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"No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit."

- Helen Keller

“The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights -- that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.”

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

A lie cannot live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

- Winston Churchill 

 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.


- Mohandas Gandhi 

Everything you can imagine is real.


- Pablo Picasso 

It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.

- Dalai Lama

All great achievements require time.


- Maya Angelou

Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.


  - Miguel de Cervantes 

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
 

- Ronald Reagan 

War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

- Barbara Tuchman 

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Ideas for Life

Societies keep reinventing ideas that the human species has forgotten. The classic example of this dynamic is humanity's inability to approximate the building prowess of the Egyptians until thousands of years later; we had literally forgotten the inventions that allowed Egyptians to move huge blocks of granite across vast expanses of desert and assemble them with mathematical precision and architectural genius.

For me, walking one step at a time in search of wisdom, moving the granite blocks of my life, I find it useful to remember certain ideas, at certain times, to help guide me.

To be able to affirmatively shape history, people have projected their will and desires in ways that create a new reality. This cognitive process is a constant in how history has been created by people through the ages. Moreover, this shaping is the creative force within each of us – projected outwardly from our minds to the universe. It is but the most optimistic assertion of ourexistence.

- Fernando Espuelas

 

Here are some great ideas for life:

“To conquer we have need to dare, to dare again, always to dare!”

– Georges-Jacques Danton

“By his own own understanding of the war, Hannibal won then Second Punic War at Cannae, but the Romans were following a different set of rules and when they did not admit defeat, there was little more that he could do to force them."

- Adrian Goldsworthy, Roman Warfare

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”

– Marcus Aurelius

“Courage and cowardice are antithetical. Courage is an inner resolution to go forward in spite of obstacles and frightening situations; cowardice is a submissive surrender to circumstance. Courage breeds creative self-affirmation; cowardice produces destructive self-abnegation. Courage faces fear and thereby masters it; cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it. Courageous men never lose the zest for living even though their life situation is zestless; cowardly men, overwhelmed by the uncertainties of life, lose the will to live. We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Your spirit has never been content within the narrow confines which nature has imposed upon us."

-Cicero writing to Julius Caesar

Hatching an idea is only the beginning of the battle. The foundation for nearly every conspicuous American achievement, organization or institution was laid by the sweat and sacrifice and unconquerable perseverance of some man possessed by an idea he was willing to give his life for, if necessary. Don’t make the mistake of imagining that an idea, no matter how good, can win its way in the world unless you have grit enough, backbone enough, enthusiasm enough to get behind it and push with all your might.”

– from an article in Forbes Magazine, July 23, 1921.

"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty...I have never in my life envied a human being who led and easy life;I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well."

- Teddy Roosevelt

“Everything's destiny is to change, to be transformed, to perish. So that new things can be born.  It's all in how you perceive it. You're in control. You can dispense with misperception at will, like rounding the point. Serenity, total calm, safe anchorage."

- Marcus Aurelius

"Some of us, of course, will die without having received the realization of freedom, but we must continue to sail on our charted course. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment."*----While Martin Luther King Jr. was specifically referring to the struggle for equal rights, it is also a quintessential message of hope and optimism for all humans, a message of personal freedom in spite of "finite disappointment".

-Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

Fortune favors the brave. - Virgil

"Knowing the concordance
Of actions and their effects,
Always help beings in fact.
Just that will help yourself"

- Nagarjuna, Precious Garland of Advice

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

- Winston Churchill

The first quality that is needed is audacity.

- Winston Churchill