BIRTHDAYS & QUOTATIONS

August 3, 1858 Paul Sabatier "Theories cannot claim to be indestructible. They are only the plough which the ploughman uses to draw his furrow and which he has every right to discard for another one, of improved design, after the harvest." August 3, 1920 P.D. James...

June 30, 1909 C. Northcote Parkinson "The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take." June 30, 1911 Czeslaw Milosz "Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a...

June 23, 1910 Jean Anouilh "God is on everyone's side... and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies." June 23, 1912 Alan Turing "Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."

June 18, 1838 Auberon Herbert "If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force." June 18, 1929 Jurgen Habermas "Each murder is one too...

June 13, 1917 Augusto Roa Bastos "The great principle of Justice: prevent crime rather than punish it. All that is needed to execute a guilty man is a firing squad or a hangman. To prevent there being guilty men requires great astuteness." June 13, 1937 Eleanor Holmes...

June 7, 1857 Samuel McChord Crothers "Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways." June 7, 1893 J.B. Morton "Justice...

June 3, 1804 Richard Cobden "For every credibility gap there is a gullibility gap." June 3, 1943 Scilla Elworthy "Wherever there is injustice, there is anger, and anger is like gasoline - if you spray it around and somebody lights a matchstick, you have an inferno....

May 31, 1884 Phyllis Bottome "It is very a dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice." May 31, 1919 Huston Smith "The most powerful moral influence is example."

May 24, 1878 Harry Emerson Fosdick "He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end." May 24, 1928 Roger Caras "There are only three sins - causing pain, causing fear, and causing anguish."

May 18, 1904 Shunryu Suzuki "If your mind is empty, it is ready for anything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few." May 18, 1920 Pope John Paul II "Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it."

May 13, 1944 Armistead Maupin "The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives." May 13, 1950 Stevie Wonder "If you don't ask, you don't get."

May 8, 1592 Francis Quarles "Meditation is the life of the soul: Action, the soul of meditation; and honor the reward of action." May 8, 1970 Naomi Klein "Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear."

May 3, 1912 May Sarton "One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being." May 3, 1919 Pete Seeger "Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't."

April 28, 1874 Karl Kraus "There are people who can never forgive a beggar for their not having given him anything." April 28, 1926 Harper Lee "Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

April 22, 1724 Immanuel Kant "So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world." April 23, 1852 Edwin Markham "When you are the anvil, bear - when you are the hammer, strike."

April 15, 1892 Corrie Ten Boom "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength." April 15, 1920 Thomas Szasz "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."

April 3, 1593 George Herbert "Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right.' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along." April 3, 1822 Edward Everett Hale "Wrong fails because it...

March 25, 1914 Norman Borlaug "You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery." March 25, 1925 Flannery O'Connor "Conviction without experience makes for harshness."

March 18, 1874 Nikolai Berdyaev "Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one." March 18, 1933 Unita Blackwell "This is what I know about courage: You don't have to think about courage to have it. You don't have to feel courageous...

March 12, 1931 Herb Kelleher "It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it." March 12, 1952 Naomi Shihab Nye "The real heroes of race and culture would always be the people who stepped out of their own line to...

March 3, 1847 Alexander Graham Bell "Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus." March 3, 1959 Ira Glass "The story is a machine for empathy. In contrast to logic or reason, a story is about emotion that...

February 27, 1861 Rudolf Steiner "A healthy social life is found only when, in the mirror of each soul, the whole community finds its reflection, and when, in the whole community, the virtue of each one is living." February 27, 1934 Ralph Nader "A society that has...

February 18, 1836 Ramakrishna "When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited." February 18, 1934 Audre Lorde "When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak."

February 7, 1478 Thomas More "And it will fall out as in a complication of diseases, that by applying a remedy to one sore, you will provoke another; and that which removes the one ill symptom produces others." February 7, 1909 Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara "When I feed...

January 29, 1927 Edward Abbey "Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top." January 29, 1939 Germaine Greer "One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night."

January 22, 1561 Francis Bacon "Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out." January 22, 1788 George Gordon, Lord Byron "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who...

January 15, 1889 A. Philip Randolph "A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess." January 15, 1929 Martin Luther King, Jr "Darkness cannot...

January 6, 1882 Sam Rayburn "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one." January 6, 1883 Kahlil Gibran "When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies."

December 28, 1856 Woodrow Wilson "In the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach." December 28, 1954 Denzel Washington "You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That's a part of...

December 23, 1926 Robert Bly "It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down." December 23, 1943 Margaret MacMillan "An apology offered and, equally important, received is a step towards reconciliation and, sometimes, recompense. Without that process, hurts can...

December 14, 1883 Morihei Ueshiba "As soon as you concern yourself with the 'good' and 'bad' of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you." December 14, 1897...

December 9, 1608 John Milton "He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." December 9, 1912 Tip O'Neill "All politics is local."

November 30, 1936 Abbie Hoffman "You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." November 30, 1947 David Mamet "Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human...

November, 24 1888 Dale Carnagie "If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive." November 24, 1946 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita "There is an interesting interplay between power corrupting and corruption empowering. The causality does not go one way."

November 19, 1917 Indira Gandhi "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." November 19, 1925 Zygmunt Bauman "Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done."

November 10, 1730 Oliver Goldsmith "You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips." November 10, 1879 Vachel Lindsay "You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them."

November 5, 1855 Eugene V. Debs "While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." November 5, 1885 Will Durant "Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom...

October 28, 1818 Ivan Turgenev "Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do." October 28, 1914 Jonas Salk "Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality."

October 23, 1491 St. Ignatius of Loyola "Be slow to speak, and only after having first listened quietly, so that you may understand the meaning, leanings, and wishes of those who do speak. Thus you will better know when to speak and when to be silent." October 23,...

October 18, 1904 AJ Liebling "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." October 18, 1956 Martina Navratilova "The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed."