Elif Shafak (October 25, 1971 -) I’d definitely say read more women. Read women writers, women journalists, women poets, women academics. And when I say women, I mean women of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds: Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Jewish, Greek. Turkey is a country of collective amnesia. Read those writers who bear witness to the …
André Aciman On Beauty
André Aciman (January 02, 1951 -) Under the spell of beauty, we experience a rare condition called plenitude, where we want for nothing.
Rachel Carson On The Mysterious
Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907–April 14, 1964) A large part of my life has been concerned with some of the beauties and mysteries of this earth about us, and with the even greater mysteries of the life that inhabits it. No one can dwell long among such subjects without thinking rather deep thoughts, without asking …
Robert Frost On Life
Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. "It goes on."
Albert Camus On Death
Albert Camus (November 07, 1913 – January 04, 1960) What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.
Alice Koller On Loving
Alice Koller Perhaps loving something is the only starting place there is for making your life your own.
Jyoti Donovan On Enlightenment And God
Jyoti Donovan Enlightenment is all there is. It's already here, and it's always here. It's you and me and all of this totality. It's the only thing going on, eternally. It's recognizing that all is God—not God as an all-knowing deity separate from the world, answering prayers or delivering judgments, but God as the source …
David Frederick Attenborough On Climate Change
David Frederick Attenborough (May 08 1926 -) This is an urgent problem that has to be solved and, what's more, we know how to do it - that's the paradoxical thing, that we're refusing to take steps that we know have to be taken... Every year that passes makes those steps more and more difficult …
Continue reading "David Frederick Attenborough On Climate Change"
Marie Corelli On Death
Marie Corelli (May 01, 1855 – April 21, 1924) There is no death. What we think of as death is merely one of life's greatest transitions.
Hannah Arendt On Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906 – December 04, 1975) What he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No …
Joy Harjo On Responsibility
Joy Harjo (May 09, 1951 -) I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to all the sources that I am: to all past and future ancestors, to my home country, to all places that I touch down on and that are myself, to all voices, all women, all of my tribe, all people, all …
Fanny Howe On The Present
Fanny Howe (October 15, 1940 -) Wherever I step I am stepping into a place that was just finished at the moment I arrived... If I freeze here, one foot poised to go forward, to land on the path, I will at least be living in the present and the past will know it.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On Living
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004) It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive — to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions …
Alexander Hamilton On Sacred Rights
Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 – July 12, 1804) The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by …
Martin L King On Freedom And Oppression
Martin L King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but … groups are more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that …
Fyodor Dostoyevsky On Life
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881) When I look back at the past and think how much time was spent in vain, how much of it was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in the inability to live; how I failed to value it, how many times I sinned against my …
Ed Simon On The Collapse Of Democracy
Ed Simon Today democracy is imperiled not by civil war but by a citizenry torn apart by warring ideologies, in part because of the compelling, if nihilistic, story that authoritarians have told about nationality. An authoritarian promises a shallow union with others who look like you; the true democrat ensures that such a union is …
A Letter From Home
Hazel L Phillips (January 06, 1926 - July 12 2013) True wisdom comes to us in many varied forms and from many sources. My mother was and continues to be a deep well of wisdom in my life. Her letter was handwritten but is typed out below. I received this letter following the tragic death …
Hans Cloos On The Past
Hans Cloos (November 8, 1885 – September 26, 1951) We translate the earth’s language into our own, and enrich the already bright and colorful surface of the present with the knowledge of the inexhaustible abundance of the past.
Erich Fromm On Mastering The Art Of Love
Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other …
Robert Penn Warren On Poetry
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905–September 15, 1989) For the basic fact about poetry is that it demands participation, from the secret physical echo in muscle and nerve that identifies us with the medium, to the imaginative enactment that stirs the deepest recesses where life-will and values reside. Beyond that, it nourishes our life-will in …
Albert Schweitzer On Inhumanity
Albert Schweitzer (January 14, 1875 – September 04, 1965) What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in …
Milarepa On Religion
Jetsun Milarepa My religion is to live — and die — without regret.
Lucinda Williams On Understanding
Lucinda Williams (January 26, 1953 -) Above all, the listener should be able to understand the poem or the song, not be forced to unravel a complicated, self-indulgent puzzle. Offer your art up to the whole world, not just an elite few.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi On The Universe
Albert Szent-Györgyi (September 16, 1893 – October 22, 1986) The universe is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Albert Einstein On Great Spirits
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Alan Watts On Connection
Alan Wilson Watts (January 06, 1915 – November 16, 1973) What do you feel when you look out at the galaxies where the sky is clear? You see this colossal affair that you are involved in. It makes a lot of people feel very small, but it shouldn't. It should make you feel as big …
Al Gore On The Environment
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (March 31, 1948 -) You look at that river gently flowing by. You notice the leaves rustling with the wind. You hear the birds; you hear the tree frogs. In the distance you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. It’s …
Aesop On Kindness
Aesop(c. 620 – 564 BCE) No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
John Malkovich On Insanity
John Malkovich as Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom From The Film: Con Air What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years, at the end of which they tell you to pissoff. Ending up in some retirement village in Florida hoping to die before suffering the indignity of …
Spike Lee On Patriotism
Shelton Jackson “Spike” Lee March 20, 1957 -) We (Black Americans) have always believed in the promise of what this country could be; we’re very patriotic. But I think that patriotism is when you speak truth to power. It’s patriotic to speak out about the injustices in this country. That is being an American patriot.
Adyashanti On Death
Adyashanti (October 26, 1962 -) Death is nothing more than a change of form. But only someone who really knows who they are knows that. And only someone who knows that can actually live life.
Adlai Stevenson On Leadership
Adlai Ewing Ferd Stevenson II (February 5, 1900 – July 14, 1965) What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose.
