I periodically publish quotes I have collected. Here is the latest batch (and here is my entire collection). Not particular topic this time: "A boat is safe in the harbor. But this is not the purpose of a boat." Paulo Coelho “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” ― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It America’s “culture of death”: “a culture that embraces a soulless free-market idolatry in which the value of everything, including human beings, is determined by the bottom line. ... It is a culture of death that prevails on Wall Street, K-Street, Hollywood, and our ever expanding Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex.” Rich Broderick, journalist who writes for the online Twin Cities Daily Planet "I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs." Frederick Douglass "What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood." Aldous Huxley "Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this-that you are dreadfully like other people." James Russell Lowell (1819 - 1891) “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire. Godwins’ Law - the idea that as an online discussion grows longer the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. anon “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Pablo Picasso “Education isn’t something you can finish.” Isaac Asimov If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it. Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 - 1799) “Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.” Voltaire "If the only thing keeping you from being a horrible person is your religion, you are already a horrible person." Someecards (on Facebook) "The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution." Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

"Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them." Albert Einstein This quote appeals me more than the platitude to think outside the box. It challenges us to reframe problems, which sometimes means there's actually no problem at all (or the problem might be much worse than we thought). I often think of this quote in terms of our seemingly intractable national problems. Conservation can substantially alleviate the "need" to spew CO2 into the air, but conservation is not part of the Chevron-driven national dialogue. Good schools and decriminalization of drugs are a LOT cheaper than prisons, but politicians fail to connect the dots to those other levels. Ubiquitous applications of this quote, but we so often get trapped on our own cozy level, cozy because that's what we are used to, and we are so used to it that it seems to be stone foundation rather than something to vigorously question.

I found this quote by the Dalai Lama on FB:

I've collected hundreds of quotes at this site. Here is a batch of my newest favorites: “The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.” ― Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller “The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.” - Tom Waits The atheist is free to concentrate on the fate of this world — whether that means visiting a friend in a hospital or advocating for tougher gun control laws — without trying to square things with an unseen overlord in the next. Atheists do not want to deny religious believers the comfort of their faith. We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth. Susan Jacoby - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/opinion/sunday/the-blessings-of-atheism.html?pagewanted=all Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see. - Arthur Schopenhauer “We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.” - Chris Hedges "Pretty much all the honest truth telling there is in the world is done by children." - Oliver Wendell Holmes ' I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. - Elie Weisel When he was asked if he hated Germans, Elie Weisel replied, "the children of murderers aren't murderers, just children." “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ” - Alvin Toffler Committee--a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done. Fred Allen (1894 - 1956) You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. - Jeannette Rankin (1880 - 1973) To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. - Elbert Hubbard "When inventing a god, the most important thing is to claim it is invisible, inaudible and imperceptible in every way. Otherwise, people will become skeptical when it appears to no one, is silent and does nothing." - Anonymous ― Alvin Toffler It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. - Ansel Adams Omnipotent God chooses not to use his power to simply forgive humankind, but instead implements a solution which requires that he impregnate a teen girl in order to give birth to himself so he can have himself slaughtered to save human beings from the Hell that he created. He then decides to communicate his scheme through conflicting accounts penned decades later by anonymous authors and subjectively handed down by flawed translators who can't even agree on the interpretation of "virgin." - anon