words to live by

No-one is a failure who is enjoying life.

— (unknown)

A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.

— attributed to Ryunosuke Akutagawa

It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

— Peter F. Drucker / "Managing for Business Effectiveness", Harvard Business Review / 1963

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds [...].
Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson / "Self-Reliance" / 1841

In every fruitful dialogue, each participant must help the other to clarify his thought rather than to force him to defend formulations about which he may have his doubts.

— attributed to Erich Fromm

Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy; calmness is a great advantage.

— attributed to George Herbert

Before you can be reasonably convinced you are right about an idea, you should be sure that you understand the objections of your most articulate antagonists. The person who can state his antagonist's point of view to the satisfaction of the antagonist is more likely to be correct than the person who cannot.

— Paul G. Hewitt / Conceptual Physics

It is important to learn not to be angry with opinions different from your own, but to set to work understanding how they come about. If, after you have understood them, they still seem false, you can then combat them more effectively than if you had continued to be merely horrified.

— attributed to Bertrand Russell

A good way of ridding yourself of certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles different from your own... If you cannot travel, seek out people with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not yours. If the people and the newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to them.

— attributed to Bertrand Russell

Reason must in all its undertakings subject itself to criticism; should it limit freedom of criticism by any prohibitions, it must harm itself, drawing upon itself a damaging suspicion.

— attributed to Immanuel Kant

Influence is like a savings account. The less you use it, the more you've got.

— attributed to Andrew Young

Never does a man describe his own character more clearly than by his way of describing that of others.

— attributed to Jean Paul

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good, and a real one.

— attributed to J. P. Morgan

Jane Wagner said, I am getting more and more cynical all the time and I still can't keep up. But cynicism is the pain of disillusioned idealists who - once in a while - see with the eyes of a child, hear that child's voice, and remember the kind of world we dreamed it could be.

— Richard Thieme / "The Eyes of a Child", Computer Underground Digest #10.37 / 1998-07-05

Beware of presenting a young person with the ideas that success in its usual sense is the goal of life. A man is considered successful if he gets more from his fellow men than his services warrant. A man's worth should, however, lie in what he gives and not in what he can get.

— attributed to Einstein

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

— attributed to George Will

The defect of equality is that we only desire it with our superiors.

(Le malheur de l'égalité, c'est que nous ne la voulons qu'avec nos supérieurs.)

— Henry Becque / Conférences, notes d'album, poésies, correspondance / 1926

Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

— (unknown)

The liberal wants to ensure that we produce rebels; The authoritarian that we do not produce rebels; The sensible educator is concerned to produce good rebels.

— Basil Mitchell / "Indoctrination", How to Play Theological Ping-Pong / 1990

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

— attributed to Nietzche

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

— John F. Kennedy / Address on the first Anniversary of the Alliance for Progress / 1962-03-13

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

— Ursula K. Le Guin / The Dispossessed / 1974

As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legistature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way; its very Constitution is the evil.

— Henry David Thoreau / Civil Disobedience / 1848

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for any just man is also a prison.

— Henry David Thoreau / Civil Disobedience / 1848

Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.

— attributed to Stanislaw J. Lec

everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself

— Leo Tolstoy / "Three Methods of Reform" / 1900