FAVORITE QUOTES
On Life and Having Courage
“Do something new. You can’t stay in your comfort zone. That’s what we all do. We get to a certain age, we all stay in our comfort zone with our recliners watching television day in and day out. It’s not worth it. Life is so short. There are such glorious images in the world and such horror as well. And I want to see it all. So I’ve moved out of my comfort zone. It’s essential for me. Otherwise I may as well die. So I’ve done it, I’ve broken every rule in the book. Not out of malice or telling anyone that ‘I’ll show you.’ I did it to show myself. I’ve shown myself. I looked in the mirror and thought ‘I’ll show you one day’ and I’ve done something completely new, I wrote the music and I feel limitless.”
... Anthony Hopkins
Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
... Apple Think Different
It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
... Theodore Roosevelt
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
... Thomas E. Lawrence
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand- strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming "Woo hoo! What a ride!"
... Hunter S. Thompson
I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed.
...Michael Jordan
Life is a rush into the unknown. You can duck down and hope nothing hits you or you can stand up as tall as you can, show it your teeth and say, "Dish it up baby, and don't be stingy with the jalapenos!"
...Unknown
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
... Kurt Vonnegut
If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world.
... J.R.R. Tolkien
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
... Upton Sinclair
Live in the sunshine. Swim in the sea. Drink the wild air.
... Ralph Waldo Emerson
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
... William James
Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
... Chinese Proverb
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
... Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.
...Beverly Sills
Beware, as long as you live, of judging people by appearances.
... Jean de la Fontaine
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
... Wayne Gretsky
Nothing kills the ego like playfulness and laughter. When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die, it cannot exist anymore.
... Osho
Sometimes you're the windshield. Sometimes you're the bug.
... Mark Knopfler
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
... Mark Twain
Well behaved women seldom make history.
... Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas. They've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.
... Emily Bronte
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.""Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
... Marjorie Willams
To achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable which must be thought.
... Tom Robbins
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
... Leonardo da Vinci
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
... Leonardo da Vinci
The best people posses a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.
... Ernest Hemingway
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
... Gandhi
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
... Ralph Waldo Emerson
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
... T.S. Eliot
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
... Mae West
Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
... Leonardo da Vinci
Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
... Leonardo da Vinci
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
... Leonardo da Vinci
You want to have a future where you are expecting things to be better, not one where you are expecting things to be worse.
... Elon Musk
There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.
... Leonardo da Vinci
Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.
... Leonardo da Vinci
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
... Leonardo da Vinci
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
...Winston Churchill
Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
...Leonardo Da Vinci
I'm not sure what I'll do but... well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.
...F. Scott Fitzgerald
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
... Mark Twain
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
... Mahatma Gandhi
A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.
... Joseph Campbell
Follow your bliss.
... Joseph Campbell
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
... Theodore Roosevelt
By all reckoning, the bumblebee is aerodynamically unsound and shouldn't be able to fly. Yes, the little bee gets those wings going like a turbo-jet and flies to every plant its chubby little body can land on to collect all the nectar it can hold. Bumblebees are the most persistent creatures. They don't know they can't fly, so they just keep buzzing around.
... Earl Bakken
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
... Charles Darwin
Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
... Steve Jobs
Pay no mind to those who talk behind your back, it simply means that you are two steps ahead.
... Unknown
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
... Albert Einstein
Not all those who wander are lost.
... J.R.R. Tolkien
If the people lead, the leaders will follow.
... Mahatma Gandhi
There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.
... J.R.R. Tolkien
In my view, staying out of the fray is not taking the 'high ground'; it is just passing the buck.
... Stephen H. Schneider
Everyone falls, it's up to you if you want to fall like an egg or a rubber ball.
... Eddie Sturman
If anything that can go right, it will, and at the best possible moment.
... Eddie Sturman
One big universe, and I had the privilege to meet YOU.
... Joseph Campbell
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
... Voltaire
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, & redeemed; never throw out anyone. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, & the other for helping others.
... Sam Levenson
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
... Cecil Beaton
It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out, it's the grain of sand in your shoe.
... Robert W. Service
The edge - there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
... Hunter S. Thompson
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
... J.R.R. Tolkien
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
... Joseph Campbell
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
... Joseph Campbell
Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.
... Martin Luther King, Jr
There have to be things that are exciting and inspiring. Life cannot just be about solving problems.
... Elon Musk
When one man or woman, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.
... Jacques Yves Cousteau
Choose well. Your choice is brief, and yet endless.
... Goethe
If your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.
... Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked - as I am surprisingly often - why I bother to get up in the mornings.
... Richard Dawkins
Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rockstar Bullsh*t. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with you're dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you tearing it down. They should get your salary and you should get theirs.
...Lollapalooza alumni Henry Rollins
She who has a thing to sell, and goes and whispers in a well, is not so apt to get the dollar, as she who climbs a tree and hollers.
... Unknown
Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.
... Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh
If by a liberal, they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind; someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions; someone who cares about the welfare of the people, their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties; someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicion that grips us; if that is what they mean by a liberal, I am proud to be a liberal.
... Senator Edward M. Kennedy, 1932-2009
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
... Bertrand Russell
A Zen master, when asked where he would go after he died, replied, "To Hell, of that's where help is needed the most."
... Roshi Philip Kapleau
Sharks have been swimming the oceans unchallenged for thousands of years; chances are, the species that roams corporate waters will prove just as hardy.
... Eric Gelman
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
... Kenneth Boulding
The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: Know more today about the world than I knew yesterday, and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
... Neil deGrasse Tyson
I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
... F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sorry for the inconvenience, we are trying to change the world.
... Unknown
Do not regret growing older, it is a privilege denied to many.
... Unknown
When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you. But because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for.
... Unknown
You have enemies? Good, that means you've stood up for something in your life.
... Winston Churchill
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.
... Steve Furtick
Something beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart. A humility. A nobility. A higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.
... Marianne Williamson
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
... John A. Shedd
On the Environment
Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.
... Nelson Mandela
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.
... Ralph Nader
Don't blow it - good planets are hard to find.
... Quoted in Time
So-called 'global warming' is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don't let them get away with it!
... Chip Giller, Founder of Grist.org
Plant a new truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water and feed it fresh air.
... Dr. Seuss
And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess."
... Art Buchwald
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.
... Robert Lynd
Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible - or even sinful - that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes!
... Dr. Paul MacCready, Jr.
Many of these trees were my friends. Creatures I had known from nut or acorn. They had voices of their own.
... J.R.R. Tolkien
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
... Henry David Thoreau
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops.
... Paul Brooks
If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.
... Albert Einstein
Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.
... Cree Indian Prophecy
I believe in God, only I spell it nature.
... Frank Lloyd Wright
It's horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
... Ansel Adams
We have met the enemy and he is us.
... Walt Kelly
Ignore the environment. It'll go away.
... Bumper Sticker
Anything else you're interested in is not going to happen if you can't breathe the air and drink the water. Don't sit this one out. Do something. You are by accident of fate alive at an absolutely critical moment in the history of our planet.
... Carl Sagan
Polite conservationists leave no mark save the scars upon the Earth that could have been prevented had they stood their ground.
... David Brower
The greenest house is the one that never gets built.
... Whit Faulconer
Man is a complex being; he makes the deserts bloom and the lakes die.
... Gil Stern
For 200 years we've been conquering nature. Now we're beating it to death.
... Tom McMillan
Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!
... William McDonough
Let this be our national goal: At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need to provide our jobs, to heat our homes, and to keep our transportation moving.
... President Richard Nixon, Jan 30, 1974
A new source of power... called gasoline has been produced by a Boston engineer. Instead of burning the fuel under a boiler, it is exploded inside the cylinder of an engine. The dangers are obvious. Stores of gasoline in the hands of people interested primarily in profit would constitute a fire and explosive hazard of the first rank. Horseless carriages propelled by gasoline might attain speeds of 14 or even 20 miles per hour. The menace to our people of vehicles of this type hurtling through our streets and along our roads and poisoning the atmosphere would call for prompt legislative action even if the military and economic implications were not so overwhelming... The cost of producing [gasoline] is far beyond the financial capacity of private industry... In addition the development of this new power may displace the use of horses, which would wreck our agriculture.
... US Congressional Record, 1875
That's the thing about Mother Nature, she really doesn't care what economic bracket you're in.
... Whoopi Goldberg
I love little children but I don't cut off their heads and stick them in vases.
... George Bernard Shaw
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
... Greek Proverb
On Science and Discovery
All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed - only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.
...Nikola Tesla
The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
...Albert Einstein
You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one.
...Albert Einstein
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny!'
... Isaac Asimov
The greatest discoveries have come from people who have looked at a standard situation and seen it differently.
... Ira Erwin
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
... Marcel Proust
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
... Andre Gide
Should we force science down the throats of those that have no taste for it? Is it our duty to drag them kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century? I am afraid that it is.
... George Porter
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.
... Hellen Keller
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
... Albert Einstein
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
... Albert Einstein
The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
... Isaac Asimov
The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe it.
... Neil deGrasse Tyson
On Animals and Not Eating Them
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
...Henry Beston
On general principles the raising of cattle as a means of providing food is objectionable. It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarian habit. That we can subsist on plant food and perform our work even to advantage is not a theory but a well-demonstrated fact. Many races living almost exclusively on vegetables are of superior physique and strength. There is no doubt that some plant food, such as oatmeal, is more economical than meat, and superior to it in regard to both mechanical and mental performance. Such food, moreover, taxes our digestive organs decidedly less, and in making us more contented and sociable, produces an amount of good difficult to estimate. In view of these facts every effort should be made to stop the wanton, cruel slaughter of animals, which must be destructive to our morals.
... Nikola Tesla
Humans -- who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals -- have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them -- without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us.
... Carl Sagan
The same questions are bothering me today as they did fifty years ago. Why is one born? Why does one suffer? In my case, the suffering of animals also makes me very sad. I'm a vegetarian, you know. When I see how little attention people pay to animals, and how easily they make peace with man being allowed to do with animals whatever he wants because he keeps a knife or a gun, it gives me a feeling of misery and sometimes anger with the Almighty. I say "Do you need your glory to be connected with so much suffering of creatures without glory, just innocent creatures who would like to pass a few year's in peace?" I feel that animals are as bewildered as we are except that they have no words for it. I would say that all life is asking: "What am I doing here?
... Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is a matter of taking the side of the weak against the strong, something the best people have always done.
... Harriet Beecher Stowe
We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living beings, humanity will not find peace.
... Dr. Albert Schweitzer
I have no doubt that it is a part of destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
... Henry David Thoreau
Since visiting the abattoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.
... Vincent Van Gogh
Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.
... Andrew Boyd
Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
...Albert Einstein
You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.
... Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything connected with vegetarianism is of the highest importance because there will never be peace in the world so long as we eat animals.
... Isaac Bashevis Singer
It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
... Albert Einstein
Lisa: Do we have any food that wasn't brutally slaughtered? Homer: Well, I think the veal died of loneliness.
... The Simpsons
We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
... Immanuel Kant
What is it that should trace the insuperable line? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
... Jeremy Bentham, philosopher
Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.
... Isaac Bashevis Singer, author - Nobel Prize 1978
The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.
... Leonardo da Vinci
I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.
... Abraham Lincoln
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
... Mahatma Gandhi
To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.
... Mahatma Gandhi
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
... Thomas Edison, inventor
My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.
... Leonardo da Vinci
When humans die, they make a will to leave their homes and all they have to those they love. I, too, would make a will if I could write. To some poor wistful, lonely stray I leave my happy home. My dish, my cozy bed, my cushioned chair, my toy. The well loved lap, the gentle stroking hand, the loving voice, the place I made in someone's heart, the love that at the last could help me to a peaceful painless end held in loving arms. If I should die, oh do not say "No more a pet I'll have, to grieve me by it's loss" Seek out some lonely, unloved pet and give my place to them. This is the legacy I leave behind - tis all I have to give.
... Anonymous
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
... George Bernard Shaw
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian.
... Paul McCartney
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
... Leo Tolstoy
One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable... We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.
... Martin Luther King, Jr.
A vegetarian is a person who believes in peace, love, compassion, solidarity and health, who wants to end world hunger, have clean air, land, water and keep the rainforests, save the world's resources and end the unnecessary torture and killing of animals.
... Bumper Sticker
Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore.
... Franz Kafka
The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion.
... Gautama Buddha
For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.
... Pythagoras
The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies... they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.
... Plato
My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford my sufficient nourishment.
... Mary Shelley
Flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act, which is contrary to moral feeling: killing.
... Leo Tolstoy
I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian.
... George Bernard Shaw
To teach a child not to step on a caterpillar is just as important to the child as it is to the caterpillar.
... Ric O'Barry
I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
... Mahatma Gandhi
Thousands of people who say they 'love' animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abbatoirs.
... Jane Goodall
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
... Isaac Bashevis Singer
I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
... A. Whitney Brown
Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy, and for decent, honorable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but because they don't.
... Matthew Scully
Whenever people say 'We must not be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it.
... Brigid Brophy
Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game.
... Paul Rodriguez
If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals.
... Albert Einstein
On the Ocean and Her Creatures
All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea -- whether it is to sail or to watch it -- we are going back from whence we came.
... John F. Kennedy
To the dolphin alone, beyond all other, nature has granted what the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage.
... Plutarch
He (dolphins) also exhibits a friendly willingness to cooperate with other earth creatures -- a rare attribute which another animal, Homo Sapiens, has not yet learned to do with any consistency.
... Barbara Tufty
There's about as much educational benefit studying dolphins in captivity as there would be studying mankind by only observing prisoners held in solitary.
... Jacques Cousteau
It's hard to bullshit the ocean. It's not listening, you know what I mean?
...David Crosby
No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.
... Jacques Yves Cousteau
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.
... Arthur C. Clarke
By Douglas Adams
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
... Douglas Adams
You live and you learn. At any rate, you live.
... Douglas Adams
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
...Douglas Adams
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
...Douglas Adams
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
...Douglas Adams
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
...Douglas Adams
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
...Douglas Adams
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
... Douglas Adams
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
... Douglas Adams
I don't believe it. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.
... Douglas Adams
If somebody thinks they're a hedgehog, presumably you just give 'em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.
... Douglas Adams
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
... Douglas Adams
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
... Douglas Adams
The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.
... Douglas Adams
Don't try to out-weird me, three eyes. I get weirder things than you in my breakfast cereal.
... Douglas Adams
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
... Douglas Adams
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
... Douglas Adams
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
... Douglas Adams
By Jack Handey
I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.
...Jack Handey
If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.
...Jack Handey
If you ever catch on fire, try to avoid looking in a mirror, because I bet that will really throw you into a panic.
...Jack Handey
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, forget em', cause, man, they're gone.
...Jack Handey
Probably the saddest thing you'll ever see is a mosquito sucking on a mummy. Forget it, little friend.
...Jack Handey
Marta says the interesting thing about fly-fishing is that it's two lives connected by a thin strand. Come on, Marta. Grow up.
...Jack Handey
Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.
...Jack Handey
Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling.
...Jack Handey
Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.
...Jack Handey
We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me.
...Jack Handey
If you're a horse, and someone gets on you, and falls off, and then gets right back on you, I think you should buck him off right away.
...Jack Handey
Love can sweep you off your feet and carry you along in a way you've never known before. But the ride always ends, and you end up feeling lonely and bitter. Wait. It's not love I'm describing. I'm thinking of a monorail.
...Jack Handey
I wish I would have a real tragic love affair and get so bummed out that I'd just quit my job and become a bum for a few years, because I was thinking about doing that anyway.
...Jack Handey
Sometimes life seems like a dream, especially when I look down and see that I forgot to put on my pants.
...Jack Handey
I can still recall old Mister Barnslow getting out every morning and nailing a fresh load of tadpoles to the old board of his. Then he'd spin it round and round, like a wheel of fortune, and no matter where it stopped he'd yell out, "Tadpoles! Tadpoles is a winner!" We all thought he was crazy. But then we had some growing up to do.
...Jack Handey
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that, I'll be over here, looking through your stuff.
... Jack Handey
By Kurt Vonnegut
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you can see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
... Kurt Vonnegut
When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, In a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, "It is done. People did not like it here."
... Kurt Vonnegut
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
... Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
(When Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he's going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
... Kurt Vonnegut
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
... Kurt Vonnegut
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
... Kurt Vonnegut
Everybody's shaking in his boots, so don't be bluffed.
... Kurt Vonnegut
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
... Kurt Vonnegut
(on loving or hating his country) That would be as silly as loving it. It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to the human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.
... Kurt Vonnegut
Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.
... Kurt Vonnegut
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
... Kurt Vonnegut
By Brian Andreas
I think my life would be easier, she said, if I could just get my selves to agree on something.
... Brian Andreas
What I'm mostly good at is sleeping, he once told me in confidence, but he added, I don't see much future in it.
... Brian Andreas
I've always liked the time before dawn because there's no one around to remind me who I'm supposed to be so it's easier to remember who I am.
... Brian Andreas
She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful & life was so short.
... Brian Andreas
Anyone can slay a dragon ...but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero.
... Brian Andreas
Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life.
... Brian Andreas
If you hold on to the handle, she said, it's easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it's more fun if you just let the wind carry you.
... Brian Andreas
My grandma used to plant tomato seedlings in tin cans from tomato sauce & puree & crushed tomatoes she got from the Italian restaurant by her house, but she always soaked the labels off first. I don't want them to be anxious about the future, she said. It's not healthy.
... Brian Andreas
She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said.
... Brian Andreas
There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each others cooking & say it was good.
... Brian Andreas
He loved her for almost everything she was & she decided that was enough to let him stay for a very long time.
... Brian Andreas
You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time.
... Brian Andreas
I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they need constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do.
... Brian Andreas
A few said they'd be horses. Most said they'd be some sort of cat. My friend said she'd like to come back as a porcupine. I don't like crowds, she said.
... Brian Andreas
There was a single blue line of crayon drawn across every wall in the house. What does it mean? I asked. A pirate needs the sight of the sea, he said and then he pulled his eye patch down and turned and sailed away.
... Brian Andreas
For a long time she flew, only when she thought no one else was watching.
... Brian Andreas
I've read a lot of books, so I know bunches of stuff that sounds like it could be true.
... Brian Andreas
There are your fog people & your sun people, he said. I said I wasn't sure which kind I was. He nodded. Fog'll do that to you, he said.
... Brian Andreas
The first time her laughter unfurled its wings in the wind, we knew that the world would never be the same.
... Brian Andreas
When I first met him, I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there'd be room for him to stay.
... Brian Andreas
Just Funnies
I have never been able to properly explain myself in this climate.
... Hunter S. Thompson
The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.
...Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst
Sell crazy someplace else; we're all stocked up here.
...Jack Nicholson, As Good As It Gets
Oh? You hate your job? Well, why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that, you know. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.
...The Drew Carey Show
I haven't seen a spider around the house in days. WHAT THE F*!K ARE THEY PLANNING?
... Robin Williams
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
... Mark Twain
Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.
... Mark Twain
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
... Dave Barry
Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
... Sam Levinson