The pages which follow contain quotations
that provide many helpful perspectives
to help guide our continuing education.
Do you have some relevant quotations, or other input to share?
Let me know which EduQuotables you especially like,
and whether there are any you disagree with.
Can you come up with any new ones of your own?
Creating aphorisms is wonderfully creative exercise.
Give it a try with these EduQuotables to inspire you.
Aphorisms are a way of referencing wisdom
without congesting our minds with complex analysis or boring exposition.
Tom Darling
These pages were updated 26 April 2015.
Have a quotation you would like to see added? Send it to readybe@gmail.com.
E d u Q u o t a b l e s
Compiled by Tom Darling
I quote others only in order the better to express myself. (Montaigne)
No man ever became wise by chance. (Seneca)
The hour which gives us life begins to take it away. (Seneca)
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life. (Seneca)
Some there are that torment themselves afresh with the memory of what is past; others, again, afflict themselves with the apprehension of evils to come; and very ridiculously both — for the one does not now concern us, and the other not yet ... One should count each day a separate life. (Seneca)
It is extreme evil to depart from the company of the living before you die. (Seneca)
Live with men as if God saw you; converse with God as if men heard you. (Seneca)
Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life. (Seneca)
If wisdom were offered me with this restriction, that I should keep it close and not
communicate it, I would refuse the gift. (Seneca)
The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires. (Seneca)
I persist on praising not the life I lead, but that which I ought to lead. I follow it
at a mighty distance, crawling. (Seneca)
Our experience of our own parents is a lifeling lens through which
we tend to process (or perhaps fail to process) the universals of gender
as well as unique characteristics of other people. --Thomas James Darling
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. (Martin Luther King)
The best ideas are common property. (Seneca)
Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor. (Seneca)
We are more wicked together than separately. If you are forced to be in a crowd, then most of all you should withdraw into yourself . (Seneca)
The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and
linger in his own company . (Seneca)
This is the reason we cannot complain of life: it keeps no one against his will. (Seneca)
The fates lead him who will - him who won't they drag. (Seneca)
It is a spiritual crime to butcher the psyche for the sake of efficiency and material muscle. (Thomas James Darling)
Good things come by keeping each other whole. (Thomas James Darling)
Better to make no claims of truth than to edit or distort Truth to fit some scheme. (Thomas James Darling)
When schemes fill the scene a child must lead us. (Thomas James Darling)
Lies are made not born. (Thomas James Darling)
The psyche that fits into academic boxes is no longer whole. (Thomas James Darling)
An action will not be right unless the will be right; for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right; for from thence comes the will. (Seneca)
Whatever is to make us better and happy, God has placed either openly before us or close to us. (Seneca)
My belief is that to have no wants is divine. (Socrates)
To find yourself, think for yourself. (Socrates)
Borrowed conscience is an oxymoron. (Thomas James Darling)
For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man. But men fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. (Socrates)
Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul? (Socrates)
Virtue does not come from wealth, but. . . wealth, and every other good thing which men have. . . comes from virtue. (Socrates)
Virtue offers the only security within humanity's reach. (Thomas James Darling)
False security is dangerous to family integrity. (Thomas James Darling)
Life is the soul's nursery — it's training place for the destinies of eternity. (Thackeray)
An unexamined life is not worth living. (Socrates)
The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things. (The Buddha)
All things conspire to a common good. (Author Unknown)
It is in giving that we receive. (Saint Francis)
Competitors enter a dialogue to "win". Friends enter a dialog because they seek the truth. (author unknown)
Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive desire to impose our view or to conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture? (David Bohm, Changing Consciousness, 1992)
(Bohm) suggests that what the cosmos is doing as we dialogue is to change its ideas of itself. Our doubts and our question, our small truths and large ones are all forms of its drive toward clarity and truth. Through us, the universe questions itself and tries out various answers on itself in an effort parallel to our own - to decipher its own being. This as I reflect on it, is awesome. It assigns a role to man that was once reserved for the gods. (Renee Weber, Dialogue with Scientists and Sages:
The Search for Unity, 1986.)
Dialogue is to love, what blood is to the body. When the flow of blood stops, the body dies. When dialogue stops, love dies and resentment and hate are born. But dialogue can restore a dead relationship. Indeed, this is the miracle of dialogue: it can bring relationship into being, and it can bring into being once again a relationship that has died. There is only one qualification to these claims for dialogue: it must be mutual and proceed from both sides, and the parties to it must persist relentlessly. (Reuel L. Howe, The Miracle of Dialogue, 1963.)
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that
somethings are more nearly certain than others. (Bertrand Russell)
Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise, and everything precise is so remote from everything we usually think, that you cannot for a moment suppose that is what we really mean when we say what we think.. (Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism)
Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth.
(Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish")
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill-temper. (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Wanderer and his Shadow)
One man's religion is another man's belly laugh. (Robert A. Heinlein)
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make it its home for life. For this task, it has arudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it. (it's rather like getting tenure).
—Daniel Dennet — Quoted in Paul Thagard's Mind — an Introduction to Cognitive Science
I think that the word 'saint' should be ruled out of present life. It is too sacred a word to be lightly applied to anybody, much less to one like myself, who claims only to be a humble searcher after Truth, knows his limitations, makes mistakes, never hesitates to admit them when he makes them and frankly confesses that he, like a scientist, is making experiments about some 'of the eternal verities' of life, but cannot even claim to be a scientist because he can show no tangible proof of scientific accuracy in his methods or such tangible results of his experiments as modem science demands. (Mahatmma Gandhi)
All are lunatics, but he who can alalyze his delusions is called a philosopher. (Ambrose Bierce)
When I hear somebody say "Life is hard", I am always tempted to ask "Compared to what?" (Sydney Harris)
We had better live as we think, otherwise we shall end up by thinking as we have lived. (Paul Bourget)
Education is not what the world makes of you - but what you make of yourself. (Thomas James Darling)
There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. (Aeschylus)
(P)
As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.
(Voltaire)
The great consolation in life is to say what one thinks". (Voltaire)
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. (Voltiare)
I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it." (Voltaire)
It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection. (Voltaire)
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a God playing the fool. (Emerson)
A man is a God in ruins. (Emerson)
What is the hardest task in the world? To Think. (Emerson)
Imitation is suicide". (Emerson)
No facts to me are sacred; none are profane. (Emerson)
A friend is one before whom I may think aloud. (Emerson)
Every man I meet is in some way my superior. (Emerson)
The years teach much which the days never know. (Emerson)
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. (Emerson)
Success has many parents but failure is an orphan. (old adage)
More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
There are now-a-days professors of philosophy but not philosophers. (Thoreau)
Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice.
(Thoreau)
Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence. (Emerson)
All proofs rest on premises. (Aristotle)
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own. (Aristotle)
Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person at the right time, and for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not within everyone's power and that is not easy. (Aristotle)
You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes. (Maimonides)
How vain is learning unless intelligence go with it . (Stobaeus)
Moveor Immotus. - "Motionless I am moved". (Motto said to be intended for the Mariner's Compass.)
As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom. (Pythagorus)
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it . ( Marcus Aurelius)
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. (Marcus Aurelius)
Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them. (Marcus Aurelius)
Death hangs over thee, while thou still live, while thou may, do good. (Marcus Aurelius)
Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the moutains . . . But all this is unphilosophical to the last degree . . . when thou canst at a moment's notice retire into thyself. (Marcus Aurelius)
Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins
Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi looked upon the following traits as the most spiritually perilous to humanity:
Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice
I thought to myself, "I am wiser than this man: neither of us knows anything that is really worthwhile, but he thinks he has knowledge when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think that I have. I seem, at any rate, to be a little wiser than he is on this point: I do not think that I know what I do not know." (Socrates)
It offends human intelligence to adopt faith in order to reject or replace logic. Instead, embrace logic as far as it will take you - and only use faith to supplement logic. (Thomas James Darling)
In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower on the psychological scale. (Morgan's "canon")
Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change. (Socrates)
Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; don't walk behind me, I may not lead; walk beside me, and just be my friend. (Albert Camus)
A person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: Those who prefer to have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden. (Albert Camus)
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. (Albert Einstein)
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. (Albert Einstein)
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -how passionately I hate them! (Albert Einstein)
The important thing is not to stop questioning. (Albert Einstein)
If you are not motivated to learn education stops. (Thomas James Darling)
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. (Albert Einstein)
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle . (Albert Einstein)
Learning from a teacher who has stopped learning is like drinking from a stagnant pond. (Thomas Beckett)
In psychological literature, a lot of focus is given to the damage that can occur from dysfunctional patterns in our families. But I feel as much and sometimes more damage is done by an educational process that is not nurturing and supportive of our full human potential . . . . In contrast to the conventional educational model, the natural learning process begins with developing an interest in what we would like to learn. This piques our curiosity. Motivation does not have to be artificially induced by fears of tests and grades. In traditional education, students often conclude that their own questions and interests do not matter, and learning becomes a forced, unnatural process. (Ed Rubenstein)
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. (Eden Philpotts)
We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try and love them . . . . How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. (Rainer Maria Rilke)
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company . . . a church . . . a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past . . . we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one thing we have, and that is our attitude . . . . I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you . . . we are in charge of our Attitudes. (Charles Swindoll)
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second is disastrous. (Margot Fonteyn)
If you don't submit an adequate lesson plan for your life — the Universe will create one for you from the shadows.
(Thomas James Darling)
Only dead fish go with the flow. (author unknown)
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. (Albert Einstein)
You can't test courage cautiously. (Anne Dillard)
To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing it's best to make you somebody else is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting. (E.E. Cummings)
I have never learned from a man who agreed with me. (Robert A. Heinlein)
People with interesting lives have no vanity. They swap cities. Invest in projects with no guarantees. Are interested in people who are their polar opposites. Resign without having another job in sight. Accept invitations to do things they have never done before. Are prepared to change their favorite color, their favorite dish. They start from zero countless times. They are not frightened about growing old. They climb on stage, shear their hair, do crazy things for love, and buy one way tickets. (Gio Sguario, Translated from Portuguese)
"Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
And while some see them as the crazy ones,
I see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.
It’s funny to think that great men like Albert Einstein, Martin
Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Mahatma Gandhi were once
considered crazy, but it’s true. While it was their accomplishments
that made them successful, it was the fact that they achieved what
everyone said was impossible, that made them legendary. Time and
time again, they were called foolish for pursuing their dreams,
but time and time again they pushed the envelope and defied all
odds to turn their dreams into reality. They had the audacity to
stand up amongst a world of disbelievers and risk everything…
all in the search for truth."
Saviz Sepah, 18
from his 2002 Valedictorian Speech, Scripps Ranch High School, San Diego, CA
It is appalingly obvious how our technology exceeds our humanity. (Albert Einstein)
If music be the food of love, play on. (William Shakespeare)
Religion is for people who don't want to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there. (Tim Flannery, musician, baseball player)
There are some things that only necessity can teach us. (Thomas James Darling)
Necessity is not a fact - it's a perspective. (Frederich Nietzche)
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes. (Marcel Proust)
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent,
but the most responsive to change" (Charles Darwin)
These pages were updated 10_JAN_2017. Google the words accompanying links if any links are on the blink.
I am not responding to email at the current time while I work on other projects.
Be wary of instructors that attempt to teach around love instead of through love.
