"The only unsolicited advice I feel comfortable giving another person is: 'Don’t give unsolicited advice'."
~~ Billy Baker, Boston Globe reporter
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50],
in his epic novel "1984"
"Food is medicine when eaten with respect."
~~ monk Shen Yu
"I should be a postage stamp, because that's the only way I'll ever get licked."
~~ boxing great Muhammad Ali [1942-2016]
"Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering."
~~ Donald E. Westlake [1933-2008]
"Fascism is what happens when the owning class resorts to law & terror to stop democratic progress because real equality would cost them wealth and power."
~~ podcaster Andre Henry
"If a white woman got shot in the face, what safety do we as Black people have?"
~~ Somali-born U.S. citizen Safiya Khalid
"Trumpian law enforcement is creating a country [that] none of us are safe in."
~~ "The Mercury Messenger" newsletter
written by V.B. Price of New Mexico
"The Declaration of Independence is our mission statement, the Constitution is our user's guide."
~~ historian and author Jon Meacham
"You know what they say, life imitates whichever TV show is going viral right now."
~~ Molly Liebergall, reporter on Morning Brew news site
"I will always be a Midwesterner at heart. In addition to the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, the two great commandments, I try to live by certain simple principles:
There are worse things than being wrong. Being a jerk, for one.
Nobody is born smart.
Listen too hard and you’ll always hear something bad about yourself.
The way to get something done is to do it.
The big thieves hang the little ones.
It’s a stupid goose who goes to the fox’s church.
Don’t cut the branch you’re standing on.
And my favorite: If you didn’t want to go to Chicago, why’d you get on the train?
That one sums it up pretty well."
~~ Garrison Keillor's daily Substack column in February 2026
"Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place."
~~ Martha Graham [1894-1991]
"I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another
the sense of what it is to be a human being."
~~ British playwright Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
"I think the theater is as essential to civilization as safe, pure water."
~~ Vanessa Redgrave [b. 1937]
"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players . . ."
~~ Wm. Shakespeare [1564-1616]
"If you want to help the American theater, don’t be an actress, be an audience."
~~ Tallulah Bankhead [1902-68]
"The covers of this book are too far apart."
~~ Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]
"The only thing more powerful than hate is love."
~~ Bad Bunny {Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio} at end of his halftime show at Super Bowl LX in February 2026
"It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our everyday duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome."
~~ Laura Ingalls Wilder [1867-1957]
Five Timeless Quotes by J.R.R. Tolkien [1892-1973]
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”
“There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.”
"Home is whatever you can rebel against."
~~ British author Pico Iyer
Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] said that "The Importance of Being Earnest" expressed his philosophy that "We should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality."
"Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading."
~~ crime novelist Ruth Barbara Rendell [1930-2015]
"The tyrant dies and his rule is over. The martyr dies and his rule begins."
~~ Danish existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard [1813-55]
"The top 10% of richest Americans own 87% of stocks. The top 1% alone own roughly half of all stocks. It's worth pointing out once again that the stock market is not the economy."
~~ economist Robert B. Reich
"Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world."
~~ actor Mandy Patinkin [b. 1952]
"The wise musician plays what he can master."
~~ Duke Ellington [1899-1974]
"It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes."
~~ Sir Thomas Beecham [1879-1961]
"The only thing better than singing is more singing."
~~ American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald [1917-96]
"There is a strange sort of reasoning in Hollywood that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas. It's a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy."
~~ entertainer Gene Kelly [1912-96]
"Theater demands truth, and music amplifies it."
~~ Leonard Bernstein [1918-90]
"We cry at musicals not because they’re sad, but because they’re true."
~~ source unknown
"The bassoon is an ill wind that no one blows good."
~~ Wayne L. Reynolds
"Don't listen to anyone who doesn't know how to dream."
~~ Liza Minnelli
on the back of a black t-shirt: 't-shirt redacted'
"Life is a lot like jazz . . . it's best when you improvise."
~~ George Gershwin [1898-37]
"[Donald] Trump has elevated diplomatic incompetence to an art."
~~ Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine
"The highest of wisdom is continual cheerfulness: such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene."
~~ essayist (Michel Eyquem de) Montaigne [1533-92]
"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome."
~~ John Steinbeck [1902-68]
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
~~ author Douglas Adams [1952-2001]
"Life is the best teacher of all. Most of the time, life does not talk to you. It just sort of pushes you around. Each push is life saying 'Wake up. There's something I want you to learn'."
~~ Robert T. Kiyosaki
"There is no issue of states rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights."
~~ President Lyndon Johnson [1908-73], in 1965
"Poetry causes you to think and to remember what you didn't know you knew."
~~ Robert Frost [1874-1963]
"Politics is what we do . . . what we hope for and what we dare to imagine."
~~ U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone [1944-2002] of Minnesota
t-shirt: it costs a lot to look this good
"A woman’s a woman until the day she dies, but a man’s only a man as long as he can."
~~ legendary African-American comedian Jackie 'Moms' Mabley [1897-1975]
"The sharpest weapon is a kind and gentle spirit."
~~ Anne Frank [1929-45]
"It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent."
~~ Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh [1853-90]
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
~~ Gen. Dwight D. 'Ike' Eisenhower [1890-1969]
"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®"
~~ weblog salutation of humorist & radio personality Garrison Keillor
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
