David's Favorite Quotations

“I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thou­sand stars how not to dance.“
~ e. e. cummings

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,; what is essen­tial is invis­i­ble to the eye.“
~ Antoine de Saint-​​Exupery

“Dive deeply into the mir­a­cle of life and let the tips of your wings be burnt by the flame, let your feet be lac­er­ated by the thorns, let your heart be stirred by human emo­tion, and let your soul be lifted beyond the earth.“
~ Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

“Be peace, don’t just talk about it.“
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

“Pho­tog­ra­phy can light-​​up dark­ness and expose igno­rance“
~ Lewis Wickes Hine

“No peace lies in the future which is not hid­den in the present instant. Take peace. The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within reach, is joy. Take joy.“
~ Fra Giovanni

“The earth is too small a star and we too brief a vis­i­tor upon it for any­thing to mat­ter more than the strug­gle for peace.“
~ Col­man McCarthy

“The God of peace is never glo­ri­fied by human vio­lence.“
~ Thomas Merton

“Where there is love, there is life.“
Mahatma Gandhi

“Imag­i­na­tion is more impor­tant than knowl­edge.“
~ Albert Einstein

“To me every hour of the light and dark is a mir­a­cle. Every cubic inch of space is a mir­a­cle.“
~ Walt Whitman

“Every­thing has beauty, but not every­one sees it.“
~ Confucius

“Bit­ter are the tears of a child: Sweeten them.
Deep are the thoughts of a child: Quiet them.
Sharp is the grief of a child: Take it from him.
Soft is the heart of a child: Do not harden it.“
~ Pamela Glenconner

“You have a life­time to work, but chil­dren are only young once.“
~ Pol­ish Proverb

“Life is merely a frac­tion of a sec­ond. An infi­nitely small amount of time to ful­fill our desires, our dreams, our pas­sions.“
~ Paul Gauguin

“I have learned more from my dog than from all the great books I have read.“
~ Gary Spencer quoted in Rum­mag­ing for God by Melan­nie Svoboda

“We are not human-​​beings hav­ing a spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence, we are spir­i­tual –beings hav­ing a human expe­ri­ence.“
~ Wayne Dyer

“There is no veil the Love of God in us can­not lift.“
~ A Course In Miracles

“We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with our­selves. World Peace must develop out of inner peace.“
~ The Dalai Lama

“The crea­tures that inhabit this earth-​​be they human beings or animals-​​are here to con­tribute, each in its own par­tic­u­lar way, to the beauty and pros­per­ity of the world.“
~ H.H. The 14^th Dalai Lama

“The ques­tion is not what you look at but what you see!“
~ Henry David Thoureau

“Peace must first be devel­oped within an indi­vid­ual. And I believe that love, com­pas­sion, and altru­ism are the fun­da­men­tal basis for peace. Once these qual­i­ties are devel­oped within an indi­vid­ual, he or she is then able to cre­ate an atmos­phere of peace and har­mony. This atmos­phere can be expanded and extended from the indi­vid­ual to his fam­ily, from the fam­ily to the com­mu­nity and even­tu­ally to the whole world.“
~The Dalai Lama

“Never doubt that a small group of thought­ful com­mit­ted cit­i­zens can change the world:
Indeed it’s the only  thing that ever has.“
~Mar­garet Mead

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that mat­ter.“
~The Rev. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.

“What­ever you believe you can do, begin it; bold­ness has genius, power and magic in it.“
~Goethe

“Every day we do things, we are things, that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of con­sum­ing, our way of look­ing at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive.“
~Thich Nhat Hanh

“Until he extends his cir­cle of com­pas­sion to include all liv­ing things, man will not him­self find peace.“
~Albert Schweitzer

“Do not believe in any­thing sim­ply because you have heard it. Do not believe in any­thing sim­ply because it is spo­ken and rumored by many. Do not believe in
any­thing sim­ply because it is found writ­ten in your reli­gious books. Do not believe in any­thing merely on the author­ity of your teach­ers and elders. Do not believe in tra­di­tions because they have been handed down for many gen­er­a­tions. But after obser­va­tion and analy­sis, when you find that any­thing agrees with rea­son and is con­ducive to the good and ben­e­fit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.“
~Buddha

“Great spir­its have always found vio­lent oppo­si­tion from medi­oc­ri­ties. The lat­ter can­not under­stand it when a man does not thought­lessly sub­mit to hered­i­tary prej­u­dices but hon­estly and coura­geously uses his intel­li­gence.“
~Albert Einstein

“Never do any­thing against con­science even if the state demands it.“
~Albert Einstein

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.“
~Albert Einstein

“There is only one reli­gion, though there are a hun­dred ver­sions of it.“
~George Bernard Shaw

“To be nobody but your­self in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you every­body else means to fight the hard­est bat­tle which any human being can fight; and never stop fight­ing.“
~e. e. cummings

“Where igno­rance is our mas­ter, there is no pos­si­bil­ity of real peace.“
~The Dalai Lama

“If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your ene­mies.“
~Moshe Dayan

“Start by doing what’s nec­es­sary; then do what’s pos­si­ble; and sud­denly you are doing the impos­si­ble.“
~St. Fran­cis of Assisi

“Out Beyond Ideas Of Right­do­ing And Wrong­do­ing There is A Field — I Will Meet You There.“
~Rumi

“Every­time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feed­ing a dog on his own tail. It won’t fat­ten the dog.“
~Mark  Twain

“If we let peo­ple see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.“
~Pen­ta­gon offi­cial, on why the US mil­i­tary cen­sored graphic footage from the first Gulf War

“Stop think­ing this is all there is… Real­ize that for every ongo­ing war and reli­gious out­rage and envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thou­sand counter-​​balancing acts of stag­ger­ing gen­eros­ity and human­ity and art and beauty hap­pen­ing all over the world, right now, on a breath­tak­ing scale, from flower box to cathedral…Resist the temp­ta­tion to drown in fatal­ism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel…Realize that this is the per­fect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your per­sonal vol­ume; right when it all seems dark and bit­ter and offen­sive and acri­mo­nious and con­flicted and bilious…there’s your open­ing.“
~Mark Morford

“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 A. Edison

“Because we all share a wish for hap­pi­ness and an iden­ti­cal need for love, it is pos­si­ble to feel that any­one we meet, in what­ever cir­cum­stances, is a brother or sis­ter. We do not need to become reli­gious; nor do we need to believe in an ide­ol­ogy. I believe that at every level of soci­ety the key to a hap­pier more suc­cess­ful world is the growth of com­pas­sion. From my own lim­ited expe­ri­ence I have found that the great­est inner tran­quil­ity comes from the devel­op­ment of love and com­pas­sion. The more we care for the hap­pi­ness of oth­ers, the greater our own sense of well-​​being. It is the ulti­mate source of suc­cess in life. This is my sim­ple reli­gion. There is no need for tem­ples: no need for com­pli­cated phi­los­o­phy. Our own brain, our own heart is our tem­ple; the phi­los­o­phy is kind­ness..“
~His Holi­ness the XIV Dalai Lama

IMAGINE

Imag­ine there’s no heaven,
it’s easy if you try,
no hell below us,
above us only sky.
Imag­ine all the peo­ple
liv­ing for today, aha.

You may say I’m a dreamer
but I’m not the only one.
I hope some­day — you’ll join us,
and the world will live as one.

Imag­ine there’s no coun­tries
It isn’t hard to do
Noth­ing to kill or die for
And no reli­gion too.
Imag­ine all the peo­ple
Liv­ing life in peace, aha.

You may say I’m a dreamer
but I’m not the only one.
I hope some­day — you’ll join us,
and the world will live as one.

Imag­ine no pos­ses­sions
I won­der if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A broth­er­hood of man.
Imag­ine all the peo­ple
Shar­ing all the world, aha.

You may say I’m a dreamer
but I’m not the only one.
I hope some­day — you’ll join us,
and the world will live as one.

~John Lennon