Mobius's blog: "...what some people have to say about it...what about YOU!!???"

Abraham Lincoln: I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. Albert Einstein: My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. Albert Einstein: I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. Albert Schweitzer: Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it -- a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals. Albert Schweitzer: The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education. Alex Carey: ... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. Australian social scientist, quoted by Noam Chomsky in World Orders Old and New Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice. Anatole France: The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. Andre Trocme: All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence...the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history. Aristotle: In justice is all virtues found in sum. Aristotle: Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. Barbara Strickland: What I am proud of, what seems so simply clear, is that feminism is a way to fight for justice, always in short supply. Benjamin Jowett: We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique. Bishop Desmond Tutu: We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. Blaise Pascal: Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical. Carter Heyward: Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies. This entry continued ... Charles Dickens: Charity begins at home and justice begins next door. Clarence Darrow: You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free. David Kaczynski: We've got to take back the ideal of justice, we've got to take back this principle of human dignity. We've got to take it back from vengeance, from hatred, we've got to say: look, we're all in this together. We are human beings.

A. A. Milne: One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. Abraham Maslow: The key question isn't "What fosters creativity?" But it is why in God's name isn't everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything. Alan Alda: The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself. Albert Einstein: You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. Albert Einstein: I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts. Albert Einstein: Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. Albert Einstein: The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. Arthur Koestler: Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. Beatrix Potter: Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality. Buckminster Fuller: When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. Buckminster Fuller: There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. Carl Sagan: It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science. Carl Sagan: If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. Edward de Bono: It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. Edwin Land: Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity. Erich Fromm: Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm: Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. Georg C. Lichtenberg: Eveyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together. Henry David Thoreau: The world is but a canvas to the imagination. Lillian Hellman: Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create. Linus Pauling: The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. Linus Pauling: The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.

Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s: If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. Often attributed to Lila Watson, who has said she was "not comfortable being credited for something that had been born of a collective process" - the attribution here is the one she accepts. Abraham Lincoln (attributed): The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among human creatures. Albert 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. Aldous Huxley: Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure. Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me. Barbara Ehrenreich: That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose. Benjamin Franklin: They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security C. Wright Mills: Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose. Carl Shurz: If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other. Charlie Daniels: A brief candle; both ends burning An endless mile; a bus wheel turning A friend to share the lonesome times A handshake and a sip of wine So say it loud and let it ring We are all a part of everything The future, present and the past Fly on proud bird You're free at last. written en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Clarence Darrow: You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free. Dorothy Thompson: When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered. Dorothy Thompson: Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare. Dorothy Thompson: It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. Dwight D. Eisenhower: We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom. Edward R. Murrow: We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. Eleanor Holmes Norton: The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with. Epictetus: We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free. Discourses

A. J. Muste: The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good. Agnes Repplier: Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements. Aldous Huxley: A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy. Alex Carey: ... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. Australian social scientist, quoted by Noam Chomsky in World Orders Old and New Alexis de Tocqueville: The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through. Aristotle: If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. Barbara Ehrenreich: That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose. Barry Goldwater: Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Bill Vaughan: A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. C. S. Lewis: Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. Demosthenes: There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust. Dorothy Thompson: It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. Dorothy Thompson: The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld. Dorothy Thompson: Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare. E. B. White: Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have. E. B. White: Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. Edward Dowling: The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. [1941] Eleanor Holmes Norton: The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with. Eugene McCarthy: As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences. Eugene V. Debs: When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.

Albert Einstein: Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. Ann Landers: All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest--never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principle of equal partnership. Ann Landers Says Truth Is Stranger..., 1968 Bertrand Russell: I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race. Education and the Social Order Christopher Morley: There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow. Colette: My dear sir, they don't debate. Each of them merely issues an ultimatum, and in what a tone! It all goes to show what extraordinary people they are, each more unequivocal than the other. - "The Old Lady and the Bear" Danny DeVito: There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull: How do you hang on to someone who won't stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won't go? The War of the Roses Dante Aleghieri: The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality. David Friedman: The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. David Hume: Truth springs from argument amongst friends. Dorothy Thompson: Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence. Elizabeth Drew: The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict. Evelyn Beatrice Hall: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. (paraphrasing Voltaire) Hamilton Mabie: Don't be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against; not with; the wind. Heinz Pagels: Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help to more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts. The Dreams of Reason, 1988 Herbert Butterfield: But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness -- each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked -- each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity. Indira Gandhi: You can't shake hands with a clenched fist. John Dewey: Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving. Jonathan Kozol: Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. On Being a Teacher, 1981 M. Scott Peck: The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. Marian Wright Edelman: [W]e are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another. Marie Ebner von Eschenbach: Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right. Martin Luther King, Jr.: True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice. Mary Parker Follett: There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish.

Albert Einstein: The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. Alex Noble: If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day. Alexander Pope: Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. Alfred Adler: Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement. Alfred North Whitehead: We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. Anais Nin: Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. Anatole France: To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. André Gide: The most decisive actions of our life ... are most often unconsidered actions. Ann Radcliffe: One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. Annie Dillard: How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. Aristotle: Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. Arnold Toynbee: Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. Barack Obama: If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress. Benjamin Disraeli: Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. Benjamin Franklin: There are no gains without pains. Benjamin Jowett: We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique. Bishop Desmond Tutu: We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose. Caroline Myss: You cannot change anything in your life with intention alone, which can become a watered-down, occasional hope that you'll get to tomorrow. Intention without action is useless. Cesar Chavez: The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating. Charlotte Whitton: Big words seldom accompany good deeds. Colleen C. Barrett: When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers. Cyrus Curtis: There are two kinds of people who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else. Danilo Dolci: It's important to know that words don't move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains. Dhammapada: Just as a flower, which seems beautiful has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of a man who speaks them but does them not. Edmund Burke: Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke (attributed): The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Janis Joplin: Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. Mary Parker Follett: There are three ways of dealing with difference: domination, compromise, and integration. By domination only one side gets what it wants; by compromise neither side gets what it wants; by integration we find a way by which both sides may get what they wish. Robert Coles: Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln? Zelda Fitzgerald: Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes. Save Me the Waltz, 1932

Abraham Joshua Heschel: A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. [New York Journal-American, April 5, 1963] Albert Einstein: A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling 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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Albert Schweitzer: What does Reverence for Life say abut the relations between [humanity] and the animal world? Whenever I injury any kind of life I must be quite certain that it is necessary. I must never go beyond the unavoidable, not even in apparently insignificant things. The farmer who has mowed down a thousand flowers in his meadow in order to feed his cows must be careful on his way home not to strike the head off a single flower by the side of the road in idle amusement, for he thereby infringes on the law of life without being under the pressure of necessity. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to. Arnold Schopenhauer: Compassion is the basis of morality. Arthur Rubinstein: Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back. Barack Obama: You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit -- the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us -- the child who's hungry, the steelworker who's been laid-off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town. When you think like this -- when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers -- it becomes harder not to act; harder not to help. Benjamin Disraeli: Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth. Bertrand Russell: Three passions have governed my life: The longings for love, the search for knowledge, And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind]. Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness. In the union of love I have seen In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of [people]. I have wished to know why the stars shine. Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens, But always pity brought me back to earth; Cries of pain reverberated in my heart Of children in famine, of victims tortured And of old people left helpless. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, And I too suffer. This has been my life; I found it worth living. adapted Daniel Goleman: The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I’d say that compassion begins with attention. Diane Berke: The major block to compassion is the judgment in our minds. Judgment is the mind's primary tool of separation. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: A good heart is better than all the heads in the world. Eugene V. Debs: Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Felix Adler: To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development. George Washington Carver: How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.

Abigail Van Buren: The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back. Abraham Lincoln: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. Albert Einstein: Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. Anne Frank: Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. Benjamin Franklin: There never was a good knife made of bad steel. Cicero: It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity. Clarence Darrow: With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men. Eleanor Roosevelt: People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built. Faith Baldwin: Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down within incredible swiftness. Goethe: Character develops itself in the stream of life. H. Jackson Brown: Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece -- by thought, choice, courage, and determination. Helen Keller: Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Henry David Thoreau: Dreams are the touchstones of our character. Henry David Thoreau: How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character? James A. Froude: You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. Lillian Hellman: I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group. [Letter to the US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities, 1952] Margaret Chase Smith: Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. Mark Twain: To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Martin Luther King, Jr.: I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality. Mohandas K. Gandhi: The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.

Albert Camus: Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. Albert Einstein: The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible. Albert Einstein: The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Living Philosophies, 1931 Albert Einstein: A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling 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 to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Anais Nin: The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. Anne Lamott: Joy is the best makeup. Buckminster Fuller: When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. Candace Bergen: People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart. Chinese proverb: When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. D. H. Lawrence: Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition. Frederick Turner: To those who followed Columbus and Cortez, the New World truly seemed incredible because of the natural endowments. The land often announced itself with a heavy scent miles out into the ocean. Giovanni di Verrazano in 1524 smelled the cedars of the East Coast a hundred leagues out. The men of Henry Hudson's Half Moon were temporarily disarmed by the fragrance of the New Jersey shore, while ships running farther up the coast occasionally swam through large beds of floating flowers. Wherever they came inland they found a rich riot of color and sound, of game and luxuriant vegetation. Had they been other than they were, they might have written a new mythology here. As it was, they took inventory. Georgia O'Keeffe: I said to myself -- I'll paint what I see -- what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it -- I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. Helen Keller: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart. Henry Miller: The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Jean Kerr: I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas? John Keats: A thing of beauty is a joy forever. John Ruskin: Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for example. Kahlil Gibran: Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. Kalidasa: Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!