Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

What blinds us, or what makes historical progress
very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance


There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not,
however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules


We cannot expect to cross the rainbow bridge through a good act
of contrition; that will not be sufficient. We have to understand


We are all cells of a much larger body, and like the cells of our own body
it is hard for us to glimpse the whole pattern of the whole of what is happen-
ing, and yet we can sense that there is a purpose, and there is a pattern


Nature is not simply the random flight of atoms through electromagnetic
fields. Nature is not the empty, despiritualized lumpen matter that we inherit
from modern physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence, a kind of mind


There is no dualism in the world of light ... One must realize that what is never mentioned is that if
one moves at the speed of light there is no time whatsoever. There is an experience of time zero


The alternative physics is a physics of light. Light is composed of photons,
which have no antiparticle. One exists in eternity, one has become eternal...
One is then apart from the moving image; one exists in the completion of eternity


Terence McKenna
American writer, philosopher and polymath
(Died this day 2000)



Don't think about who you are. Think about doing what we're doing. Do it! DO IT NOW!

[Tamrin]

[Tamrin]

Friday’s Quotes:

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it


Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall


A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who
goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond


Ceremonies are different in every country, but true politeness is everywhere the same


All that a husband or wife really wants is to be
pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little


Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee,
thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw


Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law


Oliver Goldsmith
Irish poet (She Stoops to Conquer)
(Died this day 1774)



I love everything that's old, — old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine

[Tamrin]

1 of 2:

Anything too stupid to be said is sung


It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere


The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor


Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do


If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him


God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh


Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference


Bro. Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
(Made a Mason this day 1778 in Les Neuf Soeurs Lodge (the Nine Sisters)
in Paris. His conductors were Benjamin Franklin and Count Gebelin)



Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies

(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan)

[Tamrin]

2 of 2:

Prejudices are what fools use for reason


I have only ever made one prayer to God, a very short one:

‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it


Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers


Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-
trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road


No opinion is worth burning your neighbour for


As long as we believe in absurdities we shall continue to commit atrocities


Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe


Bro. Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
(Made a Mason this day 1778)



A masonic apron of Voltaire’s

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one

[Tamrin]

Sir, when I reflect how apt hereditary wealth, hereditary influence, and, perhaps, as a consequence, hereditary pride
are to close the avenues and steel the heart against the wants and the rights of the poor, I am induced to thank
my Creator for having, from early life, bestowed upon me the blessing of poverty. Sir, it is a blessing — for if there
be any human sensation more ethereal and divine than all others, it is that feelingly sympathizes with misfortune


There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and
have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in super-
stition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the true religion, even although you
sell your goods and bestow your money on the poor, and go on and follow your Master. There may, and
every hour shows around me, fanatics in the cause of false liberty — that infamous liberty which justifies
human bondage, that liberty whose ‘corner-stone is slavery.’ But there can be no fanaticism however high
the enthusiasm, in the cause of rational, universal liberty — the liberty of the Declaration of Independence


I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however
worshipped by professing Christians — however dignified by the name of the Goddess
of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who
rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant’s lash, and the cries of his tortured victims


I have done what I deemed best for humanity. It is easy to protect the interests of the rich and power-
ful. But it is a great labor to protect the interests of the poor and downtrodden. It is the eternal labor
of Sisyphus, forever to be renewed. I know how unprofitable is all such toil. But he who is earnest
heeds not such things. It has not been popular. But if there be anything for which I have entire indiff-
erence; perhaps I might say contempt, it is the public opinion which is founded on popular clamour


I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from
their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom


It is said the South will never submit — that we cannot conquer the rebels — that they
will suffer themselves to be slaughtered, and their whole country to be laid waste. Sir, war
is a grievous thing at best, and civil war more than any other; but if they hold this language,
and the means which they have suggested must be resorted to ; if their whole country must
be laid waste and made a desert, in order to save this Union from destruction, so let it be


I would rather, Sir, reduce them to a condition where their whole country is to be re-peopled by
a band of freemen, than to see them perpetrate the destruction of this people through our agency.
I do not say it is time to resort to such means, and I do not say that the time will come, but I never
fear to express my sentiments. It is not a question with me of policy, but a question of principle


Thaddeus Stevens (“The Great Commoner”)
American abolitionist, politician and anti-mason
(Born this day 1792)



I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus: "Here lies one who never rose to any
eminence, who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he striven to ameliorate
the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color"

[Tamrin]

In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt
strongly impressed that there must be something for me to do


Society, during the last hundred years, has been alternately perplexed and encour-
aged, respecting the two great questions — how shall the criminal and pauper be
disposed of, in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand, and,
on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?


A man usually values that most for which he has labored; he uses that
most frugally which he has toiled hour by hour and day by day to acquire


I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legis-
lature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as
the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings sunk to a condition
from which the unconcerned world would start with real horror Man is not made better by
being degraded; he is seldom restrained from crime by harsh measures, except the principle of
fear predominates in his character; and then he is never made radically better for its influence


While we diminish the stimulant of fear, we must increase to prisoners
the incitements of hope, in proportion as we extinguish the terrors of
the law, we should awaken and strengthen the control of the conscience


The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it and leave the design intelligible


Dorothea Dix
US social activist (drew attention to the treatment of mental inmates)
(Born this day 1802)



I think even lying on my bed I can still do something

[Tamrin]

What is man? ... What a strange union of matter and mind!
A machine for converting material into spiritual force


The Key! it is of wonderful construction, with its infinity of combination,
and its unlimited capacity to fit every lock. ... it is the great master-key which
unlocks every door of knowledge and without which no discovery which deserves
the name — which is law, and not isolated fact — has been or ever can be made


Symbols are essential to comprehensive argument


The strongest use of the symbol is to be found in its magical power of doubling the
actual universe, and placing by its side an ideal universe, its exact counterpart, with which
it can be compared and contrasted, and, by means of curiously connecting fibres, form with
it an organic whole, from which modern analysis has developed her surpassing geometry


Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions


There is proof enough furnished by every science, but by none more than
geometry, that the world to which we have been allotted is peculiarly adapted
to our minds, and admirably fitted to promote our intellectual progress


I presume that to the uninitiated the formulae will appear cold and
cheerless; but let it be remembered that, like other mathematical
formulae, they find their origin in the divine source of all geometry


Benjamin Peirce[
American mathematician (Harvard University)
(Born this day 1809)



The branches of mathematics are as various as the sciences to which they belong,
and each subject of physical enquiry has its appropriate mathematics

[Tamrin]

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel


Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency.
We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest


You may not control all the events that happen to you,
but you can decide not to be reduced by them


There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he
has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing


My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy


Petulant priests, greedy centurions, and one million
incensed gestures stand between your love and me


Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances


Dr. Maya Angelou
American poet, playwright and novelist
(Born this day 1928)



Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between

[Tamrin]

All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is
not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of
life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love


Art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching
out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world
in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in oppos-
ition — otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence


Conscience, both as a sense and as a concept, is a priori immanent in man, and shakes
the very foundations of the society that has emerged from our ill-conceived civilisation


Perhaps the meaning of all human activity lies in the artistic
consciousness, in the pointless and selfless creative act?


Never try to convey your idea to the audience — it is a thankless and senseless task.
Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it


We know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be bought with any currency


One can only be staggered by the hubris of modern artists if we compare them, say, to the
humble builders of Chartres Cathedral whose names are not even known. The artist ought
to be distinguished by selfless devotion to duty; but we forgot about that a long time ago


Andrei Tarkovsky
Soviet and Russian filmmaker, writer, film editor, film theorist and opera director
(Born this day 1932)



A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books