It seems that everybody has an opinion these days...

The World is changed by your example, 
not by your opinion.

~ Paul Coelho

Sagan wrote this in 1995...

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and not one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues;  when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.  

~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

deja vu all over again...

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

~ Ecclesiastes 1:9 
“It’s no use going back to yesterday,” said Alice, “because I was a different person then.”

~ Alice, in Alice in Wonderland

What do you want after you stop caring about your life?

I want to save my life while I still care about it.
I want a divorce.
~ female protagonist in the HBO show, Divorce
A great warrior is just an average man with laser-like focus.

~ Bruce Lee
Are you ready to change the energy of the universe?

~ Natalie Maines, of the Dixie Chicks, at a Sept 2016 concert in Kansas City
Unless you puke, faint, or die,
keep going
~ Jillian Michaels
The sky is not really the same when your are watching it alone.
~ Clark, to Lana. Smallville
Time marches, choices narrow.
~ Nancy on Weeds
Without doing, dreaming is useless.
~ Rilla Alexander
Troubles hurt the most when they are proved self-inflicted.
~ Sophicles


The man who has no imagination has no wings.
~ Muhammad Ali (1942 - 2016)
Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them. 
 ~ Louis Armstrong

When you’ve been constantly repeating the need for a “revolution” and it still hasn’t happened, you are probably not the one who will be leading it.

— John in Winter Park, Fla., reacting to a NYTimes article about Senator Bernie Sanders seeking to damage Hillary Clinton’s standing late in the Democratic race.
"Isn't it frustrating?  Wanting somebody who doesn't want you back?"
~Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones 
What is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

~ Albert Camus
Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

~ Zora Neale Hurston
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

~ Anais Nim

Close, but no cigar

Shame sticks to you like tar...

~ Monica Lewinski

A zen story

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered this monastery. I beg you to teach me.”

Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?”

The monk replied, “I have.”

“Then,” said Joshu, “Go and wash your bowl."

 At that moment the monk was enlightened.

A meditation regarding the people who believe that Donald Trump really saw muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey City...

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be:
An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

Whoever said it, it's good advice

"Let's keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out."

~ attributed to Judge Harry Stone on Night Court
~ also attributed to Carl Sagin

~ originally said by Walter Kotschnig

Dooby dooby doo!

"Ubi dubium, ibi libertas"

with doubt, there is freedom

How's the view from down there?

Sometimes, you just have to lay in the gutter and watch the cars go by...

~ Steve, on periodic melancholia
The virtue of a man ought to be measured, not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct.

~ Blaise Pascal

Leonard Nimoy's last tweet...

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. 
LLAP


~ Leonard Nimoy 

Now if I could just find that person...

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
~ Robert A. Heinlein
The World only spins forward.

~ Tony Kushner

Isaac had some good ones...

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' "

~ Isaac Asimov
You  can't reason a person out of a conclusion they arrived at unreasonably.
The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones...
There are four kinds of persons:  zeal without knowledge; knowledge without zeal; neither knowledge nor zeal; both zeal and knowledge.

~ Pascal, Pensees

Open your eyes, man!

It's just a matter of time before a man opens his eyes and gives up his one dream, his one dream of happiness.
~ Ronny (played by Nicholas Cage) in Moonstruck

Hut, two, three, four...

Time marches,
choices narrow.

~ Nancy on Weeds

Original Haiku...composed on a gym treadmill

A leaf-covered path.
A moon-lit night, just us two;
walking hand in hand.

I'm packed and ready to go...

Travel brings power and love back into your life.

~ Rumi

Sometimes easier said than done...

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.

~ Oprah Winfrey

At least now you know...

I've been honest with you.
I simply cannot love you the way you want me to.

~ Dr. Miranda Jones, on the Star Trek episode Is There in Truth No Beauty?

Both in music and in life...

You get zero points for playing hard things badly.

~Tommy Igoe

Pertaining to the Super Bowl...or any event in your life, really.

Act like you've been here before.

~ Vince Lombardi

Guess some of us are missing out...

Love is life.

And if you miss love, you miss life.

~ Leo Buscaglia

Zen Stories

A monk said to Joshu, “I have just entered this monastery. Please teach me.” 

"Have you eaten your breakfast?" asked Joshu

"Yes, I have," replied the monk.

"Then you had better wash your bowl," said Joshu.

With this the monk gained insight.

Steve Jobs' last words...

Oh, wow.  Oh, wow.  Oh, wow.
Don't acquire what you can't afford...

90 square foot apartment in downtown Manhattan

Do you smell something?

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere. 
~ Henry David Thoreau
Being with someone you love is high on the list of life's great pleasures. But so is vanishing for days into a cherished pursuit with no one to answer to. So is not having to deal with another person's schedule, stomach or tiresome shtick. And in case you haven't heard, marriage, for all its hype, can be a real bummer sometimes. I've been lonely married and I've been lonely single, and compared to the torture of sleeping beside someone you no longer love, or know has left the building, or maybe are hoping will choke in his sleep, lonely single is a walk in the park.

~ Wendy Dennis, 'Are You Dating Yet?'
A man is what he thinks about all day long.
~ Emerson
The soul is dyed the color of it’s thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice, Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is WHO you become. Your integrity is your destiny, it is the light that guides your way.
~ Author unknown
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
~ Stephen King
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
~ Christopher Hitchens
“…the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life; the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” 
– Hubert H. Humphrey

Songs, or elections, whatever

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.
I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”
~ singer-songwriter Woodie Guthrie
WYSIWYG: Enjoying life is the direct result of a favorable attitude

~ read on a Bahama vacation chat list...
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God. 

~ Lenny Bruce
Artists understand that new isn't for everyone.  It's not even for most people.  Pass them by. They can catch up later.
~ Seth Godin

I gotta admit, I see his point...

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.
You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.
  ~ Paul Krugman in The Angry Rich Op Ed in the NYT, Sept 19, 2010
I
didn't
shoplift
the pootie!

~ Jerry in Jerry MaGuire
Anyone who would use religion as their reason to cause unhappiness to another is guilty of a great sin. 


These sins are committed first against their children. They have learned nothing from their faiths. The extremists of both Christianity and Islam, for example, follow lives of violent repudiation of the beliefs of their own religions.


~ Robert Ebert, while commenting on Christopher Hitchens' book on Religion.
When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

~ Lao Tzu