Most of these quotes are serious, others are humorous. Some I agree with, some I disagree with.
Idleness:
"Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare." - Proverbs 20:13
"As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed." - Proverbs 26:14
"Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." - Proverbs 10:4
Ignorance:
"You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." - Matthew 16:3
"Ignorance is not innocence but sin." - Robert Browning
"But the greatest of all sins is indeed the sin of ignorance. Throw this sin away, O man, and become pure from sin." "Those who think that right is wrong, and who think that wrong is right, they are the men of wrong views and they go the downward path. But those who think that wrong is wrong, and who think that right is right, they are the men of right views and they go on the upward path." - Dhammapada 243, 318-9
Ignorance doesn't kill you, but it makes you sweat a lot.
Illusion:
" 'All is unreal.' When one sees this, he is above sorrow. This is the clear path." "For whom 'name and form' are not real, who never feels 'this is mine', and who sorrows not for things that are not, he in truth can be called a monk." Dhammapada 279, 367
Imagination:
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
Immortality:
"Better than a hundred years not seeing one's own immortality is one single day of life if one sees one's own immortality." - Dhammapada 114
"Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again, / Where dead men meet on lips of living men." - Samuel Butler
Impatience:
"A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again." - Proverbs 19:19
A patient man has great understanding, but a quick-tempered man displays folly." - Proverbs 14:29
Imperialism:
"Every rod or staff of empire is truly crooked at the top." - Francis Bacon
Impermanence:
"Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, / Brief as the lightning in the collied night, / That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth; / And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' / The jaws of darkness do devour it up: / So quick bright things come to confusion." - - Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 1, scene 1
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, / To the last syllable of recorded time; / And all our yesterdays have lighted fools / The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!" - - Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 5, scene 5
Inclusiveness:
And John answered and said, "Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbade him, because he followeth not with us." And Jesus said unto him, "Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us." - Luke 9:49-50, King James Version
Indecision:
" 'Yes', I answered you last night;
'No', this morning, sir, I say.
Colours seen by candle-light
Will not look the same by day." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Lady's Yes"
Blessed are they who go around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
Independence:
"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude - feelings which increase with the years. One becomes sharply aware, but without regret, of the limits of mutual understanding and consonance with other people. No doubt, such a person loses some of his innocence and unconcern; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to build his inner equilibrium upon such insecure foundations." - Albert Einstein, from "Living Philosophies", 1931
Individuality:
"The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling." - Albert Einstein, from "Living Philosophies", 1931
"A man’s value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed toward promoting the good of his fellows. We call him good or bad according to his attitude in this respect. It looks at first sight as if our estimate of a man depended entirely on his social qualities.
"And yet such an attitude would be wrong. It can easily be seen that all the valuable achievements, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society have been brought about in the course of countless generations by creative individuals. Someone once discovered the use of fire, someone the cultivation of edible plants, and someone the steam engine.
"Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society, nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative personalities able to think and judge independently, the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
"The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close social cohesion. It has rightly been said that the very basis of Greco-European-American culture, and in particular of its brilliant flowering in the Italian Renaissance, which put an end to the stagnation of medieval Europe, has been the liberation and comparative isolation of the individual." - Albert Einstein, "Mein Weltbild", 1934
Industry:
" Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." - Benjamin Franklin
The Apostle Paul instructed believers to "respect those who work hard among you" (1 Thessalonians 5:12), adding, in 2 Thessalonians, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'If a man will not work, he shall not eat.'"
"Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth." - Proverbs 10:4
"All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty." - Proverbs 14:23
Verse 116 of the Dhammapada reads, "Make haste and do what is good; keep your mind away from evil. If a man is slow in doing good, his mind finds pleasure in evil." Verse 118 then reads: "If a man does something good, let him do it again and again. Let him find joy in his good work. Joyful is the accumulation of good work." "Better than a hundred years lived in idleness and in weakness is a single day of life lived with courage and powerful striving." (112) "If a man when young and strong does not arise and strive when he should arise and strive, and thus sinks into laziness and lack of determination, he will never find the path of wisdom." (280)
"A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. . . . The man is now a man." - Thomas Carlyle
Sean O'Casey described work as "the one great sacrament of humanity from which all other things flowsecurity, leisure, joy, art, literature, even divinity itself."
"Toil is mans allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief thats more than either, the grief and sin of idleness." - Herman Melville
"One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You cant eat eight hours a day nor drink for eight hours a day nor make love for eight hoursall you can do for eight hours is work. Which is the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy." - William Faulkner
"Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute." - John Kenneth Galbraith
"Industrial mana sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement." - Aldous Huxley
"Youll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth youve got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labour, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind." - D.H. Lawrence
"It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"In every one of those little stucco boxes theres some poor bastard whos never free except when hes fast asleep and dreaming that hes got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him." - George Orwell
Belgian philosopher Raoul Vaneigem wrote of laborers "who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work."
"In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it: they must not do too much of it: and they must have a sense of success in itnot a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of others for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and fruitfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it." - W.H. Auden
"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." - Theodore Roosevelt
"To fill the hour -- that is happiness." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Sleep is sweet to the labouring man." - John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress
"Work keeps us from three evils: boredom, vice and need." - Voltaire
"Make an island for yourself. Hasten and strive. Be wise. With the dust of impurities blown off, and free from sinful passions, you will come unto the glorious land of the great." - Dhammapada 236
"Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night." - Leo Aikman
Influence:
And he said to his disciples, "Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin." - Luke 17:1-2, Revised Standard Version
"A valid index by which to evaluate the influence other people have on us is by how much they increase or diminish our benevolence toward our fellow men." - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
Ingratitude:
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind, / Thou art not so unkind / As man's ingratitude." - Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene 7
Injustice:
"The surest way to prevent seditions (if the times do bear it) is to take away the matter of them." - Francis Bacon
Innocence:
"I wash my hands in innocence, and go about your altar, O Lord" - Psalms 26:6
Inquisitiveness:
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business." - Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
Insecurity:
"The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudices." - Clint Eastwood
Insensitivity:
"Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart." - Proverbs 25:20
"If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered." - Proverbs 21:13
"When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm." - Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Insight:
"This world is indeed in darkness, and how few can see the light! Just as few birds can escape from a net, few souls can fly into the freedom of heaven." - Dhammapada 174
Insults:
"A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult." - Proverbs 12:16
Integrity:
"The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity." - Proverbs 11:3
Intelligence:
"The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool." - Emerson, Essays xiv. "Experience"
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." - Emerson, Essays x. "Circles"
Cogito ergo sum. "I think, therefore I am." - Descartes
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." - Ambrose Bierce
"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose." - Emerson, Essays: Intellect
"No one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of great masses of the plain people." - H.L. Mencken
"Families, when a child is born, / want it to be intelligent. / I, through intelligence, / having wrecked my whole life, / only hope the baby will prove / ignorant and stupid. / Then he will crown a tranquil life / By becoming a Cabinet Minister." - Su Tung-P'o
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
Intimacy:
"Ah, intimacy! The thought of it fills me with aches, and the pretence of it exhausts me beyond myself." - D.H. Lawrence, St. Mawr, p. 118
"People always say 'dearest' when they hate each other most." - D.H. Lawrence, St. Mawr, p. 120
Intolerance:
"Although the weapons of intolerance have been sophisticated, the spirit of the thumbscrew and the rack is still with us." - William S. Banowsky
"Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings." - Heinrich Heine
"If what we profess is not an organic part of our understanding, we are likely to profess it with vehemence and intolerance. Intolerance is the 'Do Not Touch' sign on something that cannot bear touching." - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. - H.L Mencken
"Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law." - George Orwell
Irony:
"A man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it." - Ecclesiastes 2:21
"Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana - he is almost lost that built it." - Sir Thomas Browne
"People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, theres something wrong with him." - Art Buchwald
"If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn." - Andrew Mason
Irresponsibility:
"By not doing what should be done, and by doing what should not be done, the sinful desires of proud and thoughtless men increase." - Dhammapada 292
Isolation:
"Sweet are the uses of adversity, / Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; / And this our life, exempt from public haunt, / Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, / Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." - Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene 1
"Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers." - Jane Jacobs
"He who does not enjoy his own company is usually right." - Coco Chanel
Jealousy:
"Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?" - Proverbs 27:4
"But he in whom the roots of jealousy have been uprooted and burnt away, then he both by day or by night can achieve supreme contemplation." "Let him not despise the offerings given to him, and let him not be jealous of others, because the monk who feels envy cannot achieve deep contemplation."- Dhammapada 250, 365
"We often hate that which we cannot be. We put up defenses against something we crave and cannot have." - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
Joy:
"Silence is the perfectest heralt of joy; / I were but little happy, if I could say how much!" - Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act 2, scene 1
"The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it." - Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever
"Wherever holy men dwell, that is indeed a place of joy - be it in a village, or in the forest, or in a valley or on the hills. They make delightful the forests where other people could not dwell. Because they have not the burden of desires, they have that joy which others find not." - Dhammapada 99
Judgment:
"Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." - John 7:24
"Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again." - Luke 6:37-38, King James Version
"Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day: and a certain beggar named Lazarus was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table; yea, even the dogs come and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and that he was carried away by the angels into Abraham's bosom: and the rich man also died, and was buried. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.' But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things: but now here he is comforted and thou art in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that they that would pass from hence to you may not be able, and that none may cross over from thence to us.' And he said, 'I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house; for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' But Abraham saith, 'They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'Nay, father Abraham: but if one go to them from the dead, they will repent.' And he said unto him, 'If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead.'" - Luke 16:19-31, American Standard Version
Justice:
"The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern." - Proverbs 29:7
"If a king judges the poor with fairness, his throne will always be secure." - Proverbs 29:14
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." - Proverbs 31:8-9
Then he told them a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. He said, "There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, 'Render a just decision for me against my adversary.' For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, 'While it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally come and strike me.'" The Lord said, "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" - Luke 18:1-8, New American Bible
"What the wicked dreads will overtake him; what the righteous desire will be granted." - Proverbs 10:24
"Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty." - Benjamin Franklin
"Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offence." - Cicero
The Commandment "You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor" is an exhortation to justice.
Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas jus suum cuique tribuens. "Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render to every one his due." - Emperor Justinian (r. 527-565)
"Justice is the having and doing what is one's own." - Socrates
In Plato's "Republic", Socrates says that "the just man does not permit the several elements within him (desire, emotion, and intellect) to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others; he sets in order his own inner life"
"Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"A good parson once said, that where mystery begins, religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?" - Edmund Burke
"No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another." - Sir Thomas Browne
"There are in nature certain fountains of justice, whence all civil laws are derived but as streams." - Francis Bacon
"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music." - Groucho Marx
Karma:
"The wicked become a ransom for the righteous, and the unfaithful for the upright." - Proverbs 21:18
"He who destroys life, who utters lies, who takes what is not given to him, who goes to the wife of another, who gets drunk with strong drinks - he digs up the very roots of his life." - Dhammapada 246-7
Kindness:
"A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel." - Proverbs 12:10
"He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God." - Proverbs 14:31
"An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up." - Proverbs 12:25
"Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." - Proverbs 16:24
"It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind." - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
"If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world." - Francis Bacon
" 'Twas a thief said the last kind word to Christ:
Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft." - Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book
"I think it frets the saints in heaven to see / How many desolate creatures on the earth / Have learnt the simple dues of fellowship / And social comfort, in a hospital." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"A warm smile is the universal language of kindness." - W.A. Ward
Knowledge:
"The discerning heart seeks knowledge, but the mouth of a fool feeds on folly." - Proverbs 15:14
"Wise men store up knowledge, but the mouth of a fool invites ruin." - Proverbs 10:14
"With his mouth the godless destroys his neighbor, but through knowledge the righteous escape." - Proverbs 11:9
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est. "Knowledge itself is power." - Francis Bacon
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province." - Francis Bacon
"The knowledge of man is as the waters, some descending from above, and some springing from beneath; the one informed by the light of nature, the other inspired by divine revelation." - Francis Bacon
"Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person's nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions." "To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth." "The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
"But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant." - H.L. Mencken
"The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda." - Martin Buber
I would like to give credit to my Uncle James McManus, who first encouraged me to start a filing system which would allow me to keep facts and quotes in good order. Uncle Jim's files gave me my first batch of quotes, and I've used some of them here.