August 2018 Quotations (54)

"A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]

“Competing truths . . . are no longer the primary threat to American culture. Competing lies are.”
~~ Megan Garber, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine

"That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it."
~~ Mike Nichols [1931-2014]

“Better to be strong than pretty and useless.”
~~ author Lilith Saintcrow

"Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

Collingridge Dilemma: “When change is easy, the need for it cannot be foreseen; when the need for change is apparent, change has become expensive, difficult, and time consuming.”
~~ David Collingbridge [1945-2005] of U.K. - in 1980

"We are living at a time when creeds and ideologies vary and clash. But the gospel of human sympathy is universal and eternal."
~~ Samuel Hopkins Adams [1871-1958]

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
~~ Marcus Tullius Cicero [106-43 B.C.E.]

“Since childhood is a time when kids prepare to be grownups, I think it makes a lot of sense to completely traumatize your children. Gets ‘em ready for the real world.”
~~ comedian George Carlin [1937-2008]

“The term 'working mother' is redundant.”
~~ columnist Erma Bombeck [1927-96]

"The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer."
~~ sci-fi author Harlan Ellison [1934-2018]

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.”
~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832]

“If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.”
~~ E.W. Howe [1853-1937]

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.”
~~ musical legend George Harrison 1943-2001]

“Forgiveness means that you do not hold others responsible for your experiences.”
~~ Gary Zukav

“Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”
~~ Coco Chanel [1883-1971]

“I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits”
~~ Anaïs Nin [1903-77]

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."
~~ theologian Louis B. Smedes [1921-2001]

"May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live."
~~ Robert A. Heinlein [1907-88]

"Everyone wants to be on a championship team but no one wants to come to practice."
~~ Dallas Cowboys football coach Tom Landry [1924-2000]

"It is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else."
~~ E.F. Benson [1867-1940]

"Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm. The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well."
~~ Sir William Osler [1849-1919]

“May we all remember [that] our lives are not measured by the number of years and days [that] we exist, but by what we
accomplish while we do live, and the good [that] we may render to our fellow man.”
~~ Henry Wells [1805-78], in a speech at Yale

"As a single footstep will not make a path on earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]

"The secret to a long life is knowing when to pull the rip cord."
~~ 'Non Sequitur' newspaper cartoon by Wiley

"There's nothing worse than a hillbilly with a hit record."
~~ one of the backup musicians for Johnny Paycheck [1938-2003]

"Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face."
~~ author John Updike [1932-2009]

"People really don't have to give you anything, so appreciate what people give you."
~~ musical legend Aretha Franklin [1942-2018]

"Be excellent to each other."
~~ 'Bill and Ted', comic movie characters

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
~~ Brasilian author Paulo Coelho

“We're all fools, all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012], in "The Illustrated Man" [1951]

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin

"Substantive fiscal policy work is essential, but all the good policy thinking in the world won’t matter unless the politics works. Without good politics, the policies won’t be implemented."
~~ Robert E. Rubin, a co-chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, was U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1995 to 1999.

“I wish all of you great adventures, good company, and lives as lucky as mine."
~~ Sen. John McCain [1936-2018]

“Gods and politics are the tools with which the godless and unprincipled manipulate the gullible.”
~~ author Janet E. Morris

“There are two rules for success . . . 1: Never reveal everything [that] you know.”
~~ Ylond Miles-Davis

“Death is lighter than a feather. Duty, heavier than a mountain.”
~~ Robert Jordan [1948-2007], in "The Eye of the World" [1990 novel]

“If the ending is not happy, the story is not finished.”
~~ fantasy author J.P. Leck, in "The Strangely Undying" [2014 novel]

“They did not know it was impossible, so they did it.”
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

”I'm back . . . and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'.”
~~ former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher [1925-2013]

"Global warming is no longer a philosophical threat, no longer a furure threat, no longer a threat at all. It's our reality."
~~ eco-activist Bill McKibben

"To pursue science is not to disparage things of the spirit."
~~ engineer Vannevar Bush [1890-1974] Page

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]

“Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.”
~~ rocket scientist Wernher von Braun [1912-77]

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62] — in "Walden and Other Writings", 1854

"The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues."
~~ René Descartes [1596-1650]

"We have spent the last 35-plus years deregulating so many parts of our economy that one would swear Republicans take Jesus’ statement that 'The poor will always be with you' as a commandment."
~~ Brian Wade Bough

“Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.”
~~ Sen. John McCain [1936-2018]

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
~~ Nobel-laureate André Gide [1869-1951]

“When the situation is hopeless, there’s nothing to worry about.”
~~ eco-activist Edward Abbey [1927-89]

"We should be draining the swamp and protecting public lands, not the other way around."
~~ Martin Heinrich — U.S. Senator for New Mexico

"There's no Republican Party anymore, there's only Trump and Fox News."
~~ Berkeley economist Robert B. Reich

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}