..

"There are lots of things in life you can't afford, and you don't have to have them"
- Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone while flatly rejecting South Korea's request for a cheaper contract

..

“Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.” 
- Quote quoted by  Mona Simpson in a "Sister's Eulogy for Steve Jobs" (NYT, 30 Oct 2011)

..

"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same." – Carlos Castaneda


If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.
-Mark Twain

Government

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress...but then I repeat myself.
-Mark Twain

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-Douglas Casey, classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian

Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-Ronald Reagan (1986)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-Will Rogers

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!
-P.J. O'Rourke

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-Voltaire (1764)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
-Pericles (430 B.C.)

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
-Mark Twain (1866 )

Talk is cheap. . .except when Congress does it.
-Unknown

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-Ronald Reagan

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-Winston Churchill

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-Mark Twain

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-Edward Langley, Artist (1928 - 1995)

A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.
-Thomas Jefferson

The Road Not Taken

The Road Not Taken
 - Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Quotes from the essay, Letter from Birmingham Jail

You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which as constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

It is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture, but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be immoral than individuals.

"An unjust law is no law at all"
- St. Augustine

"An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust"
- St. Thomas Aquinas

An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey bust does not make it binding on itself...This is difference made illegal.

Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Actually, we who engage in nonvoilent direct action are not creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion, before it can be cured.

More and more I feel that people of ill will have used time more effectively than people of good will

"The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason"
- T.S. Eliot

...

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.
- Thomas L. Holdcroft

Investment is an act of faith
- Keynes

Empires of the future are the empires of the mind
- W. Churchill

Out beyond the ideas of wrong doing and right doing there's a field, I'll meet you there.
- Rumi


“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
-  Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Man’s most enduring stupidity is forgetting what he is trying to do,”
-  German philosopher Nietzsche’s admonition


“Negotiating … assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.”
- post-war Secretary of State Dean Acheson's trenchant observation

J.K Rowling at Harvard

Commencement Address by J.K. Rowling at Harvard (2008)


J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

..

From: Gaardner, Jostein (1991): SOPHIE'S WORLD, Phoenix Paperback


'The only thing i know is that i know nothing'
- Socrates (470-399)

'What a lot of things I don't need!'
- Socrates at a marketplace


The gods are not to be feared;
Death is nothing to worry about;
Good is easy to attain;
The fearful is easy to endure.
- "Four Medicinal Herbs of the Epicureans


"Our heart is not quiet in rest until it rests in Thee"
- St. Augustine (354-430), who "christianised" Plato

"Know thyself, O divine lineage in mortal guise!"
- Marcilio Ficino

Cogito, ergo sum -- i think, therefore i am
- Descartes (1596-?)

Propaganda

We do not talk to say something, but to obtain a certain effect.
- Goebbels

 "To maximize the power at home by subordinating groups and individuals, while reducing the material costs of power"
- Harold D. Lasswell on the Goal of Propaganda

"Propaganda is any effort to change opinions or attitudes... The propagandist is anyone who communicates his ideas with the intent of influencing his listener"
- B. Ogle

"We openly admit that we wish to influence our people. To admit this is the best method of attaining it"
- Goebbels

Stoicism

Epictetus:

"Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men's desires, but by the removal of desire." (iv.1.175)

"Where is the good? In the will. Where is the evil? In the will. Where is neither of them? In those things that are independent of the will." (ii.16.1)

"Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them." (Ench. 5)

"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone." (iii.24.2)

"I am formed by nature for my own good: I am not formed for my own evil." (iii.24.83)

"Permit nothing to cleave to you that is not your own; nothing to grow to you that may give you agony when it is torn away." (iv.1.112)

Philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject-matter. For as the material of the carpenter is wood, and that of statuary bronze, so the subject-matter of the art of living is each person's own life. - Epicteus


Marcus Aurelius:

"Get rid of the judgement, get rid of the 'I am hurt,' you are rid of the hurt itself." (viii.40)

"Everything is right for me, which is right for you, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which comes in due time for you. Everything is fruit to me which your seasons bring, O Nature. From you are all things, in you are all things, to you all things return." (iv.23)

"If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you were bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, but satisfied to live now according to nature, speaking heroic truth in every word which you utter, you will live happy. And there is no man able to prevent this." (iii.12)

"How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!" (xii.13)

"Outward things cannot touch the soul, not in the least degree; nor have they admission to the soul, nor can they turn or move the soul; but the soul turns and moves itself alone." (iv.3)

"Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also" (vi.19)

"Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands." (iv.3)

Make for yourself a definition or description of the thing which is presented to you, so as to see distinctly what kind of a thing it is in its substance, in its nudity, in its complete entirety, and tell yourself its proper name, and the names of the things of which it has been compounded, and into which it will be resolved. For nothing is so productive of elevation of mind as to be able to examine methodically and truly every object which is presented to you in life, and always to look at things so as to see at the same time what kind of universe this is, and what kind of use everything performs in it, and what value everything has with reference to the whole. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iii. 11.

Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the perception of this one living being; and how all things act with one movement; and how all things are the cooperating causes of all things that exist; observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the structure of the web. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, iv. 40.

Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together... - Marcus Aurelius, Book II Part-I


Seneca the Younger:

"The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live." - (Ep. 101.15)

"That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away." (Ep. 59.18)

"Let Nature deal with matter, which is her own, as she pleases; let us be cheerful and brave in the face of everything, reflecting that it is nothing of our own that perishes." (De Provid. v.8)

"Virtue is nothing else than right reason." (Ep. 66.32)