Whether you agree or disagree with the perspectives listed here from many great thinkers, below are some thought-provoking quotes I have accumulated over the years from a variety of sources. I list them here, because they have given me pause for thought and hope that perhaps they may do the same for others. Critical thinking is important to maintaining a free society. Please feel welcome to send me some of your favorite quotes, and I may add them here.
“Paranoia is having all the facts.” — William Burroughs
“You don’t realize until you get much older that government is nothing but people — and people lie, especially where money and power are concerned.” — Jesse Ventura
“When you look back on how the power brokers have deceived us over the years, it gets pretty damned depressing. Maybe that’s why so many people prefer to remain in denial.” — Jesse Ventura
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” — Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862
“Are policymakers, economists and peak oilists starting to speak the same language? A rash of papers, comments and interviews have made us think this recently. It’s not as simple as ‘policymakers are waking up to peak oil’, but that all those groups – and indeed, industry – are increasingly talking about the same issues looming in fossil fuel production, even if they’re using different terminology.” — Kate Mackenzie, energy writeer, The Financial Times, April 26, 2010
“The maxim of sustainable development is not ‘limits to growth’; it is ‘the growth of limits.’ We must learn to recognize, and live within, limits of physical impact beyond which degradation of ecosystems, resources, and consequently human welfare are inevitable and progressive.” — Jim MacNeill, Pieter Winsemius, and Taizo Yakushiji in Beyond Interdependence (1991)
“The trouble with being tolerant is that people think you don’t understand the problem.” — Merle L. Meacham
“What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that its people preserve the spirit of resistance?” — Thomas Jefferson
“The older generation almost always fails to understand the younger one — they think their own immutable values the only ones . . . And so the older generation barks like a dog at what they don’t understand.” — Count Leo Tolstoy
“To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.” — F. A. Hayek. (Austrian economist and Nobel laureate)
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” — Edmund Burke
“There are no eternal facts as there are no absolute truths.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” –Alexander Graham Bell
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” — James Madison
“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell
“The real winners in life are the people who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better.” — Barbara Pletcher
“It’s a funny thing about life. If you refuse to accept anything but the best, very often you get it.” — Somerset Maugham
“When you get right down to the root of the meaning of the word ‘succeed,’ you find it simply means to follow through.” — F. W. Nichol
“An ethical man is a Christian holding four aces.” — Mark Twain
“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much negative feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.” — Eric Fromm
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.” — H. G. Wells
“You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” — Bob Hope
“Old age is when you first realize other people’s faults are no worse than your own.” — Edgar A. Schoaff
“Passions are vices or virtues in their highest powers.” — Johann W. von Goethe
“I love you just like I am.” — Albert Einstein
“Wisdom is not the result of education in school. It is the result of a lifelong struggle to achieve it.” — Albert Einstein
“Only the life devoted to other beings is worth living.” — Albert Einstein
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” — Murray Rothbard (Austrian economist)
“Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death.” — Betty Bender
“Only begin and then the mind grows heated; only begin and the task will be completed.” — Johann W. von Goethe
“Patriotism is no substitute for a sound currency.” — Grover Cleveland
“How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one’s senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.” — Norman Douglas
“Life is truly about failures, and how you respond to them. You can’t succeed without also failing.” — Jesse Ventura
“When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.” — Rudolf Bahro
“A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.” — Bertrand de Jouvenal
“You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experiences to the highest advantage of others.” — Buckminster Fuller
“Economics is not a dry subject. It is not a dismal subject. It is not about statistics. It is about human life. It is about the ideas that motivate human beings. It is about how men [and women] act from birth until death. It is about the most important and interesting drama of all — human action.” — Percy Greaves (economist)
“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” – Richard Dawkins
“The most violent element in society is ignorance.” — Emma Goldman
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” — H. L. Mencken
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” — Rep. Ron Paul, MD
“There’s something contagious about demanding freedom.” — Robin Morgan
“People only see what they are prepared to see.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency . . . the banks and corporations will deprive the people of all property.” — Thomas Jefferson (1802)
“Under their Constitution, the American People can have just about anything they want. But it seems they just don’t want very much.” — Eugene V. Debs
“Inaction is action.” — Ralph Nader
“Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know.” — M. King Hubbert
“The universal language is respect. Despite the many different gestures or behaviors people bring with them, people will respect and work with those who are willing to listen and understand.” — Yu-Fen Huang
“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.” — Robert Frost
“Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.”– Abbie Hoffman
“If you do not passionately and consistently advocate and support that which you believe, then you do not deserve a future of progress.” — Paul Dumouchelle
“Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow.” — Chateaubriand
“If your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” — Mark Twain
“The only place where democracy comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Ralph Nader
“What you can do, or dream you can, begin it: Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” — Johann W. von Goethe
“You never change the existing reality by fighting it. Instead, create a new model that makes the old one obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller
“When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Revolutions are born of hope, not despair.” — Peter Kropotkin
“Ask a question and you’re a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you’re a fool for the rest of your life.” — Chinese proverb
“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” — John Lennon
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination reaches around the world.” — Albert Einstein
“What humanity owes to Buddha, Moses and Jesus, is of more value to me than all achievements of the investigating and constructive mind.” — Albert Einstein (1937)
“I don’t know how World War III will be fought, but I do know that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” — Albert Einstein
“If mankind wants to survive, we will need a new way of thinking.” — Albert Einstein
“Everything depends on the observer.” — Albert Einstein (1905)
“It is your mind that creates this world.” — Buddha (2500 BCE)
“So I live without meat or fish and feel quite well with it. It seems to me that man was not being born as a predator. Nothing is better for human health and for surviving than a well balanced vegetarian diet.” — Albert Einstein
“Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.” — Albert Szent-Gyorgi
“You have brains in your head, and feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.” — Dr. Seuss
“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out-of-date.” — Roger von Oech
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” — Walt Disney
“It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Never mistake activity for achievement.” — Mabel Newcomber
“Some men see things as they are and ask ‘why?’ I dream things that never were and ask, ‘why not?'” — George Bernard Shaw
“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where you stand as in what direction you are moving.” — Johann W. von Goethe
“It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.” — Charles F. Kettering
“Millions say the apple fell, but Newton was the one to ask why.” — Bernard Baruch
“If you have never been amazed by the very fact that we exist, we are squandering the greatest fact of all.” — W. A. Durant
“A riot is the language of the unheard.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
“We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.” — George Santayana
“The future is of our own making — and the most striking characteristic of the century is just that development.” — Joseph Conrad
“Your imagination can focus on ugliness, distress, and failure, or it can picture beauty, success, desired results. You decide how you want your imagination to serve you.” — Philip Conley
“The human mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy; am I or are the others crazy?” — Albert Einstein
“I call intuition cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you’ve got to hook the fish.” — Buckminster Fuller
“It may be those who do most, dream most.” — Stephen Leacock
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” — Henry David Thoreau
“If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you always got.” — Author Unknown
“My interest is in the future….because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.” — Charles F. Kettering
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anais Nin
“Creative thinking may simply mean the realization that there’s no particular virtue in doing things the way you have always done them.” — Rudolph Flesch
“Often you just have to rely on your intuition.” — Bill Gates
“Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.” — Jose Ortega y Gasset
“Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.” — W. J. Cameron
“I shut my eyes in order to see.” — Paul Gauguin
“If we wish to make a new world, we have the material ready. The first one, too, was made out of chaos.” — Robert Quillen
“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.” — Louisa May Alcott
“Love doesn’t make the world go ’round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” — Franklin Jones
“People don’t really care how much you know until they know how much you care.” — Mike McNight
“There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity.” — Tom Peters
“Everyone in a successful organization must be willing and ready to risk. Risk is like change; it’s not a choice.” — Max DePree
“The world is advancing, and that means than an organization must be willing to change and improve. The only sacred cow in an organization is its principles.” — Buck Rodgers
“People are far more interesting and successful when they are less concerned about being normal, and more concerned about being natural.” — Michael Nolan
“Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.” — Ken Hakuta
“Work hard to keep things simple. Simple solutions solve complex problems; complex solutions rarely accomplish anything.” — Crag O. McCaw
“I use not only the brain I have but all I can borrow.” — Woodrow Wilson
“This became a credo of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.” — Bette Davis
“You can either take action or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.” — Peter Drucker
“Losers fix the blame; winners fix the situation. Losers say, ‘Why don’t they do something?’ Winners say, ‘Here’s something I can do.” — Author Unknown
“Great discoveries and achievements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.” — Alexander Graham Bell
“All humanity is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those who are movable, and those who move!” — Benjamin Franklin
“To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure. But the person who risks nothing cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Only a person who risks is free.” — The Dilemma
“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength — one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” — Booker T. Washington
“The greatest crime in the world is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping others.” — Roger Williams
“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Fail forward fast.” — Tom Peters
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” — Theodore Roosevelt
“Luck is earned. Luck doesn’t mean that the whole world is out to do you good. Luck is working so hard at your craft, service or enterprise that sooner or later you get a break.” — Paul Hawken
“Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.” — Thomas Jefferson
“Formula for success: Underpromise; and overdeliver.” — Tom Peters
“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” — Peter Drucker
If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you,” — Steven Jobs
“I could not sleep when I got on the hunt for an idea, until I had caught it. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck with me.” — Abraham Lincoln
“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.” — Louis Pasteur
“If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep even as Michelangelo painted. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great streetsweeper.'” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I never did anything worth doing by accident; nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.” — Thomas Edison
“There are risks and costs to a program of action — but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” — John F. Kennedy
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” — Woody Allen
“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” — Galatians 6:9
“Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by those who are doing it.” — Author Unknown
“Anyone with a new idea is a crank — until the idea succeeds.” — Mark Twain
“Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been erected to a critic.” — Jean Sibelius
“No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helps you.” — Wilma Rudolph
“Leadership is action, not position.” — Donald H. McGannon
“High achievers spot rich opportunities swiftly, make big decisions quickly and move into action immediately. Follow these principles and you can make your dreams come true.” — Dr. Robert Schuller
“It’s not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.” — Seneca
“Those you have followed passionately, gladly, zealously have made you feel like somebody. It wasn’t merely because they had the job or the power — they somehow made you feel terrific to be around them.” — Irwin Federman
“Trust each other again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.” — David Armistead