"His interest in diplomacy seems to be motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths....he distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections."
- Fareed Zakaria on Barack Obama, Newsweek, July 2008

The physician can buy his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.
- R.G. Collingwood

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.
- Gladys Browyn Stern, writer (1890-1973)


It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.
-Rollo May, psychologist (1909-1994)


I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)


The living are soft and yielding; the dead are rigid and stiff. Living plants are flexible and tender; the dead are brittle and dry.
-Lao Tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE)

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There can be no government without an army
No army without money
No money without prosperity
And no prosperity without justice and good administration.

- Ibn Qutayba (ninth-century Muslim scholar)

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else.
-Peyton C. March, general (1864-1955)

What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.
-Ezra Pound, poet (1885-1972)

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
-Desiderius Erasmus, humanist and theologian (1466-1536)

The best way to be more free is to grant more freedom to others.
-Carlo Dossi, author and diplomat (1849-1910)

We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.
-George Steiner, professor and writer (b. 1929)

Yoshida Kenko (1283-1352) in Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness)

Thoughts on - suggestion, irregularity, simplicity, perishability

"Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless?...In all things, it is the beginnings and the ends that are interesting."

"In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth"

"The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty"

"A man with no business will never intrude into an occupied house simply because he so pleases. If the house is vacant, on the other hand, travellers journeying along the road will enter with impunity, and even creatures like foxes and owls, undisturbed by any human presence, will take up their abodes, acting as if the place belonged to them. Tree spirits and other apparitions will also manifest themselves.

It is the same with mirrors: being without color or shape of their own, they reflect all manner of forms. If the mirrors had color and shape of their own, they would probalbly not reflect other things.

Emptyness accommodates everything. I wonder if thoughts of all kinds intrude themselves at will on our minds because what we call our minds are vacant? If minds were occupied, surely so many things would not enter them"

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Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question,'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But,
conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must
take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must
take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.
-  Martin Luther King Junior

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Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
- James Russel Lovell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891) .

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Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his
own company.
- Seneca, philosopher (BCE 3-65 CE)

The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes.
-Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)


Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
-William James, psychologist (1842-1910)

Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must
shine light on it.
-Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (b. 1948)


If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.
-Edward Bulwer-Lytton, author (1803-1873)


I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.
-Edgar Guest, poet (1881-1959)


If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
-Desmond Tutu, clergyman (b. 1931)


The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
-Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author (1900-1980)

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We have been told that all paths lead to truth ・you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door ・which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd.

Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static,but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to ・then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are ・ your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears.
- J. Krishnamurthy

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I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty.
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

For money you can have everything it is said. No that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun,but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money.
-Arne Garborg, writer (1851-1924)