Gratuitous violence in argument betrays a conscious weakness of the cause, and is usually a signal of despair.
~ Junius
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Quotes
Pleasure
The law of the pleasure in having done anything for another is, that the one almost immediately forgets having given, and the other remembers eternally having received.
~ Seneca
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Betrayal
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friends, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
~ E.M. Forster
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Hindsight
We’re driving faster and faster into the future, trying to steer by using only the rear-view mirror.
~ Marshall McLuhan
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Commitment
Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of it.
~ Rollo May
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Disagreement
Who shall decide when doctors disagree, and sound casuists doubt like you and me?
~ Alexander Pope
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Pictures
The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.
~ Elliot Erwitt
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Work
No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.
~ Carl Jung
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Machines
If you fall in love with a machine there is something wrong with your love-life. If you worship a machine there is something wrong with your religion.
~ Lewis Mumford
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Uncompleted
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
~ William James
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Malice
Insolence is not logic; Epithets are the arguments of malice.
~ R.G. Ingerson
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Democracy
The polis or gathering place for governing, the root of our modern politics, was nothing but a physical space that designated and enabled the conversational space required for true self-governing. The capacity for talking together constituted the foundation for democracy, far more fundamental than voting. As one ancient Greek philosopher noted, “When voting started, democracy ended.”
~ Peter M. Senge
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Missionaries
Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not.
~ Chalmers
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Questions
The only question that really matters, the only question whose correct answer can exert a civilizing influence on the future specialist, is the question asked by Buddha and Jesus, by Lao-Tsu and Socrates, by Job and Aeschylus, and Chaucer and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, by every philosopher, every mystic, every great artist: Who am I and what, if anything, can I do about it?
~ Aldous Huxley
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Well-composed
A well-composed song strikes the mind and softens the feelings, and produces a greater effect than a moral work, which convinces our reason, but does not warm our feelings, nor effect the slightest alteration in our habits.
~ Napoleon
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Noticing
All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.
~ Elliott Erwitt
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Art
The noblest art is that of making others happy.
~ P.T. Barnum
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Silence
The path to all great things passes through silence.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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Unnecessary
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself… It has no survival value; Rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.
~ C.S. Lewis
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Communication
A man would have no pleasures in discovering all the beauties of the universe, even in heaven itself, unless he had a partner to whom he might communicate his joys.
~ Cicero
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