Favorite Quotes

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”–from The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway

“The more I accuse myself, the more right I have to judge you. Even better, I make you judge yourself, which comforts me the more.” –Albert Camus

“To know and not to do is not to know.”

“What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label ‘Liberal?’ …[I]f by a ‘Liberal’ they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind,someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a ‘Liberal,’ then I’m proud to say I’m a ‘Liberal.’” –John F. Kennedy

“When the rich make war it’s the poor that die.” –Jean-Paul Sartre

“What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers?” –The Stranger, by Camus

“There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.” –Moby Dick, by Melville

“Life has no meaning a priori . Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.”–Jean-Paul Sartre

“Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems, is the fraud of the age. It serves to detach the species from the natural world, and likewise each other. It supports blind submission to authority. It reduces human responsibility to the effect that God controls everything, and in turn, awful crimes can be justified in the name of the divine pursuit. And most importantly, it empowers those who know the truth but use the myth to manipulate and control societies. The religious myth is the most powerful device ever created, and serves as a psychological soil upon which other myths can flourish.”–Zeitgeist

“Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful. An analysis of the idea of revolt could help us to discover ideas capable of restoring a relative meaning to existence, although a meaning that would always be in danger.” –Albert Camus

“War corrupts everyone who engages in it, [and] it poisons the minds and souls of people on all sides…[There is] a process by which [those fighting]..become unthinking killers of innocent people.” — Howard Zinn

“[In the idea of just war], a cause may be just, an injustice may have taken place, but that doesn’t mean that the use of war to remedy that injustice is itself just.” — Howard Zinn

“We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us…We wanted to go to the moon, so we went there. We achieve what we want to achieve. If we are not achieving something, it is because we have not put our minds to it. We create what we want…We create the world in accordance with our mindset.” — Muhammad Yunus

“The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.” — Kierkegaard

“The Most Personal Question of Truth:-What am I really doing, and what do I mean by doing it?” — Nietzsche

“There is nothing very remarkable about being immortal; with the exception of mankind, all creatures are immortal, for they know nothing of death. What is divine, terrible, and incomprehensible is to know oneself immortal. ” — Borges, The Immortal

“It is good to rely upon others. For no one can bear this life alone.” — Holderlin

“One of the most important truths about us is that we have the capacity to be open minded: the capacity to live nondefensively with the question of how to live.” — Lear, Open Minded

“A man asked Mr. K. whether there is a God. Mr. K. said: “I advise you to consider whether, depending on the answer, your behavior would change. If it would not change, then we can drop the question. If it would change, then I can at least be of help to the extent that I can say, you have already decided: you need a God.” — Brecht