~~ eco-activist Greta Thunberg, World Economic Forum 1/2020
"Don't judge each day by the harvest [that] you reap, but by the seeds that you plant."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]
"In this new year, I choose optimism and insist on seeing brighter days ahead."
~~ Anthony Romero, Executive Director, A.C.L.U. (in early 2021)
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]
"Make no mistake: Every flight is a test flight when it comes to space travel."
~~ N.A.S.A. Administrator Jim Bridenstine
"Remember, ladies & Gentlemen: We wouldn't fool you for the world!"
~~ stage magician Howard Thurston [1869-1936]
"Science, unlike certain political philosophies and personality cults, corrects its mistakes."
~~ Tom Siegfried at Science News
"History has shown that democracies are healthy when the principles that bind people together are stronger than those that divide them."
~~ mega-investor Ray Dalio
"The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."
~~ H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]
"The world's most fearless warrior couldn't make it today, so I came instead."
~~ animated Doogal the Dog
"It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force." — Federalist Paper #1
t-shirt: Well dammit, I AM essential!
"Your most crucial health decision is the choice of your parents."
~~ Garrison Keillor (quoting a friend)
"People sage their homes after I leave."
~~ TV personality Cazzie David
"Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own. It's the freedom to buy any book [that] you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it."
~~ independent filmmaker John Waters
"Make people laugh when you tell them the truth, or they will kill you."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."
~~ Bill Gates
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."
~~ Howard Zinn [1922-2010]
"I may be wrong, and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth."
~~ philosopher Karl Popper [1902-94]
"The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States."
~~ financier George Soros
"It is a privilege and an honor to be me."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"Thanks for being true to yourself. Someone has to do it."
~~ Tom Voccola of Idaho
"If I only had a little humility I would be perfect."
~~ entrepreneur Ted Turner
"You are not a drop in the ocean but the entire ocean in a drop."
~~ Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]
"In science fiction, we dream."
~~ poet & author Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]
"Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do."
~~ banker John Pierpont 'J.P.' Morgan [1837-1913]
"The creative adult is the child who has survived."
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin [1929-2018]
"Just remember - when you think all is lost, the future remains."
~~ rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard [1882-1945]
"The more [that] we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival."
~~ mathematician & philosopher Norbert Wiener [1894-1964]
"Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline."
~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811-96]
"Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]
"Science is only one of the many instruments [that] people invented to cope with their surroundings. It is not the only one, it is not infallible, and it has become too powerful, too pushy, and too dangerous to be left on its own."
~~ Paul K. Feyerabend [1924-94]
"Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all."
~~ Woody Allen
"A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted."
~~ engineer Vannevar Bush [1890-1974]
"The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once."
~~ French/Dutch philosopher René Descartes [1596-1650]
“Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.”
~~ Langston Hughes [1902-67]
"I've long maintained that the health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction, since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie."
~~ David Brin
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.”
~~ economist John Maynard Keynes [1883-1946]
"Life gets mighty precious when there is less of it to waste."
~~ Bonnie Raitt
"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character."
~~ Horace Greeley [1811-72]
"We’re not asking you to shoot them like you shoot us, we’re asking you to NOT shoot us like you don’t shoot them . . ."
~~ Davontae Harris, on Twitter
"Nobody in our country should be sick because they are poor, or poor because they are sick."
~~ New Mexico State Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez
"President Trump is the world's best oxymoron."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"There is NO situation SO bad that Donald Trump can't make WORSE."
~~ Gail Collins, The New York Times columnist
"Do not underestimate the evil genius that is Donald Trump."
~~ gadfly filmmaker Michael Moore
"I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health."
~~ French philosopher Voltaire [1694-1778]
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together."
~~ Joseph Pulitzer [1847-1911]
"What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except for a cowgirl, cowgirls will kill you."
~~ Lisa Richards
"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play."
~~ cinema auteur Warren Beatty
"Against stupidity we are defenseless; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed, and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one."
~~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1906-45]
"In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."
~~ King Solomon [circa 990-931 BCE], in the Judeo-Xian book of Ecclesiastes, 1:18
"Magic is the sole science not accepted by scientists, because they can't understand it."
~~ Harry Houdini [1874-1926]
"That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
~~ Hitchens' Razor (from socio-political critic Christopher Hitchens [1949-2011] )
"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest."
~~ pop artist Andy Warhol [1928-87]
"The crux of the problem is [that] Americans now occupy two separate worlds – a fact-based pro-democracy world and a Trump-based authoritarian one."
~~ Robert B. Reich
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
