"Some skeptics are not really skeptics at all, but scientific fundamentalists attached to materialist ideology. I have found they are pretty well impervious to evidence." Rupert Sheldrake

"God! There is no god but He, the Living, the Self-Subsisting, Eternal." Qur'ân 3:2

"There is no god but He: That is the witness of God, His angels, and those endued with knowledge, standing firm on justice. There is no god but He, The Exalted in Power, The Wise." Qur'ân 3:18

"The thought of how far the human race would have advanced without government simply staggers the imagination." Doug Casey 1979

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." H.L. Mencken

"Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change... [T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition." H.L. Mencken

"To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason." H.L. Mencken

"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights." H.L. Mencken

"The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have." H.L. Mencken

"God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set the above their betters." H.L. Mencken

"All government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man." H.L. Mencken

"People constantly speak of "the government" doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men. They may have some better man working for them, but they themselves are seldom worthy of any respect." H.L. Mencken

"All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them." H.L. Mencken

"Every step in human progress, from the first feeble stirrings in the abyss of time, has been opposed by the great majority of men. Every valuable thing that has been added to the store of man's possessions has been derided by them when it was new, and destroyed by them when they had the power. They have fought every new truth ever heard of, and they have killed every truth-seeker who got into their hands." H.L. Mencken

"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." H.L. Mencken

"For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt." H.L. Mencken

"An apt and true reply was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride. "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor." St. Augustine "The City of God"

"Children with early-stage brain tumors can develop symptoms of hyperactivity or poor attention. So can lead- or pesticide-poisoned children. So can children with early-onset diabetes, heart disease, worms, viral or bacterial infections, malnutrition, head injuries, genetic disorders, allergies, mercury or manganese exposure, petit mal seizures, and hundreds—yes hundreds — of other minor, major, or even life-threatening medical problems. Yet all these children are labeled hyperactive or ADD." Dr. Sydney Walker "The Hyperactivity Hoax"

"When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Paine

"Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion." William Blake

"Slavery may change its form or its name - its essence remains the same. Its essence may be expressed in these words: to be a slave is to be forced to work for someone else, just as to be a master is to live on someone else's work. In antiquity... slaves were, in all honesty, called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of serfs; nowadays, they are called wage earners." Mikhail Bakunin "Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism"

"Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law." Henry David Thoreau

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." Henry David Thoreau

"Every great advance in... knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." Julian Huxley "Lay Sermons"

"Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason." Erich Fromm "Psychoanalysis and Religion"

"Integrity has no need of rules." Albert Camus

"Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool." John J. Miller "And Hope to Die"

"I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do." Robert A. Heinlein "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

"There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad." Salvador Dali

"Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings." Salvador Dali

"Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali." Salvador Dali

"Meaning is just one more abstraction, implying some future use or purpose; it has no place in the here and now of naked existence. And is this perhaps the significance of the Eden story? They ate of the tree in the midst of the garden, and their eyes were opened, and they became as gods, knowing good and evil. The first dualism, fundamental to all others." William Braden "The Private Sea"

"Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business." St. Jerome

"There is no division, no separation, between the society and ourselves; we are the world and the world is us, and to bring about a radical revolution in society - which is absolutely essential - there must first be a radical revolution in ourselves." J. Krishnamurti

"Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so." William Shakespeare

"Fear of the devil is one way of doubting God." Kahlil Gibran

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." Jonathan Swift

"The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism." Sir William Osler

"The Puritans nobly fled from a land of despotism to a land of freedom, where they could not only enjoy their own religion, but could prevent everybody else from enjoying his." Charles Farrar Browne

"Behind all creeds the spirit is One." Andrew Lang

"The more corrupt the state, the more laws." Tacitus

"The old notion is that a drug that makes you feel good, like booze, when you stagger around and say, "Hey, I'm great, I'm the best one on the block", that's not what we mean by feeling good or getting high. Getting high is that sense of union, wonder, revelation, merging with something that's bigger than yourself." Timothy Leary

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly." Richard Bach

"The best way out is always through." Robert Frost

"We're no different from the plants, we're no better. We're all part of the whole, and everything - a grain of sand, dirt, the birds and the animals- they are all part of us." Rolling Thunder

"Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present; the future will take care of itself." Ramana Maharshi

"Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned." Swami Nirmalananda

"At first, in that place, at all times, above the earth, On the earth, [was] an extended fog, and there the great Manito was. At first, forever, lost in space, everywhere, the great Manito was. He made the extended land and the sky. He made the sun, the moon, the stars." Samuel G. Brinton "The Lenâpé and Their Legends"

"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves." Carl Jung

"Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throat." Martin H. Fischer

"Education... is hanging around until you've caught on." John Ruskin

"Foolishness and chaos lead to new forms. And new order. Closer to, probably, what the real order is. When you break down the old orders and the old forms and leave them broken and shattered, you suddenly find yourself in a new space with new forms and new order which are more like the way it is." Jerry Garcia

"Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic." Thomas Szasz

"How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?" Paul Sweeney

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Jiddu Krishnamurti

"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" Henry David Thoreau

"Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness." George Bernard Shaw

"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots." Erich Fromm

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Jefferson thought schools would produce free men: we prove him right by putting dropouts in jail." Benjamin R. Barber

"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." John Kenneth Galbraith

"He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious." Sun Tzu

"I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love." Mahatma Gandhi

"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life." John Muir

"The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other." David Riesman

"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people." Giordano Bruno

"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps." H.L. Mencken

"Don't you see that the roads to Mecca are all different?... The roads are different, the goal one... When people come there, all quarrels or differences or disputes that happened along the road are resolved... Those who shouted at each other along the road 'you are wrong' or 'you are an infidel' forgot their differences when they come there because there, all hearts are in unison." Rumi

"Achieving unity - oneness - with ourselves, with our loved ones, with our friends and working associates, is the highest and most delicious fruit of the Seven Habits. Most of us have tasted this fruit of true unity from time to time in the past, as we have also tasted the bitter, lonely fruit of discord -- and we know how precious and fragile unity is." Dr. Stephen Covey

"If I am to know God directly I must become completely God and God I so that this God and I become one. As pear seeds produce pears and nut seeds produce nut trees, God seeds produce Gods." Meister Eckhart

"To be one's self, and unafraid whether right or wrong, is more admirable than the easy cowardice of surrender to conformity." Irving Wallace

"Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth." John F. Kennedy

"Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers." Mignon McLaughlin

"The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain." Colin Wilson

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

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." Friedrich Nietzsche

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common." John Locke "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding"

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." Herman Melville

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." G.B.Shaw "Man and Superman"

"Just because something is tradition doesn't make it right." Anthony J. D'Angelo "The College Blue Book"

"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them." Albert Einstein

"Public opinion... requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits." Walter Bagehot "Biographical Studies"

"Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul." Robert Ingersoll "Individuality"

"If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun." Katherine Hepburn

"To be a genuine individualist requires a great deal of strength and courage. It is never easy to chart new territory, to cross new frontiers, or to introduce subtle shadings to an established color." Toller Cranston

"If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it." S.I. Hayakawa

"The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered." Samuel Butler "Notebooks"

"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." Aldous Huxley

"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." Bernard Berenson "Notebook"

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." George Bernard Shaw

"We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all; but we cannot have freedom without wilderness." Edward Abbey

"Funny thing, civilization. It promises so much and what it delivers
is mass production of shoddy merchandise and shoddy people." Raymond Chandler

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of Liberty." John F. Kennedy

"The American economy is the eighth wonder of the world; the ninth is the economic ignorance of the American people." Arthur Levitt, former chair of the New York Stock Exchange

"All religion is unnecessary, and dishonest at the core." G.E. Nordell

"Life is too short to be kissing frogs, much less to be kissing
the asses of frogs." G.E. Nordell

"The resistance to a new idea increases as the square of its importance." Bertrand Russell

"My humanity [is] the only thing that makes me different from a machine... the effort of will to take control of myself and change." Alan Watts

"Learning is finding out what we already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers and teachers." Richard Bach "Illusions: Reflections of a Reluctant Messiah"

"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." H. G. Wells

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'." Yoda words from "The Empire Strikes Back"

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." Plato

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." Voltaire

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." Walt Disney

"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." Mahatma Gandhi

"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by loading honors on your head." Jean Cocteau

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer

"God, please save me from your followers!" Bumper sticker

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." Carl Gustav Jung

"Men have become the tools of their tools." Henry David Thoreau

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible." A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." Flannery O'Connor

"I criticize by creation - not by finding fault." Cicero

"I would not wish to be Prime Minister, dear." Margaret Thatcher in 1973.

"That rainbow song's no good. Take it out." MGM memo after first showing of The Wizard Of Oz.

"You'd better learn secretarial skills or else get married." Modelling agency, rejecting Marilyn Monroe in 1944.

"Radio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax." "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible." Royal Society president Lord Kelvin, 1897-9.

"You ought to go back to driving a truck." Concert manager, firing Elvis Presley in 1954.

"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'" Erich Fromm

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." Winnie the Pooh

"Forget it. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel." MGM executive, advising against investing in Gone With The Wind

"Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little." A film company's verdict on Fred Astaire's 1928 screen test.

"Very interesting, Whittle, my boy, but it will never work." Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Cambridge, shown Frank Whittle's plan for the jet engine.

"The Beatles? They're on the wane." The Duke of Edinburgh in Canada, 1965. They went on to produce a string of Number 1 hits.

"Brain work will cause women to go bald." Berlin professor, 1914.

"Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine." Radio Times editor Rex Lambert, 1936.

"He who knows himself knows God." Traditional saying of Muhammad

"I think, therefore, I am." Rene Descartes

"When asked in a coffee house if he would like another cup, Descartes replied, "I think not," whereupon he disappeared." Anon.

"Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and become absurd, and thus normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last 50 years." R.D. Laing

"People often proudly proclaim themselves as Catholic. It's hard to imagine someone happily admitting to adhering to a murderous cult that has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths and the destruction of culture around the world." Acharya S

"A well-frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice. How then can a scholar understand the Tao? He is restricted by his own learning." Benjamin Hoff "The Tao of Pooh"

"Not like Pooh, the most effortless Bear we've ever seen."
"Just How do you do it, Pooh?"
"Do What?" asked Pooh.
"Become so Effortless."
"I don't do much of anything," he said.
"But all those things of yours get done."
"They just sort of happen," he said." Benjamin Hoff "The Tao of Pooh"

"But the adult is not the highest stage of development. The end of the cycle is that of the independent, clear-minded, all-seeing Child. That is the level known as wisdom. When the Tao te Ching and other wise books say things like, "Return to the beginning; become a child again" that's what they are referring to. Why do the enlightened seem filled with light and happiness like children? Why do they sometimes even look and talk like children? Because they are. The wise are Children Who Know. Their minds have been emptied of the countless minute somethings of small learning and filled with the great wisdom of the Great Nothing, the Way of the Universe." Benjamin Hoff "The Tao of Pooh"

"One does not realize the spontaneous life by depending on the repetition of thoughts or affirmations; one realizes it by seeing that no such devices are necessary." Alan Watts

"You know, some people have the idea that we're trying to sort out bad ideologies from good ones. For example, Fascism is bad, Eco-Consciousness is good. I don't think like this. I think that all ideology is bad. Why?-- because, all these thoughts presume to understand life. It's an ego-trip. What is real is what I call the, "felt presence of immediate experience" Here, now, in this moment, what you ate for breakfast, whether you had or will have sex. These things are the things that the animal body feels. Culture is always drawing us away from ourselves, trying to make us to serve its agenda." Terence McKenna

"Consciousness is what we're in great need of to avoid running off the cliff into Armageddon. If the claim that these drugs expand consciousness, promote empathy, and allow deeper insights into our problems has any validity at all, it should be explored very carefully and very thoroughly." Terence McKenna

"Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching." Satchel Paige

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mahatma Gandhi

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Thomas Edison

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." Bertrand Russell

"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever." Genesis 3:22

"For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3.26-28

"There is one body and one Spirit just as you were called to the one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the measure of the gift of Christ... until we all reach the unity of faith and knowledge of the son of God, in the perfect Man, in maturity's measure of the fullness of Christ." Ephesians 4.4-7, 13

"Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the son of man shall give unto you; for him hath God the father sealed." John 6.27

"Freemasonry is the secret organization famous for its use of Christianity as a tool for control. The King James version of the Bible, edited by Sir Francis Bacon (a 33rd degree Freemason), is used to create ORDER in society through the implementation of a Belief system geared towards their Fascist Ideologies. The CHAOS is carefully orchestrated to insure the passing of more and more LAWS that will (eventually) completely destroy freedom. This is why there is more and more MORALITY being preached by the Politicians." James Arthur "Ethno-Mycology"

"My favorite philosopher, George Carlin, points out that if you doubt that, take along a pad every time you go out and make a note whenever you see or hear something incredibly stupid. At the end of an average day, you'll have at least 40 notes. And that's even if you don't go into a church or political meeting. We live, potentially, amid Utopian abundance, which remains invisible to most of us because of the Four Blockages named by R. Buckminster Fuller-- "ignorance, fear, greed and zoning laws." I regard ignorance as the prime evil, the source of all the fear, the greed and the zoning laws. We need a pill to make everybody smarter. I guess such a magic potion would also make them happier, healthier, funnier, sexier and less easy to govern. Maybe those last two aspects of the Brain Booster makes the Establishment nervous about it and that's why it hasn't appeared on the market yet. (I hear rumors that such a Head Expander had appeared once, back in the '60s, and quickly got suppressed, but that sounds like just another paranoid rumor. Doesn't it?)" R.A. Wilson

"No, no, no, Lisa. If adults don't like their jobs, they don't go on strike. They just go in every day and do it really half-assed." Homer Simpson

"Don't eat me. I have a wife and kids. Eat them." Homer Simpson (to aliens who abducted Simpson family)

"Explanation of the unspeakable cannot be finished." Gautama Buddha

"2000 BC - HERE EAT THIS ROOT
1000 AD - THAT ROOT IS HEATHEN; HERE, SAY THIS PRAYER
1850 AD - THAT PRAYER IS SUPERSTITION; HERE, DRINK THIS POTION
1940 AD - THAT POTION IS SNAKE OIL; HERE, SWALLOW THIS PILL
1985 AD - THAT PILL IS INEFFECTIVE; HERE TAKE THIS ANTIBIOTIC
2000 AD - THAT ANTIBIOTIC DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE. HERE EAT THIS ROOT." (Author Unknown)

"All you have to do is focus on one point. And then you will see the rest. Diversity will be unity. But do not try to understand. The brain will do all that later. Here you will have 10,000 visions. So sit back and relax. Extend yourself to an aesthetic distance. You may have the opportunity of leaving your body. Leaving your mind. You are going on a voyage. The price of admission is your mind. For if you attempt to analyse and conceptualise you will cheat yourself of the opportunity to see things in a fresh manner." Michael Hollingshead "The Man Who Turned on the World"

"Books make bondage. But the bondage is to an authority outside ourselves. Freedom lies in getting control of our own lives back into our own hands—'to stand on one's own two feet'—and everyone united by mutual affection with personal relations as the touchstone, creating an environment of creativity and harmony. But it will take a miracle to free the human mind: because the invisible reins and chains are magical in the first place; and each individual will only free himself in the measure that he knows how to locate and discover his own proper powers. Whitman, likewise in a transcendentalist sermon says, 'You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books.' And the man who is not possessed of an active soul, or of a self-conscious able to recognise that it is everywhere in chains to authority outside itself, will not know how to set about the task of magical self-liberation." Michael Hollingshead "The Man Who Turned on the World"

"Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "it just is." Aldous Huxley "The Doors of Perception"

"In the final stage of egolessness there is an "obscure knowledge" that All is in all—that All is actually each. This is as near, I take it, as a finite mind can ever come to "perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe." Aldous Huxley "The Doors of Perception"

"The tripalium is an instrument of torture. The Latin word labor means "suffering". We are unwise to forget this origin of the words "travail" and "labour". Raoul Vaneigem

"My young men shall never work. Men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams." Smohalla, founder of the dreamer religion

"If Jesus had returned, in Europe, anywhere from A.D. 300 to perhaps A.D. 1800 he would have been very likely burned at the stake. Perhaps he did and was." Jack D. Forbes

"Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." Justice William O. Douglas

"Words have limitations. Does that bother the one who "sings in his delight of a pure heart..."? Jerry Katz

"Behaviors are organized around some very durable things called beliefs. A belief tends to be much more universal and categorical than an understanding. Existing beliefs can even prevent a person from considering new evidence or a new belief." Richard Bandler "Reframing: NLP & the transformation of meaning"

"A belief isn't about reality. You have a belief in the place of knowledge about reality. Beliefs are about things that nobody can know in reality." R.B. Dilts "Changing beliefs systems with NLP"

"'The clearer I see it the more it makes me feel I probably won't be able to do it.' This is an example of how beliefs can affect visualization. Ability to visualize is a function of one's capabilities, but what gives the visualization meaning is the belief." R.B. Dilts

"To climb up the mountain is to climb down. To climb down the mountain is to go nowhere. To go nowhere is to understand there is nowhere to go. To understand there is nowhere to go is to stop climbing down. To stop climbing down is to be at the top of the mountain." Omkara

"As enlightenment is bounded by ignorance, and as ignorance is bounded by enlightenment, the boundless transcends the categories "ignorance" and "enlightenment" ..." Dan Berkow

"The very heart of Satsang is the revelation of that which is already and always eternally silent and everpresent." Hanuman

"Whatever their faith, the wise have always been able to meet each other beyond those boundaries of external forms and conventions which are natural and necessary to human life, but which nonetheless separate humanity." -- Hazrat Inayat Khan

"Seriousness is a disease." Sum Yung Gye

"If you seek for freedom, you cannot find it. Absolute freedom itself is necessary before you can acquire absolute freedom. That is our practice." Shunryu Suzuki-roshi "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"

"Realization is nothing to be gained afresh; it is already there. All that is necessary is to get rid of the thought "I have not realized." Sri Ramana Maharshi

"There is no question of going anywhere, arriving anywhere, or doing anything; you are there already." Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

"Your duty is TO BE, and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth: the method is summarized in 'be still." Sri Ramana Maharshi

"Let this truth go as deep in you as possible: that life is already here, arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don't ask about the path." Osho

"A man who is seeking for realisation is not only going round searching for his spectacles without realising that they are on his nose all the time, but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to see what he is looking for!" Wei Wu Wei

"Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what it is that you have never lost." Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

"We think that there is something hiding our reality and that it must be destroyed before the reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now." Sri Ramana Maharshi

"Yet, paradoxically, it's all we really are! We are already fully Self-realized Beings. How this is possible is actually quite simple. You see, it's only our fantastic Mind that systematically, moment-to-moment, talks us out of it!" F. Maiello

"We want money, or more sex or a bigger house or a better position, and finally we think we've gone beyond all that, because now we want enlightenment. It's just another ambition. It's no different from wanting any of the rest of it. It's just another egoic dream. If you let go of that, things are as they are." Arjuna

"Getting rid of dualism is like undressing in order to know one is born naked. Striving for eternal truth is like a fish in the ocean searching for wet water. Nothing leads to the Absolute, nothing leads from the Absolute and nothing can change that." Jan Barendrecht

"One may seek a teacher or spiritual path, but such will only provide more sensation, thought, and experience. One may seek to let go, but this activity will always depend on there being something to let go." Dan Berkow

"This Grace can never be the result of a long history of spiritual practices or sadhanas, or following strict rules of conduct or does and don'ts. That is usually what strengthens the lie of an individual wanting enlightenment." Carlos Lopez

"There is nothing that is to be learned. it is more of a process of letting go... you do not gain anything... how can you gain what has always been and will always be Reality...." Ganga Karmokar

"Notice how painful it is, to constantly be wanting, wanting. This is our suffering." Jim Gilman

"In my sadhana I realized, it's not what I do but what I stop doing that matters. There was nothing to be changed but simply my attitude, which required no conscious efforts but simple Awareness." Jinendra Swami

"Do not strive for spirituality. If you do, you will block it. It will be prevented from coming into your life. That is the most difficult thing for most people to learn, not to get in their own way. It is already yours. It has always been so. Relax, be still, and you will see what I mean. It has never left you." Raymond Karczewski

"It is conditioned thinking that says 'But we don't know that', because we are fully Aware of it. It is because of the conditioned thinking that we do not Realize that we are Aware of it. And so we *go* on *quests* try to 'Discover it for myself', all the time under the auspices of our conditioned thinking. So it is a conditioned quest and a conditioned discovery." E.J. Light

"A friend and teacher said to me: 'At some point you must decide that you are finished. Then if you ever catch yourself in the bad habit of trying to get finished just stop it and keep quiet in the moment." Keith Nightingale

"If you feel that you're not That, that's a thought. If you didn't have that thought where would you be? If you didn't have the thought that you are not realized, where would you be? What would your state be?" A.Ramana

"The modern physicist sees the world through an extreme specialisation of the rational mind: the mystic through an extreme specialisation of the intuitive mind... Neither of them is comprehended in the other, neither can either of them be reduced to the other... Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science; but man needs both". Fritjof Capra "Tao of Physics"

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." William Blake

"The spiritualization of sexuality is called love. It is a great
triumph over Christianity." Friedrich Nietzche "Twilight of the Idols"

"Those who understand history are condemned to watch other idiots repeat it." Peter Lamborn Wilson

"If you can dream it, you can make it so." Belva Davis

"The best thing in life is doing things people say you can't do." Jennifer Moore

"Life is short, and it's up to you to make it sweet." Sadie Delany

"When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try." Margaret Chase Smith

"Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal." Pamela Vaull Starr

"To realize our goals, we must first imagine them fully." Siew Hwa Beh

"Trust your gut." Barbara Walters

"Is there anything better than longing for something, when you know it is within reach?" Greta Garbo

"If there's faith that can move moutains, it's faith in your own power." Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

"The world is waiting for you. Don't be late." Anonymous

"I am where I am because I believe in all possibilites." Whoopi Goldberg

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta be willing to put up with the rain." Dolly Parton

"The doors of opportunity are marked "Push" and "Pull." Ethel Watts Mumford

"So celebrate what you've accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed." Mia Hamm

"I learned that consciousness and intelligence can be systematically expanded. That the brain can be reprogrammed." Timothy Leary, Acid Guru

"I wanted to be a philosopher. Aristotle, Plato, Voltaire and all these guys who were out there in nirvana. I discovered as I grew up that I was different'. Life was to have adventures and quests and Huckleberry Finn.' T.Leary

"Don't ask me anything. Think for yourself and question authority." T.Leary

"I often don't remember what I did two days before. It makes life interesting." T.Leary

"I wanted to be a philosopher - Aristotle, Plato, Voltaire and all these guys who were out there in nirvana. I discovered as I grew up that I was different." T.Leary

"If at first you don't succeed, pick yourself up and try again. You can dust it off and try again..." Aaliyah "Try Again"

"Living might mean taking chances, but they're worth taking." LeAnn Womack "I Hope You Dance"

"Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, not the intellect." H.Spencer

"The first rule of every law-and-order system is to trivialize-demonize the dangerous concepts of Self, Individual Aims, and Personal Knowledge. Thinking for Yourselves is heretical, treasonous, blasphemous. Only devils and satans do it. Creative thinking, committed out loud, becomes a capital crime." Timothy Leary

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein

"Will you follow the well-worn tracks of others or resign from the herd and think for yourself?" Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

"Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation..." Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

"What about light? Light is the source of life. In the morning when you see the sunrise do you appreciate light? How much would you pay for these things?" Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"But with what will you pay back your debt? True Love! That is the essence of true love. As long as you have true love, everything is okay. The entire universe will say, "Thank you." As long as true love is with you, you just say, "Thank..." and the universe will complete the sentence, saying, "You." True love is the essence of happiness and the key factor in paying back your debt to nature. Wherever you go you see water. You should think that water is my closest friend, it is connected to my life. Just as I love my body, I must love air, water and light. When you have this humble attitude then light, water and air will be proud of being what they are. They will say, "Amen." A MAN.. number one man. Everywhere you go you will be welcome. How happy is this person?" Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"Look at the ocean, it constantly moves but there is no change. The ocean water doesn't get tired. This is the formula to keep your life going." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"You can overcome everything with true love." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"No matter how much you want unity in your family or world, it must start within you. The most important thing is how can you unify yourself." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"Why everything have different sexes? What for? Because of love. No matter how pretty a woman is, she needs a man to be complete." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"Unity is formed when you take the plus and it becomes minus. By what power? True love. You can do this only by totally denying yourself, complete surrender." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"When you give yourself up totally, then you can have unity. This principle must work on all levels: the family, society, nation and world." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"When a woman is pregnant then her concentration goes to the baby, thinking, "My husband's seed is growing in my womb." This is the formula way of thinking. The woman should think, "I am like God creating new life. I am a small universe." How happy is this position. This is true. "There is a small God in my womb," this is the way the women should think." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"Do you understand? We were born through love, raised up in love, give love to our children and ultimately return to love. When we clearly understand this principle we don't need church leaders to guide our lives, or even TF to guide our life." Rev. Sun Myung Moon, creator of Unification Church

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." A.Einstein

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
A.Einstein

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." A.Einstein

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." A.Einstein "What IBelieve"

"Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love." A.Einstein

"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts." A.Einstein

"Be crazy once in a while, go against conventional wisdom and think a little bit differently, it's ok!" Claude W. Diamond [www.claudediamond.com]

"I did it my way." F.Sinatra

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change, and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength indefeatable." Helen Keller

"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your
strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength." Arnold Schwarzenegger

"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is
the man who will win." Roger Bannister, Physician and first athlete to break the 4-minute mile

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian Political Leader

"Short-term comfort for long-term trouble is not the trade you’re looking for. The easy way is not the easy way!" R.Bach "One"

"Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important, sometimes." R.Bach "One"

"Time is your name for the motion of consciousness. Every possible event that can happen in space and time happens now, at once, simultaneous. There is no past, there is no future, only now, though we have to use a time-based language so we can talk." R.Bach "One"

“Every event?” said Leslie. “Every possible thing that can happen has already happened? There is no future?” “Nor past,” said Pye, “nor time.” R.Bach "One"

“The point is not that it’s done, but that we have infinite choice,” said Pye. “Our choices lead us to our experiences, and with experience we realize that we are not the little creatures we seem to be. We’re interdimensional expressions of life, mirrors of spirit.” R.Bach "One"

"We focus on one lifetime and we think that’s all there is. But all those other aspects, the misty ones we take for dreams and wishes and might-have-beens, they’re as real as any other. We choose our focus." R.Bach "One"

“Nothing’s predetermined?” I asked. “There’s no destiny?” “Of course there’s destiny,” said Pye, “but destiny doesn’t push you where you don’t want to go. You’re the ones who choose. Destiny’s up to you.” R.Bach "One"

“How many lives in the universe, Richard?” she asked. “One.” R.Bach "One"

"Don’t spend twenty years living your life by default when you can decide right now to go in the direction of your love. What do you really want?" R.Bach "One"

“I know we’re all in school,” I said. “And we have some required courses: Survival, Nourishment and Shelter,” I said pointedly. She smiled a guilty smile, knowing I’d heard her money-saving secrets. “You know what else I know?...Arguments won’t, facts won’t, debates won’t change your mind. Your problems are easy for us to solve; every problem is easy after you’ve already found the answer. But even your own future self, materialized out of empty air in front of you, telling you word for word what you’ll find in the next thirty-five years, is not going to change your mind. The only thing that will ever change it is your own personal, individual insight!” R.Bach "One"

"And what would you do," the Master said unto the multitude, “if God spoke directly to your face and said, ‘I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.’ What would you do then?" R.Bach "Illusions"

"Every problem has a gift for you in its hands." Richard Bach

"In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice." Richard Bach

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." Richard Bach

"The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change." Richard Bach

"You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel." Richard Bach

"Learning is finding out what you already know." Richard Bach

"You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past." Richard Bach

"Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true." Richard Bach

"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem." Richard Bach

"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats." Richard Bach

"Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know." Richard Bach

"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life." Richard Bach

"Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, presured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices." Richard Bach

"You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however." Richard Bach "Illusions"

"A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons." Richard Bach "Illusions"

"The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go anywhere, instantly." Richard Bach "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"

"For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight." Richard Bach "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"

"If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?" Richard Bach "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"

"That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning." Richard Bach "The Bridge Across Forever"

"We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and LOVE!" Richard Bach "The Bridge Across Forever"

"If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim." Richard Bach "Running From Safety"

"Can miles truly separate us from friends? If you want to be with Rae, aren't you already there?" Richard Bach "There' No Such Place As Far Away"

"You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are." Richard Bach "There' No Such Place As Far Away"

"Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end." Richard Bach "There' No Such Place As Far Away"

"Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long." Richard Bach "Nothing By Chance"

"Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you." Richard Bach "Illusions"

"If you love something, set it free; if it comes backs it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was." Richard Bach

"The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work." Richard Bach

"Pope Paul VI, archpriest of Satan, a deceiver and an anti-christ, has, like Judas, gone to his own place." Dr. Bob Jones Jr. [commenting on the pope's death]

"I believe some of the leaders of the World Council of Churches and the Pope are in conscious service to the Antichrist... All the popes are demon-possessed." Dr. Bob Jones Jr.

"Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power." Salman Rushdie

"Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true." Richard Bach

"Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't." Richard Bach

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true." Richard Bach "Illusions"

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." A.Einstein

"The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat." A.Einstein

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." A.Einstein "What I Believe"

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." A.Einstein

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." A.Einstein

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." A.Einstein

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism..." A.Einstein

"It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer." A.Einstein

"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom." A.Einstein

"Religion... is the opium of the masses." Karl Marx

"Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide." Tom Robbins

"I am so sick of organized religion, I could puke." Dr. Richard Schulze

"Those who keep parroting the purely political slogan, "Islam is a peaceful religion", need to read the Koran." Judith Hayes

"I am sick to death of all religions and their bigotry and hatred." Judith Hayes

"Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers." Jesse Ventura

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." Acharya S

"There are people in this world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!" Tom Lehrer

"In short, recent experiments seem to indicate that the human mind can control delicate machinery by thought alone.

(...)

From the mid-1950s to the present, at least 75 independent labs have conducted hundreds of experiments on the powers of human consciousness. Their methods have improved, with recent experiments following strict scientific methodology under repeatable conditions. And their findings have all been similar: Operators have made small but statistically significant and recurring alterations to REGs by means of their intention alone.

(...)

The "perception is reality" school of thought grew when physicists studied the nature of electrons and noticed that they exhibited both particle-like and wave-like behavior. The duality led to the uncertainty principle: The more scientists studied one aspect of an electron, such as its position, the less precisely they could know something else, such as its momentum." Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. [http://www.llewellyn.com]

"The electron had no position or momentum before it was measured. In some sense the electron itself did not exist before it made its mark on a laboratory apparatus." Dennis Overbye "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos"

"It may just be that, beyond the odd logical analytical dimensions of the human mind, there is a whole other pattern of softer, intuitive spiritual capabilities that connect it in this wave-mechanical way with a universe that also has its own spiritual wave-mechanical dimensions. And it is in that universe of interaction, the spiritual part of human consciousness with the spiritual part of the universe, that these anomalies seem to manifest themselves." Robert Jahn

"When the Messiah comes, he will heal the sick and raise the dead... but for the fool there is no cure." old Jewish proverb

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing." Clive James

"Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other." Ann Landers

"He who looks outward sleeps, he who looks inward wakes." K.Jung

"A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one." Wallace Stevens "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

"The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been." Alan Ashley-Pitt

"The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded." George Orwell

"All limitations are self-imposed." Earnest Holmes

"Homo sapiens, the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the force that made us... Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become." Edward O. Wilson "The Unity of Knowledge"

"We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm." Winston Churchill

"Once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist - or, worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it." John Steinbeck "East of Eden"

"Judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment." Simon Bolivar

"All larger organisms, including ourselves, are living testimonies to the fact that destructive practices do not work in the long run. In the end, the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity." Fritjof Capra "The Web Of Life"

"To lovers I [bequeath] their imaginary world, with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red, red roses by the wall, the snow of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, or aught else they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love." Last will and testament of Charles Lounsbury (1897)

"Shallow, superficial people judge others by "first impressions". It is an indication of intellectual laziness (and possibly brain damage), of an unwillingness and possible inability to reason deeply, analyze, and make informed decisions." Cartaphilus

"Popular culture depicts a sleek, long legged, big-breasted nubile blonde as the ideal love partner... just the type of fantasy woman who would turn up her nose at a shy man, and why not, as she could choose from any number of ruggedly handsome socially adept men... These are the beautiful people, a world unto themselves, unapproachable, narcissistic, smug, and far removed from reality. Shy men are well advised to stay clear of this particular crowd.

Consider instead women outside the mainstream. Fellow social outcasts, these are real people, human beings who have had to grapple with life's hardships, to endure pain, to choke on embarrassment, to feel the lash of rejection... just as you have. Struggling with problems, rebounding from failure, learning by necessity to fight - all this develops the personality, forces one to grow, to become fully human, to become capable of loving and worthy of being loved." Cartaphilus

"Ugly" women glow with a serene inner beauty. Their faces are a study in rococo sculpture, an unfamiliar language of landscape and form, an intricate and convoluted roadmap of life itself. Their bodies hold promise of hidden delights. Their spirits reach out in too-long denied explosive passion. These are uncut gems, their charm not yet set aglow by a lover, their eyes glinting with hidden meanings, their depths undiscovered." Cartaphilus

"Without love, intelligence is dangerous. Without intelligence, love is not enough." Ashley Montagu

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive." Oriah Mountain Dreamer "The Invitation"

"Come to the edge," he said.
They said, "We are afraid."
"Come to the edge," he said.
They came, he pushed them...
and they flew." Guillaume Appolinaire

"We are all of us poets and storytellers, making literature of our lives..." Kelly Cherry

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones." John Cage

"Whatever was the beginning of this world, the end will be glorious and paradisiacal, beyond what our imagination can conceive." Joseph Priestley (1733 - 1804)

"You are speech. You are consciousness. You are bliss. You are Brahma. You are being-consciousness-bliss. You are the non-dual. You are plainly Brahma. You are knowledge. You are intelligence." Ganapati Upanishad

"If you make changes in small increments, they are less likely to come in large excrements." Swami Beyondananda

"Man goes to the doctor, and the doctor gives him six months
to live. Guy tells him he can’t pay the bill, so the doctor gives him
another six months." Henny Youngman

"How do you do Nothing?" asked Pooh, after he had wondered for a long time.

"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it: "What are you going to do, Christopher Robin", and you say, "Oh, nothing", and then you go and do it".

"Oh, I see," said Pooh.

"This is a nothing sort of thing that we're doing now".

"Oh, I see," said Pooh again.

"It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering." A.A. Milne "The House at Pooh Corner"

"The Buddhist does not believe in an independent or separately existing external world, into whose dynamic forces he could insert himself. The external world and his inner world are for him only two sides of the same fabric, in which the threads of all forces and of all events, of all forms of consciousness and of their objects, are woven into an inseparable net of endless, mutually conditioned relations." Lama Anagarika Govinda, Tantra Buddhist

"When you truly realize that this life and living is an absurdity, then you join in the dance. You take part in this absurdity. The
body-mind organism continues to live in the world, but without any sense of personal doership." Ramesh S. Balsekar

"A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting." Carlos Castaneda "A Separate Reality"

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Albert Einstein

"The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next." Matthew Arnold "God and the Bible" (1875)

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." Edith Wharton

"Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad." Norm Papernick

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet." James Openheim

"There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction." Salvador Dali

"The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness." Eric Hoffer "The Passionate State of Mind" (1954)

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." Albert Camus

"If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time." Josh Billings

"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true." John Lilly

"Men willingly believe what they wish." Julius Caesar

"Man is what he believes." Anton Chekhov

"Doubt is the result of conflicting wishes. Be sure of what you want, and doubt becomes impossible." Course in miracles

"Nothing is difficult that is wholly desired." Course in miracles

"Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain that what you choose before has brought you." Course in miracles

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein

"I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics." Johnny Mercer, on a British musical

"We must develop as quickly as possible technologies that make possible a direct connection between brain and computer, so that artificial brains contribute to human intelligence rather than opposing it." Stephen Hawking

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

"Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?" M.C. Escher

"There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values." David G. Myers "Social Psychology"

"Objectivity has about as much substance as the emperor's new clothes." Connie Miller

"How do we know that the sky is not green and we are all colour-blind?" Author Unknown

"There are no facts, only interpretations." Friedrich Nietzsche

"Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." Lily Tomlin

What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist." Pablo Picasso

"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check." M.C. Escher

"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality." Jules de Gaultier

"Everything you can imagine is real." Pablo Picasso

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." Mahatma Gandhi

"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it." Garrison Keillor

"Control your emotion or it will control you." Samurai maxim

“You are what your deep driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.” Upanishads

"There are only two ways to live your life, only two ways to be.
One is the right way, the other the wrong way.
The right is to give, to share, to love.
The wrong way is to snatch, to exploit, to accumulate.
Love and money are the symbols of these two ways.
Money is neurosis, love is ecstasy.
Love is the right way and money is the wrong way." Osho "No Water, No Moon"

"Learn this lesson from the little child who seems to be happy without reason. Has he done anything for his happiness?

(...)

Children are often happy without reason - it is a part of their charm. Often you can catch a child laughing for the fun of laughing, smiling for the sake of smiling, playing happily with happiness. It both amuses and saddens me to think that, when a child laughs for no reason at all we think it wonderful, but when an adult laughs for no reason at all we immediately fear for his or her health! The point is, who ever said happiness needs a reason?" [www.happiness.co.uk]

"And remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Confucius

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else." Judy Garland

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves." Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth." Benjamin Disraeli

"If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise." Johann von Goethe

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for something you are not." Andre Gide

"Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me." Carol Burnett

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." Christina Baldwin

"It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not." James Gordon

"We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves." Lynn Hall "Where Have All the Tigers Gone?"

"It's the most unhappy people who most fear change." Mignon McLaughlin

"In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play." Friedrich Nietzsche

"When you're green, your growing. When you're ripe, you rot." Ray Kroc

"The great man is he who does not lose his child's-heart." Mencius "Book IV"

"When I grow up I want to be a little boy." Joseph Heller "Something Happened"

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Pablo Picasso

"One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"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

"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult." Sigmund Freud

"Children have neither past nor future; they enjoy the present, which very few of us do." Jean de la Bruyere

"Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes." Edgard Varese

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line." Oscar Levant

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius." Oscar Wilde "The Critic as Artist"

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." Carl Jung

"Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom." Thomas Jefferson

"It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen." Homer Simpson

"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular." Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster "To the Vanishing Point"

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." Albert Einstein

"Most people are programmed to hate problems. Assuming that problems are bad, they run from them, hide from them, divorce them or drink themselves into forgetting them. But a creative person loves problems because he knows every problem contains an opportunity." Robert G. Allen

"I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it." Jack Handey

"The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war." Vera Brittain

"I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages." William H. Mauldin

"Life's a journey, not a destination." Aerosmith