

08/13/09

Life energy flows when we create, or when we help another person's creativity flower by encouraging them in some way. Think of the sense of joy and satisfaction that one can derive from the simple act of planting flowers, cooking a meal, writing a poem, solving a problem, painting a picture, dressing with flair, or doing your job to the best of your abilities. Creativity brings us life, and by using our creativity we help bring the world into being. -Joan Borysenko

08/12/09

America's future walks through the doors of our schools each day. -Mary Jean LeTendre

08/11/09

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. -Thomas Huxley

08/10/09

Good teaching in any field isn't a matter of employing gimmicks and choosing from a damnfool encyclopedia of tricks to play on students, but a matter of setting up a climate friendly to learning and then challenging learners to connect their experience and ideas with those of the accepted authorities or producers. -Ken Macrorie

08/06/09

Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. -John D. MacDonald

08/05/09

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything. The drop, by continually falling, bores its passage through the hardest rock. The hasty torrent rushes over it with hideous uproar, and leaves no trace behind. -Thomas Carlyle

08/04/09

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

08/03/09

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her. -David Brinkley

07/23/09

I write quickly, but I also do not believe in writer's block, because once I didn't have the luxury of believing it. When you only have 20 minutes, you write, whether it's garbage, or it's good … you just do it, and you fix it later. -Jodi Picoult

07/21/09

Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing. -Seth Godin

07/20/09

I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream. -Neil Armstrong

07/17/09

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant ministers, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. Those who can sit in silence with their fellowman, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken. -Henri Nouwen

07/16/09

We can't see the hidden flaws until we change our way of seeing. -Peter Elbow

07/15/09

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young. -W. Somerset Maugham

07/14/09

The current state of knowledge is a moment in history, changing just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the past has ever changed and, in many instances, more rapidly. -Jean Piaget

07/13/09

Nothing can be taught unless it has the potential of making sense to the learner... -Frank Smith

07/10/09

Good dreams don't come cheap, you've got to pay for them and If you just dream when you're asleep this is no way for them to come alive... to survive. -Harry Chapin

07/09/09

Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance. -William Wirt

07/08/09

A story untold could be the one that kills you. -Pat Conroy

07/07/09

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. -Frank Tibolt

07/06/09

That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write. -Natalie Goldberg 

07/03/09

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something. -Richard Feynman

07/02/09

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams. -Hosea Ballou

07/01/09

We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic. -Susan Jeffers

06/30/09

My theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything - even if you have no clue what you're doing. -Jessica Alba

06/29/09

Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors. -Rhys Alexander

06/26/09

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. -Douglas Adams

06/25/09

You owe reality nothing and the truth of your feelings everything. -Richard Hugo

06/24/09

The first thing to realize is that English, especially American English, is a mongrel tongue that often as not defies all logic. It's also changing and evolving, which infuriates sticks-in-the-mud like me, who would prefer rigid rules that never vary. -Craig Smith

06/23/09

Teachers are expected to reach unattainable goals with inadequate tools. The miracle is that at times they accomplish this impossible task. -Haim Ginott

06/22/09

Some veteran teachers haven't really taught thirty years--they have taught one year thirty times. -Art Belliveau

06/19/09

We die.  That may be the meaning of life.  But we do language.  That may be the measure of our lives. -Toni Morrison

06/18/09

Truth never damages a cause that is just. -Mahatma Gandhi

06/17/09

All high truth is poetry. Take the results of science: they glow with beauty, cold and hard as are the methods of reaching them. -Charles Buxton

06/16/09

Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. -Gilda Radner

06/15/09

He who sees a need and waits to be asked for help is as unkind as if he had refused it. -Dante Alighieri

05/26/09

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight. -Robertson Davies

05/22/09

The secret of concentration is the secret of self-discovery. You reach inside yourself to discover your personal resources, and what it takes to match them to the challenge. -Arnold Palmer

05/21/09

The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." -Maria Montessori

05/20/09

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities. -Dr. Seuss

05/19/09

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. -Madeleine L'Engle

05/18/09

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses. -Horace

05/15/09

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. -Booker T. Washington

05/14/09

All men -- whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans -- have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies. -Norman Cousins

05/13/09

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say, "I lost it." -Sydney J. Harris

05/12/09

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. -Bob Dylan

05/08/09

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain. -

05/07/09

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40--- and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20? -Arthur C. Clarke

05/06/09

Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside. -Hugh Macleod

05/05/09

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. -Charles Du Bos

05/04/09

The idea of perfect closes your mind to new standards. When you drive hard toward one ideal, you miss opportunities and paths, not to mention hurting your confidence. Believe in your potential and then go out and explore it; don’t limit it. -John Eliot

05/01/09

We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it. -Sharon Salzberg

04/30/09

A poet uses words not to explain something, and not to describe something, but to make something. Poet means “maker.” Poetry is not the language of objective explanation but the language of imagination. It makes an image of reality in such a way as to invite our participation in it. We do not have more information after we read a poem, we have more experience. It is not an examination of what happens, but an immersion in what happens. -Eugene H. Peterson

04/29/09

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. -Mary Oliver

04/28/09

Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is. -Amiri Baraka

04/27/09

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers. -Gwendolyn Brooks

04/24/09

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there’s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you’re writing your poem, there’s one less scoundrel in the world. And I’d like a world, wouldn’t you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I’m certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don’t think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say ‘We loved the earth but could not stay." -Ted Kooser

04/23/09

I'd rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet. -Ogden Nash

04/22/09

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it. -Wendell Berry

04/21/09

Times change and forms and their meanings alter. Thus new poems are necessary. Their forms must be discovered in the living language of their day, or old forms, embodying exploded concepts, will tyrannize over the imagination. -William Carlos Williams

04/20/09

Poems are transmissions from the depths of whoever wrote them to the depths of the reader. To a greater extent than with any other kind of reading, the reader of a poem is making that poem, is inhabiting those words in the most personal sort of way. That doesn’t mean that you read a poem and make it whatever you want it to be, but that it’s operating so deeply in you, that it is the most special kind of reading. -Kay Ryan

04/17/09

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought. -Matsuo Basho

04/16/09

Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect. -Jack Prelutsky

04/15/09

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. -Rainer Maria Rilke

04/14/09

I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time. -Robert Hass

04/13/09

I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try. -Nikki Giovanni

04/10/09

Let us enrich ourselves with our mutual differences. -Paul Valery

04/09/09

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else. -Billy Collins

04/08/09

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. -Robert Frost

04/07/09

I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? -Jalaluddin Rumi

04/06/09

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. -Allen Ginsberg

04/03/09

Nothing which does not transport is poetry. -Joseph Joubert

04/02/09

I'm not interested in poetry that keeps people out; I'm interested in poetry that invites people in. -Naomi Shihab Nye

04/01/09

Many people like to think that they'll find balance AFTER they find success. But in reality, achieving balance IS success. -Brian Koslow

03/25/09

If you're behind the times, they won't notice you. If you're right in tune with them, you're no better than they are, so they won't care much for you. Be just a little ahead of them. -Shel Silverstein

03/24/09

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. -Peter Drucker

03/23/09

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life. -Leo Buscaglia

03/19/20

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn. -Peter Drucker

03/18/09

Inspired teachers... cannot be ordered by the gross from the factory. They must be discovered one by one, and brought home from the woods and swamps like orchids. They must be placed in a conservatory, not in a carpenter shop; and they must be honored and trusted. -John Jay Chapman

03/17/09

I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul's desire. -St. Patrick

03/16/09

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, however, if faced with courage, need not be lived again. -Maya Angelou

03/13/09

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return. -Salman Rushdie

03/12/09

Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities when directing one's course by it, one must still try to follow its direction. -Vincent van Gogh

03/10/09

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. -Rainer Maria Rilke

03/09/09

The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson. -Tom Bodett

03/05/09

The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before and he does it without destroying something else. -John Updike

03/05/09

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. -Friedrich Nietzsche

03/04/09

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. -Abraham Lincoln

03/03/09

Power is only important as an instrument for service to the powerless. -Lech Walesa

03/02/09

It's not the will to win that matters...everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters. -Paul "Bear" Bryant

02/27/09

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute. -Thurgood Marshall

02/25/09

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. -James Baldwin

02/24/09

My Alma mater was books, a good library... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity. -Malcolm X

02/23/09

Don't be sad, don't be angry, if life deceives you submit to your grief--your time for joy will come, believe me. -Alexander Pushkin

02/20/09

The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you. -Tom Bradley

02/19/09

Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations. -Maya Angelou

02/18/09

Every man is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive, and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done. -Benjamin E. Mays

02/17/09

Back during the early 1960s there was a United Nations television commercial, the audio portion of which went something like this: "Ignorance, fear, disease, hunger, suspicion, hatred, war." That was it, although I would have added, "greed" and "vengeance" to the list. All or any of these can be the catalyst that turns hierarchical thinking into hierarchical behavior. Amid all this, does tolerance have a chance? Only if we want it to. Only when we want it to. Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned. -Octavia Butler

01/30/09

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief. -Gerry Spence

01/28/09

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. -Sidney J. Harris

01/27/09

It will do us little good to wire the world if we short-circuit our souls. There is not delete button for racism, poverty or sectarian violence. No keystroke can ever clear the air, save a river, preserve a forest. This transformational new technology must be an extension of our hearts as well as of our minds. The old rules still apply... -Tom Brokaw

01/23/09

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. -Jane Addams

01/22/09

We can often do more for others by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs. -Francois Fenelon

01/21/09

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential. -Barack Obama

01/20/09

The peaceful transfer of authority is rare in history, yet common in our country. With a simple oath, we affirm old traditions and make new beginnings. -George W. Bush

01/16/09

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own. -Carol Burnett

01/15/09

Invention requires an excited mind; execution, a calm one. -Johann Peter Eckermann

01/13/09

The creative adult is the child who has survived. -Ursula K. Le Guin

01/12/09

Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that. -Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire