The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.
~Jean de la Bruyere
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
~Albert Einstein
In all affairs it's a healthy thing, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
~Bertrand Russell
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
~Galileo Galilei
I believe that to meet the challenge of the next century, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for his or her own self, family or nation, but for the benefit of all mankind.
~His Holiness the Dalai Lama (1994)
A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.
~Steven Wright
If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still foolish.
~Anatole France
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
~Carl Sagan
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.
~Theodore Roosevelt
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.
~Charles Evans Hughes
Without love we could not survive. Human beings are social creatures, and a concern for each other is the very basis of our life together.
~His Holiness the Dalai Lama
If you have a reason, you don't need to shout.
~Zen proverb
Learning is like a design in water, contemplation like a design on the side of a wall, meditation like a design in stone.
~Adept Godrakpa, "Hermit of Go Cliffs"
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
~Sun Tsu
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.
~James Madison
The you that goes in one side of the meditation experience is not the same you that comes out the other side.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"
Source: BeliefNet.com, Daily Buddhist Wisdom
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
~Mark Twain
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
~Thomas Paine
A religion true to its natures must also be concerned about man's social conditions. Religion deals with both earth and heaven, both time and eternity. Religion operates not only on the vertical plane but also on the horizontal. It seeks not only to integrate men with God but to integrate men with men and each man with himself.
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
We should quickly seize enlightenment while we still have the chance. In much less than a century all of us will be dead. We cannot be sure that we will be alive even tomorrow. There is no time to procrastinate. I who am giving this teaching have no guarantee that I will live out this day.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Source: Beliefnet.com Daily Buddhist Wisdom
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
-Thomas Jefferson
What can be gained by thinking about the scriptures? What fools! They think themselves to death with information about the path, but never take the plunge! -Ramakrishna
Source: BeliefNet.com, Daily Hindu Wisdom
Suppose a man were wounded by an arrow, and when the surgeon arrived, he said to him, "Don't pull out this arrow until I know who shot it, what tree it comes from, who made it, and what kind of bow was used." Certainly the man would die before he discovered the answers. In the same way, if you say you will not be a monk unless I solve all the questions of the world, you are likely to die unsatisfied. -Majjhima Nikaya
Source: BeliefNet.com, Daily Buddhist Wisdom
Adopting an attitude of universal responsibility is essentially a personal matter. The real test of compassion is not what we say in abstract discussions but how we conduct ourselves in daily life.
-His Holiness the Dalai Lama, "Imagine All the People"
