“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait ‘til the oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
Cited in the Faith and the Common Good newsletter. Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1847-1931.
Some people thought I was a hero. Some people said that what I did was wrong. But everything I did was according to my conscience. I made a stand all people, not just black people, should have thought about making, because it wasn’t just black people being drafted. The government had a system where the rich man’s son went to college, and the poor man’s son went to war.
Muhammad Ali (65 in January), looking back on his career- and life-altering decision to refuse to go to Vietnam in 1967. Quoted in Dave Zirin’s Edge of Sports on-line column.
The East and the West must unite to give to each other what is lacking. This union will bring about a true civilization, where the spiritual is expressed and carried out in the material….We all, the Eastern and the Western nations, must strive day and night with heart and soul to achieve this high ideal, to cement the unity between all the nations of the earth. Every heart will then be refreshed, all eyes will be opened, the most wonderful power will be given, the happiness of humanity will be assured.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in 1911. (1911!) From Paris Talks, p. 21
“[Syme had a] sense of a new comradeship and comfort. Through all this ordeal, his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy.”
G.K. Chesterton, from the novel The Man Who Was Thursday.
A somewhat backhanded tribute to marriage, but a sincere and unromanticized one.
“Why is it only Christians who cannot see the non-violence of Jesus?”
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI, pithily, soul of wit-tily, but I’m not sure where or when.
Wealth without Work.
Pleasure without Conscience.
Science without Humanity.
Knowledge without Character.
Politics without Principle.
Commerce without Morality.
Worship without Sacrifice.
(Widely cited formulation by Mohandas K. (Mahatma) GANDHI, in Stephen Covey’s Principle-Centered Leadership, for example. This is worth considerable meditation. And writing. And personal application.)
“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“There are those among you who want to see God with the same eyes with which you look at a cow and to love God as you love a cow – for the milk and the cheese.”
Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hochheim), Catholic theologian/philosopher, b. 1260, modern Germany. A blazingly brief condemnation of vain imaginings…
“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
Attributed, perhaps wrongly, to R.W. Emerson. A similar quotation was written in 1905 by a Bessie Stanley, and the development of the above quote (and its attribution to Emerson) is a mystery to me. But I love it anyway.