Right Attitudes

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.
—Eric Sevareid (American Broadcast Journalist)

Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one’s own rules—this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
—D. T. Suzuki (Japanese Buddhist Philosopher)

Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave and free, is and must be ludicrously untrue and universally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classification.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Sociologist, Activist)

He who knoweth not what he ought to know, is a brute beast among men; he that knoweth no more than he hath need of, is a man among brute beasts; and he that knoweth all that may be known, is as a God among men.
—Pythagoras (Greek Philosopher)

To lay aside all prejudices, is to lay aside all principles.—He who is destitute of principles is governed by whims.
—Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (German Philosopher)

Animals are born, are sentient and are mortal. In these things they resemble man. In their superficial anatomy—less in their deep anatomy—in their habits, in their time, in their physical capacities, they differ from man. They are both like and unlike.
—John Berger (English Art Critic, Essayist, Novelist)

The methods of science aren’t foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered.
—Daniel C. Dennett (American Philosopher, Atheist)

Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
—Alberto Giacometti (Swiss Sculptor, Painter)

The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new.
—Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato) (Roman Statesman)

People who fear death live no longer than those who don’t, and live scared.
—Gene Wolfe (American Science Fiction, Fantasy Writer)

Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces.
—Henry Clay Trumbull (American Clergyman)

If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.
—Agatha Christie (British Novelist)

The world isn’t going backward, if you can just stay young enough to remember what it was really like when you were really young.
—A. J. Liebling (American Journalist)

Praise the bridge that carried you over.
—George Colman the Younger (English Playwright)

The greatest truth is the most simple one.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

If you rest, you rust.
—Helen Hayes (American Actress)

Hunger will make a monkey eat pepper.
—Haitian Proverb

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
—Lillian Hellman (American Playwright)

Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

There comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
—Luciano Pavarotti (Italian Tenor)

A man who tries to please all men by weakening his position or compromising his beliefs, in the end has neither position nor beliefs. A man must say what he believes clearly, without dogma, and without guile.
—Pierre Trudeau (Canadian Statesman)

Life has no meaning in itself but it is itself an opportunity to make it meaningful.
—Sri Rajneesh (Osho) (Indian Spiritual Teacher)

The difficult thing isn’t living with other people, it’s understanding them.
—Jose Saramago (Portuguese Novelist)

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
—Joseph Conrad (Polish-born British Novelist)

To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one is pitied.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Though a superior is rather to be loved, yet by the insolent he ought to be feared.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)