If you never see or hear something which offends you, you can be sure that you do not live in a free society. --closely after Kim Campbell, former Prime Minister of Canada

"The world we have created today as a result of our thinking thus far has problems which cannot be solved by thinking the way we thought when we created them." ~Albert Einstein

"The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love; and something to hope for." ~Joseph Addison

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience--well that comes from poor judgment." ~Aesop

"The truth which makes people free is for the most part the truth which people prefer not to hear." ~Herbert Agar

"There is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us, that it's rather hard to tell which of us ought to reform the rest of us." ~Alain-Fournier

"If you're not riding the wave of change --you'll find yourself beneath it." ~Anonymous

"A bend in the road, is not the end of the road . . . unless you fail to make the turn." ~Anonymous

* "Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own." ~Anonymous

It's more true that power attracts the corruptable. ~Anonymous

"Every time history repeats itself, the price goes up." ~Anonymous

"If people go on exploiting the world as if there was no tomorrow, there will be no tomorrow." ~Anonymous

"The greatest challenge for democracy is to persuade people not to eat the seed corn of tomorrow's harvest." ~Clement Atlee

"Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity." ~W.H. Auden

"People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering." ~St. Augustine

"No moral system can rest solely on authority." ~A.J. Ayer

"The whole history of civilization is screwn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards." ~Walter Bagehot

"It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiats can be trusted to speak the truth." ~A.J. Balfour

"A complete life may be one ending in so full an identification with the not-self that there is no self left to die." ~Bernard Berenson

. . Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations and in divers places.
. . Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it.
. . Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past.
. . Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a god inspires you.
. . Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests.
. . After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.
. . Gautama Buddha

"The wise do not rate themselves with the distinguished, nor with the lowest, nor with ordinary people; calm and unselfish, they are free from possessiveness, they hold on to nothing as theirs and reject nothing as not theirs." ~Buddhist discourses (Sutta Nipata: 954)

"At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done. They hope it can't be done because it means seeing the garden in a whole new way. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries before." ~Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden)

"The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in the closet." ~Lord Chesterfield

"The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's." ~G.K. Chesterton

"It is man's task, his greatest task, not to learn to love, but to learn to create the conditions in which love alights upon us and remains with us." ~Irene Clatremont de Castillejo (Knowing Women: A Feminine Psychology)

"Love your enemies just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards." ~R.A. Dickson

"Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage." ~Benjamin Disraeli

* "The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops--no, but the kind of man the country turns out." ~Benjamin Disraeli

"No person is an island entire of itself; every man is a part of the main. Any person's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." ~John Donne

* "There's nothing more precious in this world than the feeling of being wanted." ~Diana Dors, English actor

"The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities." ~John Foster Dulles

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say." ~Will Durant

"No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." ~Albert Einstein

"For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisted tombs." ~George Eliot

"The question put by a wise man is half the answer." ~Jacob Emden, eighteenth-century rabbinic scholar [The wiser the person, the more his question serves as the answer.]

"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." ~Epictetus

"The quizzical expression of the monkey at the zoo comes from his wondering whether he is his brother's keeper, or his keeper's brother." ~Evan Esar

"A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." ~Euripides

"I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that may be wrong. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose." ~Richard Feynman

* "If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it." ~Immanuel Hermann von Fichie

"If a person's education is finished, they are finished." ~E.A. Filene

* "Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty." ~John Finley

"I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done." ~Henry Ford

"What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system." ~Milton Friedman

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel people to unfold their powers." ~Erich Fromm

"The human landscape of the New World shows a conquest of nature by an intelligence that does not love it." ~Northrop Frye

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage." ~John Kenneth Galbraith

Gandhi's Seven Social Sins:

POLITICS Without Principles
WEALTH Without Work
COMMERCE Without Morality
EDUCATION Without Character
PLEASURE Without Conscience
SCIENCE Without Humanity
WORSHIP Without Sacrifice

* "The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." ~Gandhi

* "The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing their education." ~John W. Gardner

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." ~Andre Gide

"Tolerance is a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbours of tolerance are apathy and weakness." ~Sir James Goldsmith

"Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age. When the sense of curiosity has withered." ~Graham Greene

"They who are of the opinion that money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for money." ~Lord Halifax (George Savile)

"Those that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but they will do very few things." ~Lord Halifax (George Savile)

* "When the freedom they wishes for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again." ~Edith Hamilton

"Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only they who keep their eye fixed on the far horizon will find their right road." ~Dag Hammarskjold

"Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from dictates of government and the results of battles but through vast numbers of people changing their minds--sometimes only a little bit." ~Willis Harman (Global Mind Change)

* "There are only two worries in this world: The worry that you can resolve --so do something about it! [And] the worry that you can't resolve --so forget about it." ~Mike Harper

"A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future." ~Sydney J. Harris

"There is nothing permanent except change." ("Everything flows and nothing stays.") ~Heracleitus

"To really enjoy the better things in life, one must first have experienced the things they are better than." ~Oscar Homolka

"Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace." ~Elbert Hubbard

* "To escape criticism --do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." ~Elbert Hubbard

"If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother." ~Victor Hugo

"Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best ends by the best means." ~Francis Hutcheson

"So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleans, Caesars and Napoleans will duly arise and make them miserable." ~Aldous Huxley

"Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties." ~Sir James Jeans

"Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire." ~Samuel Johnson

"It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust." ~Samuel Johnson

"We should often be ashamed of our very best actions, if the world only saw the motives which caused them." ~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"If you want to truly understand something, try to change it." ~Kurt Lewin

"Pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves." ~Marcus Lucan, Roman Poet (39-65) [not Newton] "Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." ~David Lloyd George

"Depression is the inability to construct a future." ~Rollo May

"We'd all like a reputation for generosity and we'd all like to buy it cheap." ~Mignon McLaughlin

"Tolerance always has limits --it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant." ~Sidney Hook, American philosopher and author.

"Tell me and I'll forget. Show me, and I may not remember. Involve me, and I'll understand." ~Native American saying

"We can easily manage, if we will only take each day, the burden appointed for it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yeaterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow to the weight before we are required to bear it." ~John Newton

"O God, give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed; courage to change what should be changed, and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." ~Rienhold Niebuhr

"Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibition, instabilities... and it always balances them." ~Anais Nin

"Simply to be a human being is to be a futurist of sorts. For human freedom is largely a matter of imaging alternative futures and then choosing among them." ~James Ogilvy

"Man's loneliness is but his fear of life." ~Eugene O'Neill

"Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort." ~Jose Ortega y Gasset

"Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call for our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom." ~M. Scott Peck

"By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear." ~M. Scott Peck

"Simply seek happiness, and you are not likely to find it. Seek to create and love without regard to your happiness, and you will likely be happy much of the time." ~M. Scott Peck

* "Going into the unknown is invariably frightening, but we learn what is significantly new only through adventures." ~M. Scott Peck

"If we lacked imagination enough to foresee something better, life would indeed be a tragedy." ~Laurence Peter

* "The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything." ~Edward John Phelps

"Growing old is like being increasingly penalised for a crime you haven't committed." ~Anthony Powell

"The real voyage of discovery consists not of finding new lands but of seeing the territory with new eyes." ~Marcel Proust

"If you're not playing a big enough game, you'll screw up the game you're playing just to give yourself something to do." ~John Roger and Peter Williams (Do It! A Guide to Living Your Dreams, Thorsons, 1992)

"Nature composes some of its loveliest poems for the microscope and telescope." ~Theodore Roszak

"When a person is wrapped up in themself they make a pretty small package." ~John Ruskin

* "The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." ~John Ruskin

"The central problem of our age is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty." ~Betrand Russell

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." ~Bertrand Russell

"We want far better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them." ~Dora Russell

"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong to be set right." ~Carl Schurz

"Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as to not injure future ones," ~Seneca, Roman statesman.

"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out--it's the grain of sand in your shoe." ~Robert Service

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." ~George Bernard Shaw

"The two things that worthless people sacrifice everything for are happiness and freedom, and their punishment is that they get both only to find that they have no capacity for the happiness and no use for the freedom." ~George Bernard Shaw

The reason why sensible people are as conventional as they can bear to be is that conventionality saves so much time and thought and trouble and social friction of one sort or another that it leaves them much more leisure for freedom than unconventionality does." ~George Bernard Shaw

"These are our times and our responsibilities. Every human being has a sacred duty to protect the welfare of our Mother Earth, from whom all life comes. In order to do this we must recognize the enemy--the one within us. We must begin with ourselves." ~Leon Shenandoah, of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy

"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second." ~Logan Pearsall Smith

"Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedoms." ~Herbert Spencer

"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities." ~Lord Stamp

"I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances." ~Martha Washington [betcha never heard a quote from her before.]

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrope." ~H.G. Wells

"I wake up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day a little difficult." ~E.B. White

"The only justification in the use of force is to reduce the amount of force necessary to be used." ~Alfred North Whitehead

* "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order." ~Alfred North Whitehead

"The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur. . . . Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them." ~Alfred North Whitehead

"I am not young enough to know everything." ~Oscar Wilde

"All the seven deadly sins are self destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least, lust and gluttony, averice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape." ~Angus Wilson

The history of liberty is the history of resistence. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." ~Woodrow Wilson

"I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow." ~Woodrow Wilson

"Our power to think things out about human nature . . . is liable to be blocked by our fear of the full implication of what we find." ~D.W. Winnicott

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Everyone should learn to do one thing supremely well because they like it, and one thing supremely well because they detest it." ~B.W.M. Young

"Sitting in front of his master, the student posed the question, 'All the mountains, rivers, lakes, the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, where do they come from?' In answer, the master replied, 'Where does your question come from?'" ~Zen story

"The finger points at the moon. Do not be distracted by the finger; observe the moon!" ~Zen Saying

Below quotes are by "non-famous" people.

"The solution to every problem contains within it the seed of the next problem." ~Fred Boness

"Don't judge a person's character by his or her mistakes. Judge a person's character by the way in which he or she deals with the mistakes." ~Charles Wilson

"Even though life might seem complicated, it boils down to simple terms: your thoughts determine your decisions; your decisions determine your actions; your actions determine your behavior; your behavior determines your results; your results determine your reactions, which leads you back to your thoughts!! Only you determine your future!" ~Dean Williams

"The development of life int he third millenium will be determined by the interplay between three levels of organization: biological, social, and computer networks. The artificial form of life will not replace humankind but will be a superstructure to it, as social life is the superstructure to organic life (`life stack'). The humans are to be sandwiched between biological and computeral levels. The computer programs will be made by people as human thoughts are made by nervous cells." ~Alexander Vinogradov, scientist, Russia

"Before you can smell the flowers, you must first plant the flowers." ~Charles Carroll

"When confronted with a problem, smile; most problems are terribly afraid of smiling persons." ~Ingo Hohmann, 27, student, Germany