The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.
- Thomas Hobbes
Out of your dreams, be born! Out of your heart, be alive! Out of your soul, be light! For you are nothing else.
- Bashar
The power of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special efforts, but by his ordinary efforts.
- Blaise Pascal
The choice is the universe ... or nothing.
- H. G. Wells
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
– Lewis B. Smedes
We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
- Jimmy Carter
There is a thing inherent and natural, which existed before heaven and earth. Motionless and fathomless, It stands alone and never changes; It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted. It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe. I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.
- Laozi
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Laozi
Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.
- Buddha
There are no mistakes, no coincidences; all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Eventually you will come to understand that Love heals everything and Love is all there is.
- Gary Zukav
To travel a circle is to journey over the same ground time and time again. To travel a circle wisely is to journey over the same ground for the first time. In this way, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, a path to where you wish to be. And when you notice at last that the path has circled back into itself, you realize that where you wish to be is where you have already been and always were.
- Neal Donald Walsch
via en.wikiquote.org
The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence.
We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.
- Carl Sagan
You are the star, the dreamer, the creator of your destiny. Unfold your wings and weave your magic...
- Adele Basheer
via en.wikiquote.org
The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope.
- H. G. Wells
A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.
- Woodrow Wilson
We can have democracy, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
- Louis Brandeis
Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn Vos Savant
Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality.
- Oscar Wilde
Being is uncreated and imperishable, whole, unique, unwavering, and complete.
- Parmenides
Whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they have not been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted. Yet look what has happened to them. They have been removed from Internet … their funds have been frozen … media figures and politicians have called for their assassination and to be labeled a terrorist organization. What is really going on here is a war over control of the Internet, and whether or not the Internet can actually serve its ultimate purpose—which is to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions.
- Glenn Greenwald.
We are near waking when we dream that we dream.
The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind … They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word.
There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect. Thus with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism came Lutheranism.
- Novalis
It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.
- Margaret Thatcher
Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God. -- Leon Bloy
Keep thyself first in peace, and then thou wilt be able to bring others to peace. - Thomas a Kempis
An overcrowded chicken farm produce fewer eggs.
- Chinese Proverb
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depends on simplicity.
- Plato
☮Peace-making is a healing process and it begins with me, but it does not end there. -- Gene Knudsen Hoffman
True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed.
- Dalai Lama
Off to st barts to spend week in heaven w/kids. God is Good
- Russell Simmons
You use the mind nonstop - but when the mind quiets there is no more seeking for God. God finds you. - Sri Babaji ♡
I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
- Helen Keller
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. - Jill Jackson and Sy Miller
It is possible to live in peace. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Peace-making is a healing process and it begins with me, but it does not end there. -- Gene Knudsen Hoffman
Nothing happens unless first we dream.
- Carl Sandburg
You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust, You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don't. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly!
- Rumi
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. ~ Albert Einstein
Nothing remains forever, only thing that remain forever is romantically stupid word forever. - Santosh Kalwar
The person who makes a success of living is the person who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unservingly.
- Cecil B. DeMIlle
The best of ideas is hurt by uncritical acceptance and thrives on critical examination.
~ George Pólya ~
Every single moment of a person's life, both of the understanding and of the will, is a new beginning. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
I had some great things and I had some bad things. The best and the worst... In other words, I had a life. ~ Richard Pryor
via en.wikiquote.org
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. // The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form.
- Gustave Flaubert (Born December 12, 1821)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gustave_Flaubert
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. ... I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. ~ William Lloyd Garrison
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Quote_of_the_day/December#12
Our attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us.
- Earl Nightingale
The words you speak become the house you live in. ~ Hafiz ☺
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism. ~ Carl Sagan
A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable. ~ Carl Sagan
If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness. ~Carl Sagan
It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works — that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it. ~ Carl Sagan
Our loyalties are to the species and the planet, we speak for Earth.
Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring. ~ Carl Sagan
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. ~ Carl Sagan
Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours and every one of them is a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet at this moment, here we face a critical branch point in history, what we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants, it is well within our power to destroy our civilization and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition or greed or stupidity we could plunge our world into a time of darkness deeper than the time between the collapse of classical civilisation and the Italian Renaissance. But we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. ~ Carl Sagan
The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars. ~ Carl Sagan
There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly all right; it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny. ~ Carl Sagan
We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos. ~ Carl Sagan
We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads. But to find the truth, we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths; of exquisite interrelationships; of the awesome machinery of nature. ~ Carl Sagan
For the first time, we have the power to decide the fate of our planet and ourselves. This is a time of great danger, but our species is young, and curious, and brave. It shows much promise. ~ Carl Sagan
The major religions on the Earth contradict each other left and right. You can't all be correct. And what if all of you are wrong? It's a possibility, you know. You must care about the truth, right? Well, the way to winnow through all the differing contentions is to be skeptical. I'm not any more skeptical about your religious beliefs than I am about every new scientific idea I hear about. But in my line of work, they're called hypotheses, not inspiration and not revelation. ~ Carl Sagan
You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an airplane, you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon? Atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history… of history. ~ Carl Sagan
Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing. ~ Carl Sagan
The choice is with us still, but the civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure of this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits us. There are not yet any obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong, toward self-destruction. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars. Travel is broadening. ~ Carl Sagan
Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all of our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. Public libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries. ~ Carl Sagan
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. ~ Carl Sagan
The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. ~ Carl Sagan
The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries. ~ Carl Sagan
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key. ~ Carl Sagan
Humans — who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals — have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and 'animals' is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them — without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us. ~ Carl Sagan
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones. ~ Carl Sagan
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?" Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. ~ Carl Sagan
The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgement to have safely traveled from star to star. ~ Carl Sagan
We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter. ~ Carl Sagan
Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive. ~ Carl Sagan
In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. ~ Carl Sagan
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. ~ Carl Sagan
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan
I believe it is an act of delusion to look for (or more so), discover a so-called "educated" preacher/evangelist. Thus, no evangelist/preacher can be better than the other. But I agree, they can be worse. ~ Nadeem F. Paracha
Either I'm just too paranoid or this is just my way of now playing the sardonic court jester instead of the "angry young man" who once actually believed in the logic and persuasive power of cohesive literary narratives as a means to bring about change. ~ Nadeem F. Paracha
I'd rather fight for a tree than die for a God. ~ Nadeem F. Paracha
Don't be confused by surfaces; in the depths everything becomes law.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
To me it is enough to wonder at the secrets.
- Albert Einstein
A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warm the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.
~ Anne Sexton
I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.
~ Anne Sexton
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
~ Anne Sexton
I love you the way the oboe plays.
I love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feel.
I love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes.
Yet I fear you,
as one in the desert fears the sun.
~ Anne Sexton
And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
- Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/566.Paulo_Coelho
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html
Amplify’d from www.spacetelescope.org
Colliding galaxies make love, not war
This Hubble image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. As the two galaxies smash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The brightest and most compact of these are called super star clusters.
Credit:
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/fw7a2j
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