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Research Archive
It is the Editor's conviction that the quotes presented in this site should be read and thought about one at a time, and not skimmed through in their entirety, if the quotes are indeed to serve as food for thought. Nevertheless, there may be persons who wish to examine the whole list for analysis, review, etc. The complete list is therefore offered here in three segments. The segment below covers from May 1 through Aug. 31.
THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Ideas that Expand Your Mind ============================================== 0501LAW DAY "Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right, and PART with him when he goes wrong." --Abraham Lincoln 0502 "Television has exploded to a dimension in shaping the American mind that rivals that of America's schools and churches." --Theodore H. White 0503 "When and where were ever found, or will be found, sincerity, honesty, or veracity, in any sect or party in religion, government, or philosophy? --John Adams ME 11:321 0504 "The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." --Albert Einstein 0505 "Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted." --Benjamin Franklin 0506 "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." --Susan Ertz 0507 "Lighting a candle is not the only way to provide light. Furnishing a mirror that reflects the intense light from another source can be just as effective, and sometimes more so." --Anonymous 0508
HARRY TRUMAN BIRTHDAY "You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now." --Harry Truman 0509 "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead 0510
MOTHER'S DAY "The advantage of motherhood for a woman artist is that it puts her in immediate and inescapable contact with the sources of life, death, beauty, growth, corruption... If the woman artist has been trained to believe that the activities of motherhood are trivial, tangential to the main issues of life, irrelevant to the great themes of literature, she should untrain herself. The training is misogynist; it protects and perpetuates systems of thought and feeling which prefer violence and death to love and birth, and it is a lie." --Alicia Ostriker 0511 "In a government bottomed on the will of all, the life and liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all." --Thomas Jefferson 0512 "You make your luck. You've got to do the best you can, the very best. You cannot shirk or procrastinate. You cannot withdraw." -- Steven Callahan 0513 "Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy." --Aeschylus 0514 "A fool hath no delight in understanding, but only that his opinion may be made known." --Proverbs 18:2 0515 "I would like to say to the diligent reader of my writings and to others who are interested in them that I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, and, therefore, when anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the later of the two on the same subject." --M. K. Gandhi 0516 "No one, not even a saint, can live without a sense of personal value. The white racist has masterfully defrauded the Negro of this sense. It is the least obvious but most heinous of all race crimes, for it kills the spirit and the will to live." --John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me 0517
ARMED FORCES DAY "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." --Dwight D. Eisenhower 0518 "The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it." --Albert Einstein 0519 "An audience can only take in one point in one lecture. It must be a simple point, preferably one they are familiar with, and it must be driven in by hammering repetition." --Jacques Barzum 0520 "Contemplation, if it is to be wholesome and valuable, must be married to practice; it must inspire action and ennoble the aims of practical statesmanship. While it remains secluded in the cloister it is only a means of escape." --Bertrand Russell 0521 "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." --Emerson 0522 "Note how good you feel after you have encouraged someone else. No other argument is necessary to suggest that you never miss the opportunity to give encouragement." --George Adams 0523 "Wisdom comes by disillusionment." --George Santayana 0524 "As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." --Marian Anderson 0525 "Our lives improve only when we take chances -- and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves." --Walter Anderson 0526 "He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils for time is the greatest innovator." --Francis Bacon 0527 "Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; Freedom is something that people take, and people are as free as they want to be." --James Baldwin 0528 "The power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas." --John Maynard Keynes 0529
JOHN F. KENNEDY BIRTHDAY "Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities." --John F. Kennedy 0530
MEMORIAL DAY "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving. --Albert Einstein 0531 "The truth can be a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to deceive, and even to destroy another, with the truth." --Alfred Adler 0601 "The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." --Albert Einstein 0602 "Once a guy is over twenty-one, you'll never really change his style or habits. You may think you can, but his self-image is locked in. Nobody is ever humble enough to learn after he's grown up." --Lee Iococca 0603 "Experience has shown that mere appeal to the reason produces no effect upon those who have settled convictions." --M. K. Gandhi 0604 "The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been." --Alan Ashley-Pitt 0605 "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness... when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it....This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience." --George Santayana 0606 "All great art and all great science springs from the passionate desire to embody what was at first an unsubstantial phantom, a beckoning beauty luring men away from safety and ease to a glorious torment. The men in whom this passion exists must not be fettered by the shackles of a utilitarian philosophy, for to their ardour we owe all that makes man great." --Bertrand Russell 0607 "A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value." --Isaac Asimov 0608 "Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them." --Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain 0609 "A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." --George Bernard Shaw 0610 "As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the opportunities you didn't seize." --Anonymous 0611 "If no action is to be deemed virtuous for which malice can imagine a sinister motive, then there never was a virtuous action; no, not even in the life of our Saviour himself. But he has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motive to Him who can alone see into them." --Thomas Jefferson 0612 "I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve." --Albert Schweitzer 0613 "In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." --Al Rogers 0614 "Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it." --Francois de La Rochefoucauld
FLAG DAY 0615 Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. --Albert Einstein 0616 "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." --Abraham Lincoln 0617 "Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny." --Carl Schurz 0618 "Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it." --John D. Rockefeller, Sr. 0619 "Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience." --Anonymous 0620 "If you want to succeed you must strike out on new paths. The worn paths have already yielded their successes." --Anonymous 0621
FATHER'S DAY "Until you are willing to let go of your parents, you continue to conceive of yourself as a child." --Fritz Perls 0622 "The way to make men useful is to make them wise, and an essential part of wisdom is a comprehensive mind." --Bertrand Russell 0623 "There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control, but are only reacting, living, surviving." --Steven Callahan 0624 "It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself." --Hyman G. Rickover 0625 "Science is not the affirmation of a set of beliefs but a process of inquiry aimed at building a testable body of knowledge constantly open to rejection or confirmation. In science, knowledge is fluid and certainty fleeting. That is at the heart of its limitations. It is also its greatest strength." --Michael Shermer 0626 "I've come to the conclusion that there can be little or no dialogue between 'proclaimers of truth' (religious and secular ideologues) and 'discoverers of truth' (empiricists). The former tend to debate, the latter tend to discuss." --Edward H. Ashment 0627 "It is only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising extent of his own dependence." -- Robert D. Richardson 0628 "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -- Charles Darwin 0629 "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself." --Albert Einstein 0630 "It's great to work with somebody who knows how to do things differently." --Anonymous 0701 "If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time a tremendous whack." --Winston Churchill 0702 "It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared." --Whitney Young, Jr. 0703 "Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be. And in this respect the orthodoxy of the radical is no better than that of the reactionary." --Bertrand Russell 0704
INDEPENDENCE DAY "Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." --Thomas Jefferson 0705 "Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind." --Ralph Waldo Emerson 0706 "Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way -- that is not easy." --Aristotle 0707 "Modern science has come to realize that all scientific theories are approximations to the true nature of reality, and that each theory is valid for a certain range of phenomena." --Fritjof Capra 0708 "Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace." --Amelia Earhart 0709 "If you let conditions stop you from working, they’ll always stop you." -- James T. Farrell 0710 "Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up wrinkles the soul." --Douglas MacArthur 0711 "The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life." --Daniel Boorstin 0712 "The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with outstanding accuracy." -- Florence Schovel 0713 "Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable." --John D. MacDonald 0714 "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind." --Albert Einstein 0715 "If the kind of ideas that fill our minds are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid, uninteresting, petty and chaotic. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion -- political or otherwise -- which suddenly seems to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. Herein lies one of the great dangers of our time." --E. F. Schumacher 0716 "Courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one's own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage." -- Bertrand Russell 0717 "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order to things." --Niccolo Machiavelli 0718 "The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world." --Max Born 0719 "The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people." --Theodore Roosevelt 0720 "Many politicians lay it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim." --Lord Macaulay 0721 "You never really lose until you quit trying." --Mike Ditka 0722 "Sometimes, when you think it is the end, it is really only the beginning." --Anonymous 0723 "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." --James Madison 0724 "It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves." --Dietrich Bonhoeffer 0725 "No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." --Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 0726 "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --Louis D. Brandeis 0727 "The finest gift you can give anyone is encoragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond the wildest dreams. We would have more than one Einstein, Edison, Schweitzer, Mother Theresa, Dr. Salk and other great minds in a century." --Sidney Madwed 0728 "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." --Albert Einstein 0729 "Dreams have as much influence as actions." --Stephane Mallarme 0730 "One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good fortune." --Lew Wallace 0731 "At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past." --Maurice Maeterlink 0801 "Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions unexplored. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the path of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it." -- Abraham Lincoln 0802 "When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs 0803 "No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them." --Alan Watts 0804 "True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." --Clarence Darrow 0805 "Compromise, is not the spice of life -- it is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy." --Phyllis McGinley 0806
BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA "I do not agree with those who object to the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. All arguments for a unilateral limitation of weapons of war are only logically defensible if carried to the length of absolute pacifism, for a war cannot be worth fighting unless it is worth winning." --Bertrand Russell 0807 We cannot live for ourselves alone.
Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads,
And along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes,
And return to us as results.--Herman Melville
0808 "There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." --Sam Walton 0809 "The essence of a genuine professional man is that he cannot be bought." --H.L. Mencken 0810 "The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt." --Thomas Merton 0811 "An unprincipled man, let his other fitnesses be what they will, ought never to be employed." --Thomas Jefferson 0812 "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --Albert Einstein 0813 "I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me." --Dudley Field Malone 0814 "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness." --Charles Darwin 0815 "Certainly a leader needs a clear vision of the organization and where it is going, but a vision is of little value unless it is shared in a way so as to generate enthusiasm and commitment. Leadership and communication are inseparable." --Claude Taylor 0816 "The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character." --Peter Devries 0817 "When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." --William Blake 0818 "The less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice." --Clint Eastwood 0819 "A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on a cold iron." --Horace Mann 0820 "If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who had not been satisfied with their conditions, you would still be living in caves. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation." --Eugene V. Debs 0821 "Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path." --Ralph Waldo Emerson 0822 "Personality is illusion, but character is power." --Anonymous 0823 "It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in. --Schiller 0824 "Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace." --Albert Schweitzer 0825 "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." --Aristotle 0826 "When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge." --Albert Einstein 0827 "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." -- Francis Bacon 0828 "There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success." --George Adams 0829 "He who loves the Workman and His work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of Him." --John Adams 0830 "That I may be wholly wrong is quite possible, but quite irrelevant to the present purpose. So long as I am not conscious of the error, but, on the contrary, am sure, as far as it is humanly possible to be, of being in the right, I must go on with my pursuit to the farthest end." -- M. K. Gandhi 0831 "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric." --Bertrand Russell
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