Here are some of my favorite quotations. This list includes the ones which randomly pop up on my index page. You may note that a good many of my opinions may be gleaned from this selection.

I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!
	-- Richard Feynman

Concern for people and their fate must always form the chief interest of all
technical endeavors in order that the creations of our mind shall be a
blessing, not a curse, to humanity. Never forget this amidst your diagrams
and equations.
	-- Albert Einstein

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it
because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If
nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were
not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.
	-- Henri Poincaré

If the population of the earth were to increase at the present rate
indefinitely, by A.D. 3530 the total mass of human flesh and blood would
equal the mass of the earth; and by A.D. 6826, the total mass of human
flesh and blood would equal the mass of the known universe.
	--Robert Fulghum, _All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten_ 

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give
orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem,
pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently,
die gallantly.  Specialization is for insects.
	--Robert Heinlein

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know, that's a
really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually
change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.
They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because
scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens
every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened
in politics or religion.
	--Carl Sagan

It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
	--Krishnamurti, (1895-1986)

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the 
heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. 
It is the opium of the people.
	--Karl Marx

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.
	--Blaise Pascal (Pensees, 1670)

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles, and to understand
the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in 
astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious,
and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters
of nature and the gods. For these men know that once ignorance is put
aside that wonderment would be taken away which is the only means by
which their authority is preserved.
	--Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677)

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe
nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
	--Thomas Jefferson, (letter to Rev. James Madison, July 19, 1788)

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much
liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.
	--Thomas Jefferson (letter to Archibald Stuart, Dec. 23, 1791,
		on the encroachments of state governments)

You will do me the justice to remember that I have always supported
the right of every man to his opinion, however different that opinion
might be to mine. He who denies to another this right makes a slave of
himself to present opinion because he precludes himself the right of
changing it. The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind
is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
	--Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason)

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on
society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual
tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they
have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no
instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people.
Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an
established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government,
instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.
	--James Madison (from Memorial and Remonstrance against
		Religious Assessments, 1785)

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own
good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of
theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
	--John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1859)

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.
	--Abraham Lincoln

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty
to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt
is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the
minds of men.
	--Robert Ingersoll (The Ghosts)

For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and
women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant
religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith.
The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the
known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to
prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to
misery hereafter. The few have said "Think" The many have said "Believe!"
	--Robert Ingersoll (Gods)

Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is
none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities,
sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face.
	--Murray Gell-Mann (Quark and the Jaguar)

Virtually every major technological advance in the history of the
human species-- back to the invention of stone tools and the
domestication of fire-- has been ethically ambiguous.
	--Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World)

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical
invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
	--Mark Twain 

Plurality is never to be posited without need.
	--Occam

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
	--Albert Camus (1913-1960)

I'll tell you something honestly about drugs.  Honestly - and I know
it's not a very popular idea.  You don't hear it very often any more.  
But it is the truth: I had a great time doing drugs.  Never murdered
anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone,
never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife, or kids.  Laughed my ass off,
and went about my day.
	--Bill Hicks, "Relentless"

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point.
	--Friedrich Nietzsche 

Now let us retract the foreskin of misconception and apply the wire
brush of enlightenment.
	--Geoff Miller, in comp.lang.perl.moderated

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should
burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I
would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to
live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.
	--Jack London

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move
in the opposite direction.
	--Albert Einstein

The process of scientific discovery is, in effect, a continual flight
from wonder.
	--Albert Einstein

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S
relativity.
	--Albert Einstein

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions,
a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in
a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it
clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it
is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as
our science can reveal it.
	--Albert Einstein, _The Human Side_, 1954

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has
forgotten the gift.
	--Albert Einstein

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm
not sure about the former.
	--Albert Einstein

I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics
to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind
it.
	--Albert Einstein, _The Human Side_, 1954

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should
be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality,
deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how
despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be
a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the
cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
	--Albert Einstein

If A equals success, then the formula is: A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play.
Z is keep your mouth shut.
	--Albert Einstein

The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied
to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of
the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
	--Albert Einstein

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong.
	--Henry Louis Mencken

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be
made in his subject and how to avoid them.
	--Werner Heisenberg

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see
them misunderstood.
	--Henry Louis Mencken

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
	--Bertrand Russell

Ignorance feeds on ignorance. Science phobia is contagious.
	--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with
insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change
alone control the world?
	--Euripides, Hecuba

One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and
fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate
evidence.
	--Bertrand Russell

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
	--Thomas Jefferson

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
	--Bertrand Russell

The state is made for man, not man for the state.... That is to say,
the state should be our servant and not we its slaves.
	--Albert Einstein

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence;
it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
	--Bertrand Russell

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more so.
	--Albert Einstein

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
	--Thomas Paine

No miracle has ever taken place under conditions science can accept.
Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times
and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence
of persons who are disposed to believe them.
	--Ernest Renan

Knowledge is power.
	--Thomas Hobbes

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.
	--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
	--Sun Tzu

Information is the currency of democracy.
	--Thomas Jefferson

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
	--Albert Einstein

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be
exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.
	--Thomas Jefferson

He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself.
	--Thomas Paine

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be
maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
	--Abraham Lincoln

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be
their own governours, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge
gives.
	--James Madison, quoted on the Library of Congress

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that
could provoke such a question.
	--Charles Babbage

In view of the stupidity of the majority of the people, a widely held
opinion is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
	--Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and
catastrophe.
	--H. G. Wells

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat
it.
	--Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Speech (1801)

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate
any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
	--Thomas Jefferson

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
without knowledge, of things without parallel.
	--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion,
and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish.
	--Timothy Jones

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
	--Edward Everett

Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.
	--Mark Twain

By nature's law, every man has a right to seize and retake by force
his own property taken from him by another, by force of fraud. Nor is
this natural right among the first which is taken into the hands of
regular government after it is instituted. It was long retained by our
ancestors. It was a part of their common law, laid down in their books,
recognized by all the authorities, and regulated as to circumstances of
practice.
	--Thomas Jefferson

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions; it only guarantees
equality of opportunity.
	--Irving Kristol

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
	--John Maynard Keynes

Finally I am becoming stupider no more.
	--Paul Erdös' epitaph, written by himself

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the
customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for
work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its
result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the
community.
	--Albert Einstein

Fiction is a noble pursuit.  Ideally, it profoundly changes the ways
in which people perceive their experience.
	--Norman Mailer

Most people are not really free.  They are confined by the niche in
the world that they carve out for themselves.  They limit themselves
to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.
	--V. S. Naipaul

Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by
the truth.
	--Nozick

The maxim that people should not have a right till they are ready to
exercise it properly, is worthy of the fool in the old story who
resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
	--Macaulay

Never tell people how to do things.  Tell them what you want them to
achieve, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
	--George Patton

It is the first step of wisdom to recognize that the major advances
in civilization are processes which all but wreck the society in which
they occur.
	--Alfred North Whitehead

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve
change amid order.
	--Alfred North Whitehead

Our institutions and values are in jeopardy as the mores of the
market pervade all social life in this country.  Loyalty, honesty,
courage, discipline, patriotism, and commitment to family are being
crowded out by the goals and rules of economic rationality -- do
whatever makes the most money.
	--Barry Schwartz

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he
knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known
nothing but what has passed under his own eye.
	--Thomas Jefferson

There is no legitimate religion apart from truth.
	--John Calvin

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in
the kingdom of the blind.
	--Kurt Vonnegut, _Player Piano_

Computers don't poop, fart, fuck, or laugh, and cannot detect irony.
These, then, are the distinguishing characteristics of humanity.
	--Eric Idle, _The Road to Mars_

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make
their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of
water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still
have to drink water from time to time.
	--Kurt Vonnegut

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
	--John Stuart Mill

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,           
which is the exact opposite.
	--Bertrand Russell, _Skeptical Essays_

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man.
	--George Bernard Shaw

Why, of course people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a
farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it
is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people
don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter
in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of
a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter
to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist
dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same in any country.
	--Hermann Goering (1893 - 1946), at the Nuremburg Trials


Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than
in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.
	--J. R. R. Tolkien (as Haldir the elf), _The Fellowship of the Ring_

The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it
away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is
something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it
away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are
free...
	--Utah Phillips

What lawyers call "intellectual property" is -- as every Latin
student knows -- no more than theft from the public domain.
	--Andy Mueller-Maguhn


The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should
expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and
no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
	--Richard Dawkins

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of
it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and
understand, for all that is life.
	--Jiddu Krishnamurti


Stuff your eyes with wonder.  Live as if you'd drop dead in ten
seconds.  See the world.  It's more fantastic than any dream made or
paid for in factories.
	--Ray Bradbury


They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
	--Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in
peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick
the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and
may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
	--Samuel Adams

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never--in nothing
great or small, large or petty--never give in except to convictions
of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the
apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
	--Winston Churchill, 29 October 1941, at the Harrow School

We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and
security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that law and order
can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties
surrendered for whatever good reason are freedom lost.
	--Walter Cronkite, in the preface to the 1984 edition of 1984

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within
limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.  I do not add
"within the limits of the law," because law is often but the tyrant's
will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
	--Thomas Jefferson, 1819, in a letter to Isaac H. Tiffany

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
	--Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

I am not going to question your opinions.  I am not going to meddle
with your belief.  I am not going to dictate to you mine.  All that I
say is, examine, inquire.  Look into the nature of things.  Search
out the grounds of your opinions, the for and the against.  Know why
you believe, understand what you believe, and possess a reason for
the faith that is in you.
	--Frances Wright (1795-1852), in "Divisions of Knowledge," 1828

Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living! I take
exercise every afternoon that way. Oh, to just grip your handlebars
and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and
road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds, avoiding
collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the
time when you're going to smash up. Well now, that's something! And
then go home again after three hours of it, into the tub, rub down
well, then into a soft shirt and down to the dinner table, with the
evening paper and a glass of wine in prospect - and then to think
that tomorrow I can do it all over again!
	--Jack London

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work
becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount
a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on
anything but the ride you are taking.
	--Arthur Conan Doyle, in Scientific American, January 18, 1896

I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas.  I'm
frightened of the old ones.
	--John Cage (1912-1992)


To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we
are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and
servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
	--Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th U.S. President, 1918

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by
men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
	--U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928

Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no
claim to it.  It is not the function of our government to keep the
citizen from falling into error, it is the function of the citizen to
keep the government from falling into error.
	--Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1950

Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern
world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of
being identified with the majority... Human salvation lies in the
hands of the creatively maladjusted.
	--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Strength to Love, 1963)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
	--Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself", 1855


The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian
of true liberty.
	--James Madison, June 30 1825, in a letter to George Thomson


We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend
to be.
	--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., 1970

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,                                      
The signet of its all-enslaving power,                                         
Upon a shining ore, and called it gold;                                        
Before whose image bow the vulgar great,                                       
The vainly rich, the miserable proud,                                          
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings,                                
And with blind feelings reverence the power                                    
That grinds them to the dust of misery.                                        
	--Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab V.

People say they don't care about politics; they're not involved or
don't want to get involved, but they are.  Their involvement just
masquerades as indifference or inattention.  It is the silent
acquiescence of the millions that supports the system.  When you
don't oppose a system, your silence becomes approval, for it does
nothing to interrupt the system.  People use all sorts of excuses for
the indifference... Many people say it's insane to resist the system,
but actually, it is insane not to.
	--Mumia Abu-Jamal 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  I like to believe
that People in the long run are going to do more to promote peace
than our government.  Indeed I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days governments had best get out of the way and
let them have it.
	--Dwight D. Eisenhower

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level
of thinking we were at when we created them.
	--Albert Einstein

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he
has, or how he is regarded by others.
	--Arthur Schopenhauer

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country
the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit
out of the public for a number of years, the government and the
courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the
future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary
public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute
nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right
to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped or
turned back, for their private benefit.
	--Robert A. Heinlein

On two subjects the overwhelming majority of people regarded
their own opinions as Absolute Truth, and sincerely believed that
anyone who disagreed with them was immoral, outrageous, sinful,
sacrilegious, offensive, intolerable, stupid, illogical, treasonable,
actionable, against the public interest, ridiculous, and obscene. The
two subjects were (of course) sex and religion.
	--Robert A. Heinlein

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more
and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and
glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright
moron.
	--H.L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority.  The more
uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is
right and what is wrong.  All human progress, even in morals, has
been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not
of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them.  The truly
civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in
all others.  His culture is based on "I am not too sure."
	--H.L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956)

Our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit. We may
choose not to find access to it, we may even deny its existence,
but it is indeed there inside us, and there are chemicals that can
catalyze its availability.
	--Alexander Shulgin

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live.
	--Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle" (in conclusion)

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
	--Charles Darwin

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others
of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power
called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as
long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it
forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver
cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is
that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the
whole of it.  He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction
himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely
spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual
instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have
been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their
density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move,
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive
appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of
property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising
from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may
produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the
will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from
any body.
	--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813

If there is a sin against life, it consists in hoping for another
life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
	--Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history
of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made
to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. [...] This
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may
be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes
nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out
just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out
the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon
them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either
words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by
the endurance of those whom they oppress.
	--Frederick Douglass, 1857


In the face of eternity, art that lasts only a minute is just as
valid as art that lasts a millenium.
	--Lucio Fontana, Italian artist (1899-1968)


Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires
a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility
of an opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a
many-sided truth.
	--Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil
secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens.  They who
can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely
under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of
war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.
	--Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677)