“There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behooves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.” James Truslow Adams

'When You're Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression'

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” – Dalai Lama

“The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom.”
-Bell Hooks

"And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, Freedom or loneliness?”
-Milan Kundera-The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

“I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks

“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

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” – Michelangelo

“The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.” – Niccolò Machiavelli

“There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.”
Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir

"So, let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.“
John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

“Beware of destination addiction, a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job, and with the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.”
– Robert Holden

"Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar."
—William Wordsworth

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”
George Bernard Shaw

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
Chief Seattle

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
—Zora Neale Hurston

“The most beautiful people we meet in life are often those who have walked through fire.”
Ernest Hemingway

“One has either to take people as they are, or leave them as they are. One cannot change them, one can merely disturb their balance. A human being, after all, is not made up of single pieces, from which a single piece can be taken out and replaced by something else.”
Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” - Bob Marley

“Listen carefully to me. Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention... There is no difference in the person who intends to do things differently and the one who never thinks about it in the first place. Have you ever considered how often we judge ourselves by our intentions while we judge others by their actions? Yet intention without action is an insult to those who expect the best from you.”
— Andy Andrews

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
Hunter S. Thompson

“Life is no brief candle to me.
It is a sort of splendid torch, that I have a hold of for the moment, and
I want to pass it on to future genrations. That is the goal, right?”
Dr Tom O'Bryan

“You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect—you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break—her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.”
Bob Marley

“To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out to another is to risk involvement,
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return,
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair,
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.
Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.”
― Leo F. Buscaglia

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend”
Bruce Lee

“I will not have you without the darkness that hides within you. I will not let you have me without the madness that makes me. If our demons cannot dance, neither can we.”
Nikita Gill

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Anais Nin

“Don't speak negatively about yourself, even as a joke. Your body doesn't know the difference. Words are energy and they cast spells, that's why it's called spelling. Change the way you speak about yourself, and you can change your life.”
Bruce Lee

“Whenever I see someone with an abundance of empathy, I want to ask what heartbreak they have endured, for compassion is often birthed in the valley of despair.”
— Zoe Clark-Coates

“So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two, and to heal the state of man.” –Aristophanes (Plato’s Symposium)

“When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.” – Tecumseh

“I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.”
Robin Williams

“If it's out of your hands, it deserves freedom from your mind too.”
Ivan Nuru

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Laozi

"We can’t know all of what we will be in this lifetime until we see the last day and take our final breath. All that happened, all of the mistakes we worked to correct, all harms that we endeavored to make right, all joys we felt, love we shared will, in that final moment, be the absolute sum of all we will ever individually be. In this final moment we will know, for ourselves, who we truly are."

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” – Leo Buscaglia

The remedy for loneliness is not isolation.

"There's no use doing a kindness if you do it a day too late."
—Charles Kingsley

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” – Voltaire

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Hope is not a resting place but a starting point - a cactus, not a cushion.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr. 

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” – Maya Angelou

“Love has something to do with the notion of being seen - the opposite of invisibility. The invisible, the unwitnessed, the unacknowledged, the isolated, the lonely - these are the unloved. Loving attention illuminates the unseen, escorting them from the frontiers of lovelessness into the observed world. To truly see someone - anyone - is an act that acknowledges and forgives our common and imperfect humanity. Love enacts a kind of vigilant perception - whether it is to a partner, a child, a co-worker, a neighbour, a fellow citizen, or any other person one may encounter in this life. Love says softly - I see you. I recognise you. You are human, as am I.”
Nick Cave
The Red Hand Files

“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” – Vern Law

“You are made for perfection, but you are not yet perfect. You are a masterpiece in the making.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardships and heartbreaks. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an appletree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”
Louise Erdrich

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde

“The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own "national security" to be paramount above all other consideration.

I am all for cultural diversity and would be willing to see each recognizable group value its cultural heritage. I am a New York patriot, for instance, and if I lived in Los Angeles, I would love to get together with other New York expatriates and sing "Give My Regards to Broadway."

This sort of thing, however, should remain cultural and benign. I'm against it if it means that each group despises others and lusts to wipe them out. I'm against arming each little self-defined group with weapons with which to enforce its own prides and prejudices.

The Earth faces environmental problems right now that threaten the imminent destruction of civilization and the end of the planet as a livable world. Humanity cannot afford to waste its financial and emotional resources on endless, meaningless quarrels between each group and all others. there must be a sense of globalism in which the world unites to solve the real problems that face all groups alike.

Can that be done? The question is equivalent to: Can humanity survive?

I am not a Zionist, then, because I don't believe in nations, and because Zionism merely sets up one more nation to trouble the world. It sets up one more nation to have "rights" and "demands" and "national security" and to feel it must guard itself against its neighbors.

There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don't come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.”
Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
—Socrates