April 2008

Sticks and stones are hard on bones Aimed with angry art, Words can sting like anything But silence breaks the heart.

-Suzanne Nichols

March 2008

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

- Mohandas K. 'Mahatma' Gandhi

February 2008

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

- Vincent van Gogh

January 2008

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

- Bertrand Russell

December 2007

How a minority,
Reaching majority,
Seizing authority,
Hates a minority!

- Leonard H. Robbins

November 2007

Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.

- Richard Lederer

- Robert K. Merton,
Social Theory

September 2007

He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of great understanding, for belief in one false principle is the beginning of all un-wisdom.

- Arthur Desmond

August 2007

When I had youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life. I suppose it's the discipline I need; but it's rather hard to love the things I do, and see them go by because duty chains me to my galley. If I ever come into port with all sails set, that will be my reward perhaps.

- Louisa May Alcott

July 2007

There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.

- Walter Lippmann

June 2007

To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.

- David Brooks

May 2007

How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.

- Christiaan Huygens,
c. 1690

April 2007

You are told, by astrologers, psychics and other such "experts", that you are not the capable, responsible and rather remarkable person that you really are. We belong to a species that has reached out a quarter of a million miles to set foot on the moon, and if that is not miracle enough for us all, I despair for our sense of wonder. The modern soothsayers suggest that you stop thinking for yourselves. They ask you to retreat to the caves from which our ancestors are said to have come, while you have the choice of going to the stars. I have opted for the stars, and I invite you to join me.

- James Randi, "The Mask of Nostradamus"

March 2007

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

- Doug Larson

February 2007

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

- Abraham Lincoln

January 2007

Youth is not a time of life - it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of red cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a temper of the will; a quality of the imagination; a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over a life of ease. This often exists in a man of fifty, more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old by deserting their ideals.

- Samuel Ullman

December 2006

Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness. Broad, wholesome, and charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one tiny corner of the globe.

- Mark Twain

November 2006

t is typical that a nation where half the country thinks Evolution is a myth also believes in Survival of the Fittest.

- Garrison Keillor from the short essay The Older Scout

October 2006

When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.

- Emo Phillips

September 2006

We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free.

- Epictetus

August 2006

Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.

- Umberto Eco

July 2006

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

- Abraham Lincoln

June 2006

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

- William Arthur Ward

May 2006

The concept of a Supreme Being who childishly demands to be constantly placated by prayers and sacrifice and dispenses justice like some corrupt petty judge whose decisions may be swayed by a bit of well-timed flattery should be relegated to the trash bin of history, along with the belief in a flat earth and the notion that diseases are caused by demonic possession. Ironically, the case for the involuntary retirement of God may have been best stated by one Saul or Paul of Tarsus, a first-century tentmaker and Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, who wrote, 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things' (I Corinthians 13:11). Those words are no less relevant today than they were two thousand years ago.

- John J. Dunphy

April 2006

As soon as one's convictions become unshakeable, evidence ceases to be relevant except as a means to convert the unbelievers. Factual inaccuracies... are excusable in the light of the Higher Truth.

- P.H. Hoebens

March 2006

To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.

- Confucius

February 2006

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

- Ludwig Borne

January 2006

Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit atrocities.

- Voltaire

December 2005

Much unhappiness has come into this world because of things left unsaid.

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

November 2005

For the media owners, allegations of a liberal bias make it easier for them to impose the conservative bias they prefer. For the pseudoliberals who work in the media system, confessing to a liberal bias is far more comfortable than admitting that they've sold out their beliefs for a nice salary. It's only because the mainstream media is so conservative that all these right-wing pundits can make accusations of liberal bias without opposition.

- John K . Wilson

October 2005

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest-- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein

September 2005

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

- David Hume

August 2005

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

- Charles Darwin

July 2005

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

- Benjamin Franklin

June 2005

To be sure, the vast majority of people who are untrained can accept the results of science only on authority. But there is obviously an important difference between an establishment that is open and invites every one to come, study its methods, and suggest improvement, and one that regards the questioning of its credentials as due to wickedness of heart, such as (Cardinal) Newman attributed to those who questioned the infallibility of the Bible. Rational science treats its credit notes as always redeemable on demand, while non-rational authoritarianism regards the demand for the redemption of its paper as a disloyal lack of faith.

- Morris Cohen,
"Reason and Nature" (1931)

May 2005

Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are laboring to dethrone; but if they argue without reason (which, in order to be consistent with themselves they must do), they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.

- Ethan Allen

April 2005

To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.

- John Quincy Adams

March 2005

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

- Charles Darwin

February 2005

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

- Demosthenes

January 2005

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

- Albert Einstein

("No matter how long a log stays in the water, it doesn't become a crocodile.")

-Anonymous
(Bambara Proverb)

September 2003

Our glory is not in never falling, but rising every time we fall.

- Confucius

August 2003

They who say that we should love our fellow-citizens but not foreigners, destroy the universal brotherhood of mankind, with which benevolence and justice would perish forever.

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

July 2003

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

-Thomas Jefferson

June 2003

Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness, speak cheering words while their ears can hear, and while their hearts can be thrilled and made happier by them.

-Williams Childs


May 2003

Grab your ticket and your suitcase,
Thunder's rolling down the tracks.
You don't know where you're goin',
But you know you won't be back.
Darlin' if you're weary,
Lay your head upon my chest.
We'll take what we can carry,
And we'll leave the rest.

Big Wheels rolling through fields
Where sunlight streams,
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

I will provide for you,
And I'll stand by your side.
You'll need a good companion for
This part of the ride.
Leave behind your sorrows,
Let this day be the last.
Tomorrow there'll be sunshine,
And all this darkness past...

This Train,
Dreams will not be thwarted.
This Train,
Faith will be rewarded.
This Train,
Hear the steel wheels singin'.
This Train,
Bells of freedom ringin.

-Bruce Springsteen
Land of Hope and Dreams

April 2003

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

- George Orwell

March 2003

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.

- John Lennon

February 2003

For the first time in my life, I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light - our atmosphere. Obviously, this was not the "ocean" of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.

- Ulf Merbold, German space shuttle astronaut (1988)

January 2003

We fall short of presenting all, or even a goodly part, of the news each day that a citizen would need to intelligently exercise his franchise in this democracy. So as he depends more and more on us, presumably the depth of knowledge of the average man is diminished. This clearly can lead to a disaster in democracy.

- Walter Cronkite