"I speak without reservation from what I know and who I am. I do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voice to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance, the worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned. Should any part of my music offend you, please do not close your ears to it. Just take what you can use and go on."
-Ani DiFranco
"I guess there's only two ways to go through life....you either get busy living, or get busy dying."
-Unknown (?)
"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."
-Scottish Proverb
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
-Helen Keller
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
-Oscar Wilde
"One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be."
-Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is."
-Albert Camus
"Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have."
-Margaret Mead
"Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn."
-Joseph Addison
"Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry."
-Charles Baudelaire
"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
-Albert Camus
"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something."
-Ornette Coleman
"Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World."
-Christopher Columbus
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Music is the soul of language."
-Max Heindel
"All progress occurs because people dare to be different."
-Harry Millner
"Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn."
-Charlie Parker
"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
"But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows...
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
‘Fool,’ said my Muse to me; ‘look in thy heart and write.’"
-Sir Philip Sidney
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
-Albert Einstein
"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become."
-Harold Taylor
"He who angers you conquers you."
-Elizabeth Kenny
"In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters."
-Paul Gauguin
"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
-Michelangelo
"In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer."
-Albert Camus
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
-Mahatma Gandhi
"We have met the enemy and it is us."
-Walt Kelly
"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."
-Albert Einstein
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To know thy self is to make yourself."
-Brandon Boyd
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-Thomas Edison
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"This above all; to thine own self be true."
-William Shakespeare
"I want to record the vocals wireless on a beach, frolicking in the waves. And hopefully not get electrocuted."
-Brandon Boyd
"I think you're doing a much better debt to the world by following your heart."
-Brandon Boyd
"I don't think my physical body is truly me. I would like 'me' to be something that expresses itself through creativity, spirit, and passion."
-Brandon Boyd
"The easiest thing in the world would be to repeat the same equations that worked for us in the past, but with repetition would come demise."
-Brandon Boyd
"When I was 13, I used to go to the beach with my older brother's friends. Once they locked me in a Porta Potti. I had my brother's sandwich with me and they were shaking the thing, and there was fecal matter going all over the place. So I'm all, 'I'm going to throw your sandwich away!' And he was laughing, so I threw it away and started crying in front of all his friends. That's not funny. That's distressing."
-Brandon Boyd
"It's not my duty to die for your government and suffer for your religion. I choose life."
-Brandon Boyd
"Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement."
-Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again
"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace."
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"We are told never to cross a bridge until we come to it, but this world is owned by men who have 'crossed bridges' in their imagination far ahead of the crowd."
-Anon.
"The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you."
-Kin Hubbard
"She would rather light candles than curse the darkness and her glow has warmed the world."
-Adlai Stevenson, Eulogy of Eleanor Roosevelt, November 7, 1962
"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."
-Helen Keller
"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
-Gene Fowler
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once."
-William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar, Act II, Sc. 2, line 32."
"We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing."
-R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
"The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster."
-Adam Smith
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."
-Christopher Morley
"Silence is one great art of conversation."
-Anon.
"Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies; but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the roots of human spirit."
-Ansel Adams
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."
-Abraham Lincoln
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
-James Halliwell, Nursery Rhymes of England, 1844
"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
-T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"
"The years teach much which the days never knew."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
"....if I had to choose which way I were to die today, it would be by whatever way that chaos and randomness had in store for me, and i wouldn't feel like I missed a thing."
-Brandon Boyd
"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."
- Ayn Rand (1905-82), Russian-born American writer, "The Fountainhead"
"Live a life as a monument to your soul."
- Ayn Rand (1905-82), Russian-born American writer, "The Fountainhead"
"When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is."
- Ayn Rand (1905-82), Russian-born American writer, "The Fountainhead"
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand (1905-82), Russian-born American writer, "The Fountainhead"
"If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker who, doing some small routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a machine, does not choose to know how the machine got there or what makes his job possible, and proclaims that the management of the undertaking is parasitical and unneccessary."
- Ayn Rand (1905-82), Russian-born American writer, "The Fountainhead"
"Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride."
-Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1825
"And when man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own."
-André Malraux, The Voices of Silence
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."
-Kierkegaard
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were."
-Anonymous
"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."
-Henry Ward Beecher
"Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves. Its eternal goal is life."
-Smiley Blanton
"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul."
-Judy Garland
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
"Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real."
-Tupac Shakur
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."
-Anonymous
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
-Robert Frost
"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for."
-Allan K. Chalmers
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
-Henry David Thoreau
"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
-Albert Einstein
"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."
-Johann von Goethe
"I am imagination. I can see what the eyes cannot see. I can hear what the ears cannot hear. I can feel what the heart cannot feel."
-Peter Nivio Zarlenga
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-Albert Einstein
"Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them."
-Walter Kerr
"You'd better slow down, don't dance so fast. Time is short, the music won't last. Life isn't a race, take it slower, hear the music before the song's over."
-Unknown
"When you run so fast to get somewhere you miss half the fun of getting there."
-Unknown
"I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
-(Robert Frost) The Road Not Taken
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
-Mark Twain
"Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden. My words echo thus, in your mind."
-T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"
"When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of our decay."
-Brian Aldiss
"I both love and do not love; and am mad and not mad."
-Anacreon (Greek lyric poet, BC 572?-488?)
"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart."
-Marcus Aelius Aurelius (Roman emperor, philosopher 121-180 AD)
"I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others".
-Marcus Aelius Aurelius (Roman emperor, philosopher 121-180 AD)
"Oh, how I love the Earth and everything in it, life and death. And men. One can think of nothing finer, or nicer, than men... their wars, their concentration camps, their justice."
-Marcel Ayme
"The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're alive."
-Orlando A. Battista
"True love is not rare at the age of a teen, but recognizing it as true love is."
-Brad Bell
"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself."
-Josh Billings (essayist/humorist, 1800s)
"I never use the words humanist or humanitarian, as it seems to me that to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature."
-The Wicked Witch of the West (from the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire)
"Elphie thought: Such silly things, children--and so embarrassing--because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of need to be loved or love something. While animals are born who they are, and accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do."
-The Wicked Witch of the West (from the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire)
"I wouldn't smack Britney because she's a girl. But, I would lock her up in a room with lots of poisonous spiders and make her think about what she has done to today's youth."
-Brandon Boyd
"There's definitely, definitely, definitely no logic to human behavior."
-Bjork
"We are all Hippies at heart and believe in peace and love. We all believe in rebellion, and for myself, I know spiritual rebellion is at the core of what I do."
-Brandon Boyd
"We were doing the TRL thing, then Britney goes, 'Today is even more special because it's Brandon's birthday.' A cake comes in, and she starts singing. It was surreal. I'll look back on it and say, 'She sang "Happy Birthday" to me just like Marilyn did to JFK. 'But when the audience kicked in, I could have sworn she was lip-syncing."
-Brandon Boyd
"To be a good christian basically means to give up all the reins of your life and let some unseen force do it for you."
-Brandon Boyd
"Look at everything as though you were seeing it for the first time or the last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory."
-Betty Smith
"Not all who wander are lost."
-J. R. R. Tolkien
"I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for..."
-Thornton Wilder
"Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them."
-Lily Tomlin
"Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion."
-G. W. F. Hegel
"Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks."
-Herodotus
"There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one's maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity."
-Buck Rodgers
"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it -- who can say this is not greatness?"
-William Makepeace Thackeray
"Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow."
-Johann von Goethe
"When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow."
-Anais Nin, The Diaries of Anaïs Nin
"Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy."
-Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes
"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy."
-Robert Anthony
"...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..."
-Aristotle
"In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
-Martin Niemöller
"It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!"
-Emiliano Zapata
"Ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision?"
-Marilyn Monroe (1926-62), actress
"...So just walk away and respect individuality -- kiss it off as they say --because if anything kisses -- even in the air -- it's beautiful."
-Drew Barrymore
"I would rather see the world from another angle."
-Jewel
"My mind is my church."
-Unknown, old saying
"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."
-Janis Joplin
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."
-Howard Aiken
"The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset."
-Anthony D'Angelo
"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
-Victor Hugo
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
-Albert Einstein
"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'"
-George Bernard Shaw
"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears."
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation."
-Molière, The Would-be Gentleman
"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-Aristotle
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be."
-Douglas Adams
"It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end."
-Ursula K. LeGuin
"In simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up, and goes."
-John Erksine, The Complete Life
"The brighter you are, the more you have to learn."
-Don Herold
"The only thing you take with you when you're gone is what you leave behind."
-John Allston
"He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times."
-Johann von Schiller
"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"
-Patrick Henry
"The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live."
-Joan Borysenko
"It is not length of life, but depth of life."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
-Harvey Fierstein
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
-Mahatma Gandhi
"The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."
-William James
"This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it."
-William James
"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it."
-W. M. Lewis
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep."
-Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
"As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd stay away."
-Hughes Mearns, The Psychoed
"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies."
-William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
-William Shakespeare, As You Like It
"As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport."
-William Shakespeare, King Lear
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
"Nothing but blackness above
And nothing that moves but the cars...
God, if you wish for our love,
Fling us a handful of stars!"
-Louis Untermeyer, Caliban in the Coal Mines
"You shall go with me, newly-married bride,
And gaze upon a merrier multitude.
White-armed Nuala, Aengus of the Birds,
Feachra of the hurtling form, and him
Who is the ruler of the Western Host,
Finvara, and their Land of Heart's Desire.
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, time an endless song."
-William Butler Yeats, Land of Heart's Desire
"Love builds bridges where there are none."
-R. H. Delaney
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."
-Bertrand Russell
"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."
-Russell Baker
"What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish."
-W. H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand, 1962
"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?"
-Ayn Rand
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dream. Wandering by lone sea breakers, and sitting by desolate streams. World losers and world forsakers, for whom the pale moon gleams. Yet we are movers and the shakers of the world forever it seems."
-Arthur O'Shaunessey
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-Carl Sagan
"The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone."
-Orison Swett Marden
"Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?"
-Kahlil Gibran, "The Voice of the Poet"
"What do the nationalists say about killers punishing murderers and thieves sentencing looters?"
-Kahlil Gibran, "The Voice of the Poet"
"Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world."
-George Bernard Shaw
"Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit."
-Napoleon Hill
"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."
-Erich Fromm, Man for Himself
"A poet is someone who is astonished by everything."
-Anon.
"Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
'Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain't been there before."
-Shel Silverstein
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
-Plato
"We were a silent, hidden thought in the folds of oblivion, and we have become a voice that causes the heavens to tremble."
-Kahlil Gibran, "Children of Gods, Scions of Apes"
"He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past."
-George Orwell
"Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love."
-Kahlil Gibran, "Children of Gods, Scions of Apes"
"There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still."
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."
-Eden Phillpotts
"I am a student. Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate me."
-Slogan of the Free Speech Movement, 1964.
"We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear. Although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnible, we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living."
-Randolph Bourne, Youth and Life
"Prudent people are very happy; 'tis an exceeding fine thing, that's certain, but I was born without it, and shall retain to my day of Death the Humour of saying what I think."
-Mary Wortley Montagu, The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortly Montagu
"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."
-Austin Phelps
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
-Mark Twain
"Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms."
-Kahlil Gibran, "The Philosophy of Logic"
"Forget regret, or life is yours to miss."
-Jonathan Larson
"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'"
-John Greenleaf Whittier, "Maud Muller"
"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
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
-Thomas Jefferson
"We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they were made or just happened."
-Mark Twain
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
-Confucius
"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do."
-Helen Keller
"The reason people blame things on the previous generations is that there's only one other choice."
-Doug Larson
"I was taught very early that I would have to depend entirely upon myself; that my future lay in my own hands."
-Darius Ogden Mills
"The most heroic word in all languages is revolution."
-Eugene Debs
"The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed."
-Alexis Carrel, Reflections on Life
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return."
-Ewan McGregor ("Moulin Rouge")
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
-Albert Einstein
"The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success."
-James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies
"There's a very fine line between a groove and a rut; a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts."
-Christine Lavin, "Prisoners of their Hairdos"
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
-Archimedes, Pappus of Alexandria
"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination."
-John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty
"The soul that is within me no man can degrade."
-Frederick Douglass
"Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people."
-André Dubus, Broken Vessels, 1991
"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
"Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has."
-Randolph Bourne, Youth and Life
"To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet."
-Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1825
"There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire."
-Jules Renard, Journal, December, 1900
"I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end."
-Kahlil Gibran, "Anthem of Humanity"
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit."
-Stephen Hawking
"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."
-Neil Armstrong
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
-Seneca
"Adversity cause some men to break; others to break records."
-William A. Ward
"'We must do something' is the unanimous refrain. 'You begin' is the deadening refrain."
-Walter Dwight, The Saving Sense
"I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong."
-Leo Rosten
"We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more."
-Madame Swetchine, The Writings of Madame Swetchine
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizen in a Republic", April 23, 1910
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone."
-Bill Cosby
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
-Albert Einstein
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail."
-Napoleon Hill
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
-Robert Francis Kennedy
"Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world."
-Lily Tomlin
"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure."
-George E. Woodberry
"The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life."
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Inaugural Address
"If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger."
-Frank Lloyd Wright
"Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go."
-William Feather
"Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open."
-Lord Thomas Dewar
"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."
-Hermann Hesse
"When all men think alike, no one thinks very much."
-Walter Lippmann
"The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it."
-Colin Wilson
"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend."
-Henry David Thoreau
"Love like you've never been hurt and dance like no one's watching."
-Unknown
"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."
-Frederick Douglass (1817-95), African-American liberated slave, civil rights leader, writer, author, "The Heroic Slave," "John Brown"
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose."
-Frederick Douglass (1817-95), African-American liberated slave, civil rights leader, writer, author, "The Heroic Slave," "John Brown"
"The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness; and knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream."
-Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-born American mystic poet, painter, "The Prophet"
"Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from."
-Jodie Foster
"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."
-Buddha
"Every man dies. Not every man lives."
-Tim Robbins
"I'm the one who's got to die when it's time for me to die so let me live the way I want to."
-Jimi Hendrix
"When we walk to the end of all the light we have,
and take a step into the darkness of the unknown,
we must believe one of two things will happen:
that we will land on something solid,
or we will learn to fly."
-Unknown
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
-Walter Bagehot
"I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If you want to be happy, be."
-Leo Tolstoy
"Intelligent people make many blunders because they never believe the world is as stupid as it is."
-Nicholas Chamfort
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold a higher esteem in those who think alike than those who think differently."
-Nietzsche
"A man should not fear death; he should fear never beginning to live."
-Marcus Aurelius
"The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed."
-Lloyd Jones
"What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight -- it's the size of the fight in the dog."
-Dwight David Eisenhower
"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
-Albert Einstein
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
-Carl Gustav Jung
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
-Albert Einstein
"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
-Martin Luther
"We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - or to make it the last."
-John F. Kennedy
"American society is a bleak scene, but it is all a lot of us have to look forward to. Society povides no challenge. American society in the standard conception it has of itself is simply no longer exciting. The most exciting things going on in America today are movements to change America...The "futures" and "careers" for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children."
-Mario Savio "An End to History" (1963)
"We have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
"Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force."
-Martin Luther King, Jr. (Atlanta speech 8/15/67)
"If the button is pushed, there's no running away. There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave."
-P.F. Sloan/Barry McGuire "The Eve of Destruction"
"This way of "life" is a way of death. To work for the industries of death is to murder. To know the torments Amerika inflicts on the Third World, but not to sympathize and identify, is to deny our right to love - and not to love is to die. We refuse. In death-directed Amerika there is only one way to a life of love and freedom; to attack and destroy the forces of death and exploitation and to build a just society - revolution."
-Revolutionary Force 9
"Question Authority!"
-Unknown
"Power to the People!"
-Unknown
"The people in power will not disappear voluntarily, giving flowers to the cops just isn’t going to work. This thinking is fostered by the establishment; they like nothing better than love and nonviolence. The only way I like to see cops given flowers is in a flower pot from a high window."
-William S. Burroughs
"I think the real test of psychedelics is what you do with them when you're not on them, what kind of culture you build, what kind of art, what kind of technologies... What's lacking in the Western mind is the sense of connectivity and relatedness to the rest of life, the atmosphere, the ecosystem, the past, our children's future. If we were feeling those things we would not be practicing culture as we are."
-Terence McKenna "Tripping"
"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either."
-Benjamin Franklin
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free."
-Bertrand Russell
"I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams."
-Madonna Ciccone
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
-Noam Chomsky
"How many of us realize we live our lives in a prison? It may be velvet lined with all the amenities, but it's a prison nevertheless. We are the slave labor used to perpetuate this system by enriching those with power (our jail keepers). If you try to escape from this velvet lined jail, they put you in another higher-security jail without all the amenities, and even less freedom. Face it we're all prisoners!
FREE THE PRISONERS! FREE YOUR MIND! "
-Skip Stone
"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."
-Erica Jong "How to Save Your Own Life"
"I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful."
-Frederick E. Perl
"Dejeme decirle, a riesgo de parecer ridiculo, que el revolucionario verdadero esta guiado por grandes sentimientos de amor."
"Let me say at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."
-Che Guevara
"The relationship between rock and revolution is granting that most musicians are a bunch of avaricious ass-sucking dogs, and most of the song writers (too), myself in many ways included. It's the form or the intention, or the implications of the music that make it interesting to the revolutionary. It's a tool and a tactic for getting children to revolt against the protoplasm that raised them and consider other forms of government, other forms of dealing with the situation. When you coordinate and liberate and release the sexuality and the minds of youth, and can twist it and change it toward a different goal and direction, via rock 'n roll, via fucking in the streets, via dope, via action, direct action ... then you can maybe push this country and we can rewrite the whole structure, based on the kind of energy released by rock 'n roll."
-Ed Sanders
"We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first- rock and roll or Christianity."
-John Lennon
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
-Adolph Hitler
"No one today can afford to be innocent, or indulge himself in ignorance of contemporary governments, politics and social orders. The national polities of the modern world maintain their existence by deliberately fostered craving and fear: monstrous protection rackets. The "free world" has become economically dependent on a fantastic system of stimulation of greed which cannot be fulfilled, sexual desire which cannot be satiated and hatred which has no outlet except against oneself, the persons one is supposed to love, or the revolutionary aspirations of pitiful, poverty-stricken marginal societies like Cuba or Vietnam. The conditions of the Cold War have turned all modern societies - Communist included - into vicious distorters of man's true potential."
-Gary Snyder
"The war against terrorism is terrorism. The whole thing is just bullshit!"
-Woody Harrelson "Daily Mirror"
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."
-Aldous Huxley
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years."
-Bertrand Russell
"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
-Bertrand Russell
"The world is ready for a mystic revolution, a discovery of the God in each of us."
-George Harrison
"The attitude is we live and let live. This is actually an amazing change in values in a rather short time and it's an example of freedom from religion."
-Tom Wolfe
"Do your own thing."
-Unknown
"Tell it like it is."
-Unknown
"Live and let live."
-Unknown
"Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music."
-George Carlin
"For those who understand no explanation is needed, ...For those who don't none will do."
-Jerry Lewis
"It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio."
-Bono (of U2)
"It's better to live one day as a lion, than a hundred as a sheep."
-Benito Mussollini
"It's funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life."
-Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stone, December 2, 1976.
"My audience loves to see Britney get her head cut off."
-Alice Cooper
"It's a benevolent universe, and I love it, and any struggle was worth it. Struggle or unhappiness are so enormously unimportant. I don't regret a minute of my life."
-Ayn Rand
"Men hunt because they have something wrong with their own equipment and they need something else to shoot."
-Pamela Anderson
PETA: "What do you say to people who wear fur or are pro-fur?"
Pink: "I believe in the saying ‘to each his/her own,’ but I hope they someday get bitten in the ass by the same kind of animal they wear on their back."
"[Y]ou need to hunt something that can shoot back at you to really classify yourself as a hunter. You need to understand the feeling of what it’s like to go into the field and know your opposition can take you out. Not just go out there and shoot Bambi."
-Gov. Jesse Ventura
"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."
-Alice Walker
"Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking of life."
-Dick Gregory
"The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it."
-Abbie Hoffman
"We are here to make a better world. No amount of rationalization or blaming can preempt the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on this planet. The lesson of the '60s is that people who cared enough to do right could change history. We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided. The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly, headstrong and scared half to death.
And we were right."
-Abbie Hoffman
"Life actors never rehearse and need no script. A life actor uses only what is available, nothing more, nothing less."
-Abbie Hoffman
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
-Abraham Lincoln
Source: First Inaugural Address
"Revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past."
-Fidel Castro
"You can kill the revolutionary but you can't kill a revolution."
-Fred Hampton
"This is a very unforgiving country when you show this country its warts, when you hold the mirror up. If you happen not to share their beliefs, they'll kill you."
-H. Rap Brown
"There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first."
-Jim Morrison
"All we are saying is give peace a chance."
John Lennon
"Millions of mind guerrillas... Raising the spirit of peace and love, not war."
-John Lennon
"What solidarity we do find exists despite the society, against all its realities, as an unending struggle between the innate decency of man and the innate indecency of the society. Can we imagine how men would behave if this decency could find full release, if society earned the respect, even the love of the individual?"
-Lewis Herber
"...we condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakeable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives."
-June Jordan
"But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know: 1) Everything is part of it. 2) It's never too late to have a happy childhood."
-Tom Robbins "Still Life With Woodpecker"
"By writing lyrics, I'm hoping to audibly influence and inspire people to change their ways in a more positive direction. We could do so much more, and it could be easier too. Human society is so complicated and for such ridiculous reasons. We tend to overlook the easiest things and go for the most complicated, technologically-advanced solutions. It's almost like we need to step back in order to step forward. Even to go back and appreciate the more primitive sides of cultures."
-Brandon Boyd
"Everything you can imagine is real."
-Picasso
"Whoever controls the media... the images... controls the culture."
-Allen Ginsberg
"Madonna created a monster that sucks up souls."
-Rufus Wainwright
"No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings."
-William Blake (1757-1827), British poet, artist, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's."
-William Blake (1757-1827), British poet, artist, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object."
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President, Democrat
"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President, Democrat
"I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President, Democrat
"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd US President, Democrat
"In my thirty-some odd years of life, I've come to the conclusion that everyone is just a little fucked up. Then you can divide the world into those who realize how fucked up they are and the delusional ones. But it's okay, it's good to realize how fucked up you are."
-Rob Thomas, Matchbox 20
"Thanks to unencouraging parents everywhere for giving their children the will to show them up."
-Kurt Cobain
"A famous linguist once said that out of all the combinations of words in the English language, of everything ever spoken throughout history 'cellar door' was the most beautiful."
-Ms. Pomeroy, from the movie Donnie Darko, referring to a quote by J.R.R. Tolkien
"This note should be pretty easy to understand. All the warnings from the punk rock 101 courses over the years since my first introduction to the shall we say, ethics involved with independence and embracement of your community, it's proven to be very true. I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing something, for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things. For example, when we're backstage and the lights go out and the roar of the crowd begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love and relish the love and adoration of the crowd. Which is something I totally admire and envy. The fact that I can't fool you, any one of you, it simply isn't fair to you or to me. The worst crime I could think of would be to pull people off by faking it, pretending as if I'm having 100% fun. Sometimes I feel as if I should have a punch-in time-clock before I walk out on stage. I've tried everything within my power to appreciate it, and I do, God believe me I do, but it's not enough. I appreciate the fact that I and we have affected and entertained a lot of people. I must be one of those narcissists who only appreciate things when they're alone. I'm too sensitive. I need to be slightly numb in order to regain the enthusiasm I once had as a child. On our last 3 tours I've had a much better appreciation of all the people I know personally, and as fans of our music, but I still can't get out the frustration to gather the empathy I have for everybody. There's good in all of us and I simply love people too much. So much that it makes me feel just too fucking sad. Sad little sensitive unappreciative. I had a good marriage, and for that I'm grateful. But since the age of seven, I've become hateful toward all humans in general only because it seems so easy for people to get along that have empathy. 'Empathy?' Only because I love and feel for people too much I guess. Thank you all from the pit of my burning nauseous stomach for your letters and concern during the last years. I'm pretty much an erratic moody person and I don't have the passion anymore. Peace, Love, Empathy, Kurt Cobain."
-Kurt Cobain (from suicide note)