Security and certainty

Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

~ Helen Keller

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

~ George Bernard Shaw

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

~ Albert Einstein

Christmas

If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

~Yeshua Cristos, as reported by John, son of Zebedee

 

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

~Luke, the Historian in the account he recorded for his friend Theophilus, Chapter 2: 1-7

 

Art vs Science

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers
~ Pablo Picasso

Common Sense and Wisdom

I've always been in the right place and time. Of course, I steered myself there.

~ Bob Hope

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.

~ W.C. Fields

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

~ Job 28:28

~Psalm 111:10

~ Proverbs 1:7

~ Proverbs 9:10

~ Proverbs 15:33

~ Isaiah 33:6

~ Micah 6:9

of knowledge and learning

"Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge that is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind."

~ Plato

"Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?"

~ Cicero

movie quote

So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.

George Lucas, Senator Amidala in Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Election Day

"Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."

-- John Quincy Adams

Art and Science

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection...That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.
~ Isaac Asimov

Liberty

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

— Benjamin Franklin

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

— John Adams

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

— David Hume

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty."

— John F. Kennedy

What is knowledge?

Information is not knowledge.

~ Albert Einstein

More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.

~ Daniel J. Boorstin

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

~ Niels Bohr

Is God 'there' to help us?

Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices—saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God's side.

- Abraham Lincoln

Beware being right with a passion...

In a heated argument we are apt to lose sight of the truth.

— Publilius Syrus

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.

— William Penn

Metaphors

"Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible."

— Johan Huizinga

"A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on."

— G.C. Lichtenberg

Philosophies for getting better

Success is the culmination of failures, mistakes, false starts, confusion and the determination to keep going anyway.

-- Nick Gleason

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

-- Winston Churchill

One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils. The thing is to supply light and not heat.

— Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)

Successful technologies

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

~ Isaac Asimov

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

~ Richard P. Feynman

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

~ Francis Bacon

the whole of creation, and truth

Know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful...
... the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.

~ Robinson Jeffers

Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of spreading even against it.

~ Paramahansa Yogananda

knowledge, wisdom, and rights

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

~ Jimmy Wales

A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.

~ John C. Maxwell

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

~ Alexander Hamilton

We bring small daily blessings

"Human felicity is produc'd not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day."

~ Benjamin Franklin

"Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage."

~ Albert Schweitzer

What happens if I say this is a quote for all of us?

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

- Christopher Morley

Dream of the Power of Love

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."

~ Edgar Allan Poe

"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love... I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. And I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go."

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.