C o n f u c i u s

"Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change."

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."

B u d d h a

"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."

"To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance."

"He is able who thinks he is able."

"It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways."

"An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind."

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."

"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

About    r e l i g i o n

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love on another."
(Jonathan Swift)

"The Lord is my light, and my salvation; whom shall I fear?"
(The Bible, Psalm 27)

"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window."
(Stephen King)

"There are only three sins - causing pain, causing fear, and causing anguish. The rest is window dressing."
(Roger Caras)

"I still say a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence."
(Doug McLeod)

Religion is a candle inside a multicolored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there.
(Mohammed Neguib)

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.
(Timothy Jones)

A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked.
"I am weeping for my sins," said the lad.
"You must have little to do," said the man.
The next day, they met again. Once more the lad was weeping.
"Why do you weep now?" asked the man.
"I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad.
"I thought it would come to that," said the man.
(Robert Louis Stevenson)

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)

I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
(Oscar Wilde)

I'm still an atheist, thank God.
(Luis Bunuel)

God will forgive me; it is his trade.
(Heinrich Heine)

Men talk of "finding God," but no wonder it is difficult; He is hidden in that darkest hiding-place, your heart. You yourself are a part of Him.
(Christopher Morley)

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything."
( Robert A. Heinlein )

"A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain—then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?"
( Robert A. Heinlein )

To listen to some devout people, one would imagine that God never laughs.
( Ghose Aurobindo )

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
( Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche )

Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believeonly in the God idea, not God Himself.
( Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo )

If the work of God could be comprehended by reason, it would be no longer wonderful.
( Pope Gregory I )

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
( Gilbert K. Chesterson )

Christianity does not remove you from the world and its problems; it makes you fit to live in it, triumphantly and usefully.
( Charles Templeton )

Genuine religion is not so much a matter of feeling as a matter of principle.
( Alexander Pope )

The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me His existence.
( La Bruyere )

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
( Albert Camus )

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
( Blaise Pascal )

M i s c e l l a n e o u s

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
( Oscar Wilde )

If you hate a person, you hate something in them that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
( Hermann Hesse )

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.
( Dante Alighieri )

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

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar." -Jerome K. Jerome

"The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher."
( Thomas Henry Huxley )

"A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same."
( Elbert Hubbard )

"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
( Elbert Hubbard )

"Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin."
( Herman Hesse )

"Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks."
( Herodotus )

"But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated."
( Ernest Hemingway )

"Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion."
( G. W. F. Hegel )

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything."
( Robert A. Heinlein )

"Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater."
( William Hazlitt )

"There is only one terminal dignity - love."
( Helen Hayes )

"The expert at anything was once a beginner."
( Hayes )

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."
( Alexander Hamilton )

"Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in!"
( H.R. Haldeman )

"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."
( Jules de Gautier )

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
( F. Scott Fitzgerald )

"It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls."
( Epicurus )

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
( Conan Doyle )

"It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well."
( Rene Descartes )

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
( Dalai Lama )

"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."
( Winston Churchill )

"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue."
( Gilbert K. Chesterton )

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
( Napoleon Bonaparte )

"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do."
( William Blake )

"How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it."
( Marcus Aurelius )

"He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own."
( Aesop )

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
(Chinese proverb)

J o h a n n    W o l f g a n g   G o e t h e

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."

"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action."

"Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow."

"The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."

"Man . . . knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself."

"It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors."

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

A r i s t o t l e

"...happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it..."

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a t hought without accepting it."

A l b e r t   E i n s t e i n

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

God is subtle but he is not malicious.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

"The important thing is not to stop questioning."

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."

"When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."

"The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax."

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

"He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice."

V i c t o r   H u g o

"The greatest happiness of life it the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

A n d r e    G i d e

"The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say -- because they were too obvious."

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not.

A n a t o l e    F r a n c e

"Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin."

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't."

J a m e s    B a l d w i n

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and now we cannot live within."