“The challenges facing our planet are not mainly technological or even financial, because as a world we are rich enough to increase our investments in skills, infrastructure, and technological know-how to meet our needs and to protect the planet. Our challenge is mostly a moral one, to redirect our efforts and vision to the common good.”
~~
Bernie Sanders speech on income inequality and the environment, at Vatican City on 15 April 2016
“What greater thing is there for human souls than to feel that they are joined for life – to be with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”
~~ George Eliot [1819-80]
"Life is a comedy, written by a sadistic comedy writer."
~~
Woody Allen, in his new movie "Café Society", 2016
"All our civilization is based on invention; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves."
~~ Reginald Fessenden [1866-1932]
"[Ted Cruz is] Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
~~ John Boehner, at Stanford University in April 2016
"There is a saying that life is uncertain, so you should eat dessert first. For the same reason, you should also take advantage of early voting."
~~
G.E. Nordell
"Drink up; you're half the man my mother was."
~~ slogan for
Rock & Reilly's Irish Pub
"I wanted to live in a world where a woman could choose her own role in life."
~~
Mabel Dodge Luhan [1879-1962]
"I abhor averages. I like the individual case. A man may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but that is not a good way to live."
~~ Justice Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
"I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of."
~~
screenwriter Dalton Trumbo [1905-76]
"A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject."
~~
Sir Winston Churchill [1874-1965]
"If everybody minded their own business the world would go around a great deal faster than it does."
~~
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) [1832-98] in "Alice In Wonderland"
"Without the dreamers who write science fiction and other imaginary material we'd still be sitting in caves . . . if we weren't already extinct."
~~ William C. Samples
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
~~
Albert Einstein [1879-1955]
"Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie and nothing they say is to be believed. That's a pretty good rule."
~~
Daniel Ellsberg
“Actually, this seems to be the basic need of the human heart in nearly every great crisis – a good hot cup of coffee.”
~~ Alexander King [1899-1965]
"No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nurture and education."
~~
Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death."
~~
Elbert Hubbard [1856-1915]
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.”
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941], in "A Room of One’s Own", 1929
"Indeed it is possible to stand with one foot on the inevitable 'banana peel' of life with both eyes peering into the Great Beyond, and still be happy, comfortable, and serene – if we will even so much as smile."
~~
Douglas Fairbanks [1883-1939]
"Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world."
~~ Malala Yousafzai
"We are the first generation to feel the effects of climate change, and the last generation that can do something about it."
~~
President Barack Obama
"People assume that Time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff."
~~
TV character "Doctor Who"
"It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct."
~~ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939]
"Creativity is just connecting things."
~~
Steve Jobs [1955-2011], co-founder of
Apple, Inc. [est. 1975]
"The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day. After all, a movement is only people moving."
~~ Gloria Steinem
"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers."
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87]
"When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something."
~~ Dmitri Shostakovich [1906-75]
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
~~ biologist Thomas Huxley [1825-95]
"Every man or woman who is sane, every happy person, is in infinite debt to a woman."
~~ psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott [1896-1971]
"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."
~~ British proverb, circa 1720
"Virtue would not go far without vanity to escort her."
~~ François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt [1747-1827]
"Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust. Hatred alone is immortal."
~~ William Hazlitt [1778-1830]
"Without data you are another person with an opinion."
~~
management expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming [1900-93]
"Life's ultimate statistic is the same for all people. One out of one dies."
~~
George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. [It's] like a muscle, you can build it up."
~~
Facebook, Inc. exec Sheryl Sandberg
"Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people."
~~ broadcast pioneer David Sarnoff [1891-1971]
"Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered."
~~ Giorgio Armani
"If it wasn't for procrastination, I'd never get around to not getting around to anything."
~~
Ziggy cartoon panel drawn by Tom Wilson & Tom II
"The business of corporate America is no longer business – it is finance."
~~ Rana Foroohar,
Financial Times, 2016
"Love isn't something that you find. Love is something that finds you."
~~ Loretta Young [1913-2000]
"George Washington is my favorite president because he's the only one who didn't blame all his problems on the previous administration."
~~
syndicated comedian Argus Hamilton
"If I read a book and it makes my body so cold [that] no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry."
~~ poet Emily Dickinson [1830-86]
"We have to change truth a little to remember it."
~~
George Santayana [1863-1952]
"It is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there."
~~ Don DeLillo
"The purpose of a business is to create a customer."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]
"Too much freedom seems to change into nothing but slavery."
~~
Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 BCE]
"Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil, and still more the man who is indifferent to everything."
~~ Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater [1741-1801]
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust [that] I never shall."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809]
"People fascinate me – they're amazing. Life fascinates me. And I'm no more fascinated by my own life than by anyone else's."
~~ rock legend Prince [1958-2016]
"The noblest art is that of making others happy."
~~ P.T. Barnum [1810-91]
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
~~
Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]
"Son, they can't do what you do. Just go out there and do what you do."
~~ Charlie Daniels
"It is impossible to live at peace with those [that] we regard as damned."
~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]
"Behind every fortune is a crime."
~~ French author Honoré de Balzac [1799-1850]
"The sins of
Citizens United are many, but the first is that the [cited basic] facts are bonkers."
~~ Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island
"Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress."
~~
Sen. Bernie Sanders, during the first Democratic Party debate, October 2015
"History repeats itself; the first time as tragedy, the second as show business."
~~ Stuart Klawans, film critic at
The Nation Magazine
"Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun."
~~ book critic George Scialabba
"We don't have a world government. Fortunately, we don't have that many world problems – most problems can be solved locally – but this one [climate change] is a world problem."
~~ Bill Gates
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}