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i am no prophet, and here is no great matter

Walk your talk.

Don’t just do something: change your mind.

But if you were going to do something, then this is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people [that do], take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem

To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful

I make promises to myself. Following them makes me aware

Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful.

Everything looks perfect from far away

How you behave towards cats here determines your status in heaven.

Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire--
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man insists on adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion

Anybody who supposes himself wise is already demonstrating the reverse.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us

fate, the unknowable mind of the other, opaque and vile circumstance, inscrutable nature, implacable evil, whatever you call it: things don't always go your way, in matters both grand and trivial

if you start over enough times, you forget how to stop.

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”

if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

an idealist is one who is proud of himself to the degree in which he is empathic, respects himself to the degree in which he is benevolent, and feels confident in himself to the degree in which he is authentic

when the facts change, I change my opinion. what do you do, sir?

the soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the full light of day. the content of your character is your choice. day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become. your integrity is your destiny; it is the light that guides your way.

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ''history'' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time -- and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance

How am I not myself?

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. There is where they should be. Now put foundations under them

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education

Wise men established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began

Democracy is not average people selecting average leaders. It is average people with the wisdom to select the best prepared.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that

The only real fire to cultivate is the fire inside of you. Nothing external will cultivate it. The greater your internal fire is, the more people will want it. They will smoke every drug lit by your fire. They will try to ignite their own fires. They will try to light up their own dark caves. The universe will bend to you.

I am sick of women who love me; women who hate me are far more interesting

Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative

when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular

Those who can forget the past are way ahead of the rest of us

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

in the final mix, i hope the lies I've told are far outweighed by the truths I've lived.

at the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards

So long and thanks for all the fish