I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.Thomas Jefferson
Move like a beam of light:
Fly like lightning,
Strike like thunder,
Whirl in circles around
A stable center.
Morihei Ueshiba - The Art of Peace
And then, I said, we must try them with enchantments -- that is the third sort of test -- and see what will be their behaviour: like those who take colts amid noise and tumult to see if they are of a timid nature, so must we take our youth amid terrors of some kind, and again pass them into pleasures, and prove them more thoroughly than gold is proved in the furnace, that we may discover whether they are armed against all enchantments, and of a noble bearing always, good guardians of themselves and of the music which they have learned, and retaining under all circumstances a rhythmical and harmonious nature, such as will be most serviceable to the individual and to the State. And he who at every age, as boy and youth and in mature life, has come out of the trial victorious and pure, shall be appointed a ruler and guardian of the State; he shall be honoured in life and death, and shall receive sepulture and other memorials of honour, the greatest that we have to give. But him who fails, we must reject. I am inclined to think that this is the sort of way in which our rulers and guardians should be chosen and appointed. I speak generally, and not with any pretension to exactness.
Plato - The Republic
They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are,
I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
R D Laing - Knots
Submitted by Rom
What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.
Kerry Thornley, Principia Discordia, 5th edition
I was laying there in my bed last night looking up at the stars in the sky, and wondered to myself, "Where is the ceiling?!"
Milan's grandmother
Submitted by Milan
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Mark Twain
I am the way to the City of Woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
Primordial love and ultimate intellect.
Only those elements time cannot wear
Were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here
The inscription on the gates of Hell
Dante - The Inferno, Canto III
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Duty then is the sublimest work in the English language.
You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more,
you should never wish to do less.
Robert E. Lee
Submitted by Fffys@aol.com
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine De Saint-Exuprey
Submitted by mjg333@aol.com
Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.
Simonides - Epitath on the monument marking the Battle of Thermopylae
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Voltaire
I had thought -- I had been told -- that a "funny" thing is a thing of goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to. The goodness is in the laughing. ... it is a bravery -- and a sharing -- against pain and sorrow and defeat.
Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
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