Quotes
Member
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Unknown
Posts: 122
It is not one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between them" - Jeanette Winterson
"Man was given speech to disguise his thoughts" - Tallyrand
"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive." - Henry Miller
"You can't build the future on bad memories" - Napoleon
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"Man was given speech to disguise his thoughts" - Tallyrand
"I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive." - Henry Miller
"You can't build the future on bad memories" - Napoleon
(Hi Zencat
Remember me?)
Optimist
Join Date: Apr 2009
Posts: 486
Here are two hopeful paragraphs from an essay about uncertainty inspiring hope by Howard Zinn in a collection of essays by social activist Paul Rogat Loeb titled, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: a citizen’s guide to hope in a time of fear.
Is an optimist necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that only confidence can prevent people from giving up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
…
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spiraling top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopias future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Is an optimist necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that only confidence can prevent people from giving up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
…
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spiraling top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopias future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Member
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Unknown
Posts: 122
Thank you for that Daisy, that was beautiful. I'm a pathological cynic always striving for bodhisattva-hood so this is a battle I fight all the time, the sorry state of the world vs the beauty I CAN know and feel within me. Things can get better, we are the change we seek.
Daisy
Daisy
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,899
Because they know not the forces of nature, and in order that they may have comrades in their ignorance, they suffer not that others should search out anything, and would have us believe like rustics and ask no reason... But we ask in all things a reason must be sought.
-William of Conches
Humanism is optimistic regarding human nature and confident in human reason and science as the best means of reaching the goal of human fulfillment in this world. Humanists affirm that humans are a product of the same evolutionary process that produced all other living organisms and that all ideas, knowledge, values, and social systems are based upon human experience. Humanists conclude that creative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy. - published in Free Mind, American Humanist Association. Author unknown.
This is a call to the living,
To those who refuse to make peace with evil,
With the suffering and the waste of the world.
This is a call to the human, not the perfect,
To those who know their own prejudices,
Who have no intention of becoming prisoners of their own limitations.
This is a call to those who remember the dreams of their youth,
Who know what it means to share food and shelter,
The care of children and those who are troubled,
To reach beyond barriers of the past
Bringing people to communion.
This is a call to the never ending spirit
Of the common man, his essential decency and integrity,
His unending capacity to suffer and endure,
To face death and destruction and to rise again
And build from the ruins of life.
This is the greatest call of all
The call to a faith in people.
-Algernon Black
-William of Conches
Humanism is optimistic regarding human nature and confident in human reason and science as the best means of reaching the goal of human fulfillment in this world. Humanists affirm that humans are a product of the same evolutionary process that produced all other living organisms and that all ideas, knowledge, values, and social systems are based upon human experience. Humanists conclude that creative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy. - published in Free Mind, American Humanist Association. Author unknown.
This is a call to the living,
To those who refuse to make peace with evil,
With the suffering and the waste of the world.
This is a call to the human, not the perfect,
To those who know their own prejudices,
Who have no intention of becoming prisoners of their own limitations.
This is a call to those who remember the dreams of their youth,
Who know what it means to share food and shelter,
The care of children and those who are troubled,
To reach beyond barriers of the past
Bringing people to communion.
This is a call to the never ending spirit
Of the common man, his essential decency and integrity,
His unending capacity to suffer and endure,
To face death and destruction and to rise again
And build from the ruins of life.
This is the greatest call of all
The call to a faith in people.
-Algernon Black
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,899
Eternity
"Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity."
-Michael Korda
"After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see."
-Joy Page
"Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it."
-Michael Ende
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein "
-Michael Korda
"After an eternity of seeking the sudden threshold of seeing and finding leaves one filled with a strange paradox of ecstasy and grief. I was born to see."
-Joy Page
"Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it."
-Michael Ende
"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein "
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,899
Failure 
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
~Thomas Edison
"Failure doesn't mean you are a failure... it just means you haven't succeeded yet."
~Robert Schuller
"I had a mother who taught me there is no such thing as failure. It is just a temporary postponement of success."
~Buddy Ebsen
"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."
~Dan Quayle
Member
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: UK
Posts: 4,682
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth - W.Shakespeare
I still love this one, as it can be taken a couple of ways. It could be viewed as negative, but i now see it as the futility of self...
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth - W.Shakespeare
I still love this one, as it can be taken a couple of ways. It could be viewed as negative, but i now see it as the futility of self...
Member
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 271
From Thomas Paine, An Age of Reason: I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
Note he said "creatures" and not "people," and that's what he meant!
Note he said "creatures" and not "people," and that's what he meant!
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,899
Originally Posted by yeahgr8 
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth - W.Shakespeare
I still love this one, as it can be taken a couple of ways. It could be viewed as negative, but i now see it as the futility of self...
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth - W.Shakespeare
I still love this one, as it can be taken a couple of ways. It could be viewed as negative, but i now see it as the futility of self...
Bawhahahaha...No I get it, have gotten it and done getit when the gettings is good.
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,899
Nihilism
Quotes by E. M. Cioran.
"There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both."
"Everything is nothing, including the consciousness of nothing."
"Why rebel any longer against the symmetry of this world when Chaos itself can only be a system of disorders? Our fate being to rot with the continents and the starts, we drag on, like resigned sick men, and to the end of time, the curiosity of a denouement that is foreseen, frightful, and vain."
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,899
"Still, instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government". - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes." - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
"Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government". - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes." - Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Member
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Central, La.
Posts: 422
Furthermore, we have not even to risk the journey alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
-Joseph Campbell,
-Joseph Campbell,
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude
Thread Starter
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Oxnard (The Nard), CA, USA.
Posts: 13,899
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.
-Voltaire
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