~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that you think are important to you."
~~ Carl Jung [1875-1961]
"Every time I'm in the woods I feel like I'm in church."
~~ American folk singer Pete Seeger [1919-2014]
funny t-shirt: available for limited time only
"Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics."
~~ Charles Péguy [1873-1914] of France
"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure."
~~ Herman Melville [1819-91] Page
"I get over a hundred letters a day from all over the world, from children and parents, and it's a wonder
[that] I ever have time to write books, let alone speak!"
~~ British children's author Enid Blyton [1897-1968]
"Books are really, really hard to write. They represent a kind of summit of grappling with what one really has to say."
~~ visionary Jaron Lanier
"If you want to assert a truth, first make sure [that] it's not just an opinion that you desparately want to be true."
~~ astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson
"Nobody who says 'I told you so' has ever been, or ever will be, a hero."
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin [1929-2018]
"Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes
with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor."
~~ mathematician & philosopher Norbert Wiener [1894-1964]
"Human nature is above all things lazy."
~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811-96]
"A Universal Good should reflect the reality of the individual benefits that are collected under its name, not the other way around."
~~ Paul K. Feyerabend [1924-94]
"I think being funny is not anyone's first choice."
~~ cinema master Woody Allen
"Writing is like traveling. It's wonderful to go somewhere, but you get tired of staying."
~~ writer & activist (James Mercer) Langston Hughes [1901-67]
"Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"There is no more thrilling experience for a man than to be able to state that he has learned something that no other person in the world has known before him." (as quoted by Kenneth Franklin)
~~ engineer Vannevar Bush [1890-1974]
"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of."
~~ Chinese philosopher Confucius / Kong Qiu [551-479 BCE]
"Funny/not funny: Fascist MAGAts getting so triggered by objective facts. Any objective fact."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"I’ve increasingly come to feel that one’s curiosity is a kind of sacred thing, not to be trifled with. It’s almost like a magic power that helps you find your way to what’s most worth thinking about."
~~ theoretical physicist Latham Boyle
"The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”
~~ David Foster Wallace [1962-2008] - from his 2005 Kenyon College in Ohio commencement speech “This Is Water"
"Dust doesn't get any thicker after eight years."
~~ Quentin Crisp [1908-99]
"Jimmy Carter honors the Nobel Peace Prize as surely as it honors him."
~~ journalist Hendrik Hertzberg
"Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed."
~~ Miranda July, in "No One Belongs Here More Than You"
"Life is not an annuity, but a mandate, and the mandate is that there is no end to what one human being owes to another, can mean to another."
~~ Abraham Joshua Heschel [1907-72]
"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."
~~ model Kate Moss
"[Humans are] smart enough to invent A.I., dumb enough to need it, and so stupid we can't figure out if we did the right thing."
~~ Jerry Seinfeld, on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2024
"Cats are like baptists - you know [that] they raise hell, you just can't catch'em at it."
~~ entertainr Jim Stafford
"The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government."
~~ inscription above the entrance to the New York State Supreme Court building
"When all is said and done, more is said than done."
~~ Lou Holtz
found text for t-shirt: CONTROL / UNIT {even better: on the back of a dark blue poplin jacket - for Hallowe'en only, of course}
"The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally."
~~ reporter Salena Zito
"It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and a usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin."
~~ inaugural address by President James Monroe [1758-1831] on 4 March 1817
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…"
~~ inaugural address by President Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
~~ inaugural address by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
~~ inaugural address by President John F. Kennedy [1917-63]
"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."
~~ inaugural address by President Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
~~ inaugural address by President Bill Clinton
"It is only because of their stupidity that they can be so sure of themselves."
~~ Franz Kafka [1883-1924]
"The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that 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], in "The Fire Next Time" [1963]
"Scumbag dictator Adolph Trump is now effectively in charge of the U.S. government - it's all downhill from here."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"In the final analysis, all issues are economic issues."
~~ Chris Kruger
"I'm writing a book. I have the page numbers done, now I just have to fill in the rest."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
"I have an inner child but I don't think it's mine."
~~ senior comedian Andy Huggins [b. ]
"Our public schools are not Sunday schools."
~~ The American Civil Liberties Union [est. 1920]
"We live in newsy times. Things seem to get crazier from day to day, and the headlines, like magnets, can attract and repel with equal force."
~~ Joshua Rothman, in The New Yorker Magazine
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
~~ early-XXth Century Peruvian strongman Óscar R. Benavides [1876-1945]
"Trump is American gangsterism crystallized, honest about itself, unashamed, and bold."
~~ Cornel West
"Societal privilege is not a right, except under aristocracy - which was ended in the U.S.A. in 1776. However, our democratic republic was declared to be a fascist state in January 2010 and became a full fascist dictatorship in January 2025."
~~ philosopher G.E. Nordell
"Photography is truth. But cinema is truth 24 times per second."
~~ French director Jean-Luc Godard [1930-2022]
"Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power."
~~ American philosopher & psychologist William James [1842-1910]
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
