Freedom is not fun. It is not the same as individual happiness, nor is it security or peace or progress. It is a responsible choice. Freedom is not so much a right as a duty. Real freedom is not freedom from something; that would be license. It is freedom to choose between doing or not doing something, to act one way or another, to hold … [ Read more ]
Author: Peter Drucker | Subject: Freedom | Liberty
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Author: Unknown | Subjects: Gratitude, Imagination
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Author: Albert Einstein | Subjects: Intelligence | Knowledge, Wisdom
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Author: Oscar Wilde | Subjects: Life & Society, Perception | Observation
The purpose of life is to find your gift. The meaning of life is to give it away.
Author: Unknown | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Philosophy
If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be unhappy for the rest of your life.
Author: Abraham Maslow | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night of the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
Author: William Shakespeare | Subjects: Life & Society, Wisdom
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
Author: Plato | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
Properly speaking, there are in the world no such men as self-made men. The term implies an individual independence of the past and present which can never exist.
Author: Frederick Douglass | Subject: Success / Failure
To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Author: Walker Percy | Subjects: Life & Society, Meaning
We misunderstand Congress’s role if we demand that it be a model of efficiency and quick action. America’s founders never intended it to be that. They clearly understood that one of the key roles of Congress is to slow down the process—to allow tempers to cool and to encourage careful deliberation, so that unwise or damaging laws do not pass in the heat of the … [ Read more ]
Author: Lee H. Hamilton | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
The first and liveliest of the passions inspired by equality of status is the love of equality itself.
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville | Subjects: Perception | Observation, Philosophy
How can knowledgeable, reasonable, pragmatic men work for their own servitude, thinking they’re struggling for their freedom? That is what is called ideology.
Author: Bernard-Henri Lévy | Subjects: Freedom | Liberty, Perception | Observation, Politics & Public Policy
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we … [ Read more ]
Author: Joan Didion | Subjects: Material Possessions, Perception | Observation
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 […] Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.
Author: Thomas Jefferson | Subjects: Law | Legal, Politics & Public Policy
Humility is admitting that I don’t know the whole story. Compassion is recognizing that you don’t know it either.
Author: Unknown | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
Author: Robert Frost | Subject: Gratitude
A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children.
Author: John James Audubon | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Politics & Public Policy
Until humans can solve their philosophical problems, they’re condemned to solve their political problems over and over and over again. It’s a cruel, repetitious bore.
Author: Tom Robbins | Subjects: Philosophy, Politics & Public Policy
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Author: Martin Luther King Jr. | Subjects: Character, Family & Friends, Life & Society, Miscellaneous, Relationships