History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
—David McCullough (American Historian)
The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering. Why do we still blind ourselves, now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to the immeasurable suffering that we inflict on animals, knowing that a great part of the pain that we cause them is neither necessary nor unavoidable? Certainly we should know that there is no moral justification for inflicting needless pain and death on any being.
—Matthieu Ricard (French Buddhist Monk)
The hero’s choice is made in a flash. To him the larger vision is closer than the near. Within an instant, he strikes for eternity, strikes and is done.
—Sister Nivedita (Irish-born Indian Social Worker)
I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)
Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.
—D. T. Suzuki (Japanese Buddhist Philosopher)
When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles—generally three to twelve of them—that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.
—John Reed (American Journalist, Poet)
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)
All the way to heaven is heaven.
—Teresa of Avila (Spanish Carmelite Nun, Mystic)