Powerlessness and silence go together. We should use our privileged positions not as a shelter from the world's reality, but as a platform from which to speak.
A voice is a gift.
It should be cherished and used.
- Margaret Atwood
Every time you actually think that you’ve got it together, something occurs to remind you not to take yourself so seriously.
- Dr. Carl A Hammerschlag
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
- Chinese Proverb
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and found that life was duty. I acted and behold, duty was joy.
- Sylvia Bass West
If you are going to greet the world as an equal, your feet have to planted firmly in some unique, prideful recognition of self. You must learn in a good way that what you are is okay. Then you can know that others are just fine too.
- Dr. Carl A Hammerschlag
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.”
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
We don't live in a world of reality, we live in a world of perceptions.
- Gerald J. Simmons
I understand that I am flawed and imperfect, so it’s okay to feel small and weak. I am free of the dominion of those fears.
- Dr. Carl A Hammerschlag
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.
- Storm Jameson
Civilization is sustained by women.
- Dr. Carl A Hammerschlag
There is no such thing as obligation, only opportunity.
- Unknown
"If you have come to help me, You are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
- Lilla Watson (Australian Aboriginal Woman)
If you choose to make the journey you will always find guides.
- Dr. Carl A Hammerschlag
The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics. According to Newton, time is absolute: “Absolute true, mathematical time of itself and from its own nature, it flows equably and without relation to anything external.” The European feels himself to be times slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function, he must observe its ironclad, inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules. He must heed deadlines, dates, days, and hours. He moves within the rigors of time and cannot exist outside them. They impose upon him their requirements and quotas. An unresolvable conflict exists between man and time, one that always ends with man’s defeat – time annihilates him.
- Ryszard Kapuscinski
"The bird of paradise alights only on the hand that does not grasp."
- John Berry
"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and 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
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson
"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."
-Margaret Fuller
"Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
"If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?"
- Linda Ellerbee
"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
- Arundhati Roy
I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.
-Maureen Reagan
The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.
- Lucretia Mott
Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We're not inherently anything but human.
- Robin Morgan
Keep walking, though there's no place to get to. Don't try to see through the distances. That's not for human beings. Move within, but don't move the way fear makes you move. Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi
(In: "Traveling Mercies: some thoughts on faith" by Anne Lamott)
The mystic dances in the sun, hearing music others don't. 'Insanity,' they say, those others. If so, it's a very gentle, nourishing sort.
- Rumi
You cannot see anything that you do not first contemplate as a reality.
- Ramtha
The way of love is not a subtle argument. The door there is devastation. Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom. How do they learn it? They fall, and falling, they're given wings.
- Rumi
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
- Chinese Proverb.
Tradition and Custom should be challenged from time to time to ensure that they continue to provide a positive influence on the present lest they hinder our growth into the future.
- Kelly Ries
How will you know the difficulties of being human, if you're always flying off to blue perfection? Where will you plant your grief seeds? Workers need ground to scrape and hoe, not the sky of unspecified desire.
- Rumi
Never be so committed to a path, idea, belief, point of view or opinion that you can not easily let it go when a better, more accurate or the right one presents itself. To do otherwise makes you obstinate and uncompromising; neither of which are associated with the wise.
- Kelly Ries
A tradition is only truly a living tradition if, as Edmund Burke says, it constitutes "a partnership between those who are dead, those who are living, and those who are yet to be born." That means it lives and breathes, adjusts to new circumstances, and accomodates to change.
"Traditionalism" is an idolatrous relation to tradition, for it is an attempt to arrest evolution and submit everything that is living to dead authority. As a token, it is just used to reach somewhere else, such as a state of self-righteous smugness. It is magic and theurgy, using received formulae to transform reality by turning back the clock to an imagined time of purity.
- Peter C. Emberley
Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, There is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.
- Rumi
You risked your life, but what else have you ever risked? Have you ever risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous in risking one's life. So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time. Right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That's not courage. Real courage is risking something you have to keep on living with, real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's clichés.
- Tom Robbins
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
- Henry Miller
A day without work is a day without eating.
- Baizhang (Chinese Chan Master)
Happiness comes not from self-sufficiency and exaltation in our achievements, but from gratitude.
- Peter Emberley
Wonder is the beginning of the desire to know the beautiful and the good.
- Plato
If those who lead you say to you, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky," then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, "It is in the sea," then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.
- (All the sayings of Jesus gathered from ancient sources and compiled into a single volume for the first time. Compiled by Ricky Alan Mayotte) From The Complete Jesus. (Pg 71) Jesus
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.
- William James
In all my research I have never come across matter. To me the term matter implies a bundle of energy which is given form by an intelligent spirit.
- Max Planck
Resistance to new ideas increases by the square of its importance.
- Bertrand Russell
“New scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
- Max Planck
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
- Albert Einstein
After all is said and done, more is said than done.
- Aesop
The dull compulsion of the economic.
- Marx
It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.
- Upton Sinclair
When you pray, move your feet.
- African Proverb
We're all ignorant, just about different stuff.
- Will Rogers
I don't care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.
- Will Rogers
No man is great if he thinks he is.
- Will Rogers
We'll hold the distinction of being the only Nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile.
