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Revised February 29, 2008
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"Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience and convictions." Dag Hammarskjold, United Nations.
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great." Mark Twain
"Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable." Betrand Russell
"Humor is the fulcrum upon which sanity rests." Roberto Assognoli
"You are a child of the Universe, no less than the moon and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should." Max Ehrmann
"I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it." Thomas Paine, 1783
"Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free." Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
"The truth is found when men are free to pursue it." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell, 1945
"Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them." Dwight David Eisenhower, 1963
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant." Robert F. Kennedy, 1964
"The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life..." Oscar Wilde
"Be patient with every one, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disturbed because of your imperfections, and always rise up bravely from a fall. I am glad that you make a daily new beginning. There is no better means of progress in the spiritual life than to be continually beginning afresh, and never to think that we have done enough." Francis De Sales (1567-1622, Christian Bishop)
"Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it." Swedish proverb,
"With courage, walk through your fears. With gentleness, open your heart." Paul Ferrini
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. When the fear is gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Frank Herbert(American science fiction Author and Writer 1920-1986)
"Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest."Mark Twain
"It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all." Laura Ingalls Wilder (1917)
A PARABLE
Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others, including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all constructed boats and left. Except for Love.
Love was the only one who stayed. Love wanted to hold out until the last possible moment. When the island had almost sunk, Love decided to ask for help.
Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, Richness, can you take me with you?" Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you."
Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel. "Vanity, please help me!" "I can't help you, Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat," Vanity answered.
Sadness was close by so Love asked, "Sadness, let me go with you." "Oh . . . Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!"
Happiness passed by Love, too, but she was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called her.
Suddenly, there was a voice, "Come, Love, I will take you." It was an elder. So blessed and overjoyed, Love even forgot to ask the elder where they were going. When they arrived at dry land, the elder went her own way. Realizing how much was owed the elder, Love asked Knowledge, another elder, "Who Helped me?" It was Time," Knowledge answered. "Time?" asked Love. "But why did Time help me?" Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered, "Because only Time is capable of understanding how valuable Love is."
"I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!" -- Louise Bogan
"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly. "One must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower." Hans Christian Andersen
"To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer." Saadi, poet (c. 1200) AD
Like a chess game, your health is the sum of every mistake you've made. Steve Richfield
"Security is an illusion. Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all." Helen Keller
"Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch - what makes you go beyond the norm." Cicely Tyson
"I've always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best." Hakeem Olajuwon
" To be juicy is to be: a fearlessly joyous optimist, a troublemaker tirelessly afflicting the comfortable, a passionate lover of good talk and tasty food, an anonymous prophet hovering over the cosmological riddle, a frequent violator of the ordinance against indecent exposure of the heart, and a guerilla in the insurrection against the dream molestors everywhere." Rich Heffern
"No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity but I know none and therefore am no beast."Shakespeare
"The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it." Jean Paul
"There really are people and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do this not with conscious malice but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil---indeed, seeking to avoid any such awareness. As has been described of the devil in religious literature, they hate the light and instinctively will do anything to avoid it, including attempting to extinguish it. They will destroy the light in their own children and in all other beings subject to their power.
Evil people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. They hate goodness because it reveals their badness; they hate love because it reveals their laziness. They will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of such self-awareness. My second conclusion, then, is that evil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme. As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. Ordinary laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinarily lazy people may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove; still, they are not evil.
Truly evil people, on the other hand, actively rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They will take any action in their power to protect their own laziness, to preserve the integrity of their sick self. Rather than nurturing others, they will actually destroy others in this cause. If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them.
I define evil, then, as the exercise of political power---that is, the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion---in order to avoid extending one's self for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth. Ordinary laziness is nonlove; evil is antilove." M. Scott Peck, Psychiatrist & author The Road Less Travelled
"Tradition will accustom people to any atrocity."George Bernard Shaw