Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

[Tamrin]

Thursday’s Quotes:

The shortest answer is doing


Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie: a fault which needs it most, grows two thereby


Do not wait; the time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with what-
ever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along


Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame, when once it is within thee


Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them


He that hath lost his credit is dead to the world


The offender never pardons


George Herbert
English metaphysical poet (5 Mystical Songs)
(Born this day 1593)



Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer

[Tamrin]

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes


Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little


One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more


Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvan-
tage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles


There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never
dreads contact and communion with others however humble


He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates,
not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart


They who drink beer will think beer


Washington Irving
American writer (Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
(Born this day 1783)



I've had it with you and your emotional constipation!

[Tamrin]

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And
because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do


If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough


Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army


Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of
trouble — the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have


The making of friends who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life


'Do you pray for the senators, Dr. Hale?'
No, I look at the senators and I pray for the country


Make it your habit not to be critical about small things


Edward Everett Hale
US, clergyman and author (Man without a Country)
(Born this day 1822)



Even with all my wrinkles! I am beautiful!

[Tamrin]

A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did


The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are


A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else


It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative


Joy in the universe, and keen curiosity about it all — that has been my religion


Science has done more for the development of western civilization
in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years


If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast
that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go


John Burroughs
US writer and nature enthusiast (Burroughs Medal namesake)
(Born this day 1837)



To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another

[Tamrin]

To understand a man is really to be that man


If man were not free, then he could not conceive of causality at all, and could
not form any concept of it. Insight into lawfulness is already freedom from it


No one can understand himself, for to do that he would have to get outside himself;
the subject of the knowing and willing activity would have to become its own object


A creature that cannot grasp the mutual exclusiveness of A and not A has no difficulty in lying; more
than that, such a creature has not even any consciousness of lying, being without a standard of truth


The logical axioms are the principle of all truth. These posit an existence towards which all cognition serves.
Logic is a law which must be obeyed, and man realises himself only in so far as he is logical. He finds
himself in cognition. All error must be felt to be crime. And so man must not err. He must find the truth


No two moments in the life of an individual are exactly alike; there is between the later
and the earlier periods only the similarity of the higher and lower parts of a spiral ascent


Man is alone in the world, in tremendous eternal isolation. He has no object outside himself;
lives for nothing else; he is far removed from being the slave of his wishes, of his abilities,
of his necessities; he stands far above social ethics; he is alone. Thus he becomes one and all


Otto Weininger
Austrian philosopher (Sex and Character)
(Born this day 1880)



The highest expression of all morality is: Be!

[Tamrin]

It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought
and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another


Marriage laws, the police, armies and navies are the mark of human incompetence.
We have not yet found the right road to conquering ourselves and our environment


We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.
Nor should we represent motherhood as something so common and easy that everyone
can go through it without harm or suffering and rear her children competently and well


Democracy can only spring from practising it early, and democratic action was
not to expected from young people brought up under a close authoritarian system


To believe in the unity of the human race and get children to believe it
in early youth would mean the creation of that unity and the end of war


To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been
accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature will do next. We none of us
know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do


Strictly speaking, no person who believes that wars between classes
and nations are inevitable is fit to be in charge of the destiny of children


Dora Russell (nee Black)
British feminist, social activist and writer
(Born this day 1894)



Humanity will ever seek but never attain perfection. Let us at least survive and go on trying

[Tamrin]

My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature


Lasting change is a series of compromises.
And compromise is all right, as long your values don't change


Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with
the people who are doing something you don't believe is right


Especially now when views are becoming more polarized, we must work to
understand each other across political, religious and national boundaries


We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the
standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down
considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources


The most important thing is to actually think about what you do. To
become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the
environment and on society. That's key, and that underlies everything else


The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves


Jane Goodall
British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist
(Born this day 1934)



The greatest danger to our future is apathy

[Tamrin]

It takes a certain ingenuous faith — but I have it — to believe that people who
read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth


In life reason is the pilot, law is the light it steers by, wisdom is knowing
that the law comes from nature; and reason is nature’s gift to man


If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and
Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cancer, meningitis, millions
of spontaneous abortions every day, mass killings of people in floods and earthquakes — and too great
a mountain of other natural evils to list besides. It would also, as the putative designer of human
nature, ultimately be responsible for the ubiquitous and unabatable human propensities for hatred,
malice, greed, and all other sources of the cruelty and murder people inflict on each other hourly


Behave in life as at a dinner party. Is anything brought around to you? Put out your hand and
take your share with moderation. Does it pass by you? Do not stop it. Is it not yet come? Do not
stretch your desire towards it, but wait till it reaches you. Do this with regard to children, to a
spouse, to public post, to riches, and you will eventually be a worthy guest at the feast of life


It is very unjust to find a tincture of vanity in a laudable action and to depreciate it
on that account, or to ascribe it entirely to that motive. The case is not the same with
vanity as with other passions. Where avarice or revenge enters into any seemingly
virtuous action, it is difficult for us to deter mine how far it enters, and it is natural
to suppose it the sole actuating principle. But vanity is so closely allied to virtue, and
to love the fame of laudable actions is so close to loving laudable actions for their own
sake, that these passions are more capable of mixture than any other kinds of affection;
and it is almost impossible to have the latter without some degree of the former. Thus
in general, to love the glory of virtuous deeds is a sure proof of the love of virtue itself


Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it,
and those who love it are not equal to those who delight in it


The secret of life is not to do what you like, but to like what you do


A. C. Grayling
English philosopher (The Refutation of Skepticism)
(Born this day 1949)



Mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life

[Tamrin]

When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions


As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a
curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching


This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement,
because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom


If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere,
and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do


If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him
into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto


One can cite cases of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists


The mere imparting of information is not education


Dr. Carter G Woodson
American "father of black history"
(Died this day 1950)



I am ready to act, if I can find brave men to help me