February 9, 2015

Good Morning! Here are your daily birthday quotations...

Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809):

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

and

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

and

“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”

William Henry Harrison (1773 – 1841):

“The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.”

Samuel J. Tilden (1814 – 1886):

“I still trust in the people.”

Natsume Sōseki (1867 – 1916):

“I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.”

and

“I do not want your admiration now, because I do not want your insults in the future. I bear with my loneliness now, in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves.”

and

“It is painfully easy to define human beings. They are beings who, for no good reason at all, create their own unnecessary suffering.”

Amy Lowell (1874 – 1925):

“All books are either dreams or swords,

You can cut, or you can drug, with words.”

and

“For books are more than books, they are the life

The very heart and core of ages past,

The reason why men lived and worked and died,

The essence and quintessence of their lives.”

Dean Rusk (1909 – 1994):

“The usual cause of evil in the world is that at any given time half the people in the world are awake.”

Brendan Behan (1923 – 1964):

“It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.”

and

“I'm a drinker with writing problems.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940 - ):

“Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light.”

and

“The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.”

and

“He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world.”

Joseph Stiglitz (1943 - ):

"The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."

Alice Walker (1944 - ):

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”

and

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”

and

“HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.

HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.

HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.

HELPED are those who love others unsplit off from their faults; to them will be given clarity of vision.

HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize an partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

HELPED are those who love the Earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy in her lively response to love, they will converse with the trees.

HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child.

HELPED are those who risk themselves for others' sakes; to them will be given increasing opportunities for ever greater risks. Theirs will be a vision of the word in which no one's gift is despised or lost.

HELPED are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or of war.

HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for peace; on them depends the future of the world.

HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgiveness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth.

HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator's magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing.

HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous.

HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.

HELPED are those who love the lesbian, the gay, and the straight, as they love the sun, the moon, and the stars. None of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.

HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.

HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion.

HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another--plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid.

HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass.

HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differences.

HELPED are those who KNOW.”

Brian Greene (1963 - ):

“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding...”

and

“The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.”

and

“When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level”