Quotes, Phrases and Sayings

I am only a child, yet I know that if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this would be. In school you teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? You grownups say you love us, but I challenge you, please, to make your actions reflect your words. -- Severn Cullis-Suzuki

Even the mighty oak was once a little nut like you. --Sabina Peters

 

The purpose of fun is to have it. --Author Unknown

 The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. --Thomas Merton

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. --Pablo Picasso

If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much. --Marian Wright Edelman

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them." --Leo F. Buscaglia

Whether you are addicted to craving, or aversion, or hatred, or passion, or fear, the addiction is to a particular sensation that has arisen because of a bio-chemical flow. This type of matter results in reaction at the mental level, and the reaction at the mental level again turns into this bio-chemical reaction. When you say that you are addicted, you are actually addicted to the sensation. You are addicted to this flow, the bio-chemical flow. --S. N. Goenka

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. --Arthur Koestler

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. --Samuel Ullman

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. --Joyce Maynard

The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human. --John Naisbitt

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. --Viktor Fran kl

It isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is that we never cease to aim for it. --Atul Gawande

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. --J.D. Salinger

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. --Rachel Carson

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. --Albert Camus

What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are. --Anthony Robbins

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. --Sophia Loren

We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things. --Marcel Proust

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. --Peter Drucker

Every life has a story. What's yours? --Autobiography Project Tagline

I am a part of all that I have met. --Alfred Tennyson

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward. --Charlotte Bronte

If you practice remaining speechless for a long enough time, you begin to realize how severely limited your thinking has become through shaping thoughts into the words and concepts of everyday, middle-range consciousness. --Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown. --Claude Berna

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes. --Marcel Proust

We are all broken and wounded in this world. Some choose to grow strong at the broken places. --Harold J. Duarte-Bernhardt

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. -- St Augustine

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in. -- Alan Alda

People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within. --Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls ... --Robert F. Kennedy

You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. --Zig Ziglar

If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. --Mark Twain

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. --Hans Hofmann

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. --Sir Edmund Hillary

The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated. --Plato

 

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that has. --Margaret Mead

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. --W. B. Yeats

I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance. --Reuben Blades

At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities. --Jean Houston

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was You. --Unknown

The sound of children playing is a universal sound of peace. --Rev. Heng Sure

The greater our awareness of intentions, the greater our freedom to choose. --Gil Fronsdal

If you don't like the news ... go out and make some of your own. --Wes Nisker

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. --Stacia Tauscher

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. -- Fran z Kafka

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. --Henry David Thoreau

Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons. --Ruth Ann Schabacker

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end. --Ursula K. LeGuin

This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, "you've made this day a special day by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are." --Fred Rogers

There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes. --R. Buckminster Fuller

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. --Albert Einstein

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly. --Richard Bach

Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. --Robert Lewin

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. --Mark van Doren

Make not your thoughts your prisons. --William Shakespeare

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen. --Bobby - age 7

Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us. --Oscar Wilde

A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are. --Ara Parasheghian

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. --Douglas Adams - author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. --Plato

Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors. --Jonas Salk - inventor of the polio vaccine.

Each single one of us is said to be of infinite worth... each one of us is a god carrier, each one of us god's viceroy. Can you imagine if we really believed that? --Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The world I am trying to understand is one in which men think they want one thing and then upon getting it, find out to their dismay that they don't want it nearly as much as they thought or don't want it at all and that something else, of which they were hardly aware, is what they really want. --Albert Hirschman

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. --Charles DuBois

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace. --Jimi Hendrix

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. --Winston Churchill

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. --Albert Schweitzer

Living together is an art. --William Pickens

When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.
--Billy (age 4)

Forgiveness is letting go of all hope of a better past. --Annie Lamont

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. --Nelson Mandela

Your options are limited only by your fears. --Unknown

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. --Thich Nhat Hanh

The best way out is always through. --Robert Frost

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. --English Proverb

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. --Audery Hepburn

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others. --Rosa Parks

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
--Carl Jung

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty. --Mother Teresa

I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking. --Albert Einstein

Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death. --Betty Bender

Determination is the wake-up call to the human will. --Anthony Robbins

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. --Booker T. Washington

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life." --Abraham Maslow

In every community there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it. --Marianne Williamson

I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly. --Buckminster Fuller

Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves.They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision. --V. S. Naipaul, 2001 Nobel Laureate

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. --Douglas Everett

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. --John Wooden

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We are not seeking a meaning of life, we are seeking an experience of being alive. --Joseph Campbell

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear. --Aung San Suu Kyi

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid. --Audre Lorde A person is not strong by knocking down his rival. The strong person is he who controls himself when he is angry. --Mohammed

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing. --Rollo May

Where there is no vision, a people perish. --King James Bible: Proverbs 29:18

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction. --Annie Sullivan

We don't realize that the gods are not out there somewhere. They live in us all. They are the energies of life itself. --Joseph Campbell

Life can not give me joy and peace, it is up to me to will it. Life just gives me time and space, it is up to me to fill it. --William James

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. --Native American Proverb

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. --St. Fran cis of Assisi

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. --Jane Addams

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs. --Vance Havne

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion. --Abraham Lincoln

Empty the glass of your need so that you won't be disgraced Stop looking for something out there and begin seeking within. --Rumi

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he'll quickly learn how to chew it. --Roy Ash

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. --Mark Twain

Concentration is the secret of strength. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false. I want to stay clear in your sight. --Rilke (from the Book of Hours)

Roberto de Vicenzo, the famous Argentine golfer, once won a tournament, and after receiving the check and smiling for the cameras, he went to the clubhouse and prepared to leave. Sometime later he walked alone to his car in the parking lot and was approached by a young woman. She congratulated him on his victory and then told him that her child was seriously ill and near death.

De Vicenzo was touched by her story and took out a pen and endorsed his winning check for payment to the woman. ‘Make some good days to the baby,' he said as he pressed the check into her hand.

The next week he was having lunch in a country club when a PGA official came to his table. 'Some of the guys in the parking lot last week told me you met a young woman there after you won the tournament.' De Vicenzo nodded. 'Well,' said the official, 'I have news for you. She's a phony. She's not married. She has no sick baby. She fleeced you, my friend.'

'You mean there is no baby who is dying?' said de Vicenzo.
'That's right.'
'That's the best news I've heard all week,' said de Vincenzo.
--Jack Kornfield

A different language is a different vision of life. --Federico Fellini

Where there is love there is life. --Gandhi

Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is nothing more uncommon than common sense. -- Fran k Lloyd Wright

So often it's a matter of trading in. Old lamps for new. Small dreams for big ones. So often all it requires is the courage to accept the responsibility of knowing you are bigger than your smallness. --Pavi Krishnan

Most things I let go of have clawmarks in them. --Annie Lamott

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. --Stephen Jay Gould

The mind has to be empty to see clearly. --J. Krishnamurti

Freedom lies in being bold. --Robert Frost

Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within. -- Fran z Kafka

I think education is power. I think that being able to communicate with people is power. One of my main goals on the planet is to encourage people to empower themselves. --Oprah Winfrey

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the rest of the world calls butterfly. --Richard Bach

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom. --Henry Ward Beecher

If you have a dream and don't work at it, what good is the dream? --Rita Simo

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. --Paulo Freire

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.
--Jesse Jackson

No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself. --Thomas Mann

The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven. --John Milton

Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these. --Lloyd Shearer

All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today. --Anonymous

Look at each day as a chance to invest life into life. Each day is a chance to work miracles in the lives of others. --Jim Rohn

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “I have a dream speech” is famous because it put forward an inspiring, positive vision that carried a critique of the current moment within it. Imagine how history would have turned out had King given an “I have a nightmare” speech instead. The world's most effective leaders distinguish themselves by inspiring hope against fear, love against injustice, and power against powerlessness. --Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

When people make the decision in their lives that they want to be free more than anything else, and that choice goes all the way to the deepest part of themselves, they begin to make different choices because they want to be free. --Andrew Cohen

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. --Michelangelo

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. --Doug Larson

"Why not" is a slogan for an interesting life. --Mason Cooley

The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds. --Tryon Edwards

Begin difficult things while they are easy, Do great things when they are small. The difficult and great things must have once been small... A thousand mile journey begins with one step. --Lao-Tse

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. --Robert Brault

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. --Andre Gide

Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment.
--Ralph Marston

You can go your whole life and not need math or physics for a minute, but the ability to tell a joke is always handy. --Garrison Keillor

When you lose your sense of humor, it's just not funny anymore. --Wavy Gravy

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. --John F. Kennedy

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little need of reform in our prisons. --John Ruskin

Everything can be taken from a man but ...the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. --Victor Fran kl   

Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking. --Eckhart Tolle

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the Ark and professionals built the Titanic. --Author Unknown

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. --Eugene Ionesco

To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. --e.e. cummings

Be careful with the present you are creating- it should look like the future you dream of. --Mujeres Creando

A smile confuses an approaching frown. --Anonymous

Peace of mind is attained not by ignoring problems, but by solving them. --Raymond Hull

You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. --Buckminster Fuller

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.
--Mother Teresa

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world ... as in being able to remake ourselves. --Mahatma Gandhi

Always we hope someone else has the answer. Some other place will be better, some other time it will all turn out. This is it.
No one else has the answer. No other place will be better, and it has already turned out. --Lao Tzu

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction. --John F. Kennedy

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. --Fr. Alfred D'Souza

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will feel less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again. --M. Scott Peck

In every community there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart there is the power to do it. --Marianne Williamson

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come. --Victor Hugo

We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth. --Virginia Satir

Who would you be without your story? You never know until you inquire. There is no story that is you or that leads to you. Every story leads away from you. Turn it around; undo it. You are what exists before all stories. You are what remains when the story is understood. --Byron Katie

You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time. --Charles F. Kettering

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not. --Yogi Berra

If we don't change the direction we're going, we're likely to end up where we're headed.
--Chinese Proverb

The word 'Impossible' itself spells - 'I'm possible'. --Author Unknown

When life gives you lemons... make lemonade! --Author Unknown

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. --Henry Van Dyke

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. --Phyllis Diller

Practice being kind ... not right. --Wayne Dyer

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. --Guillaume Apollinaire

In the 1800s, Paganini was an emerging violinist and composer. And his dream was to play to a packed opera house in which the audience to would jump to its feet with an ovation. And then that evening came. It was time for his solo. But as the musician began to draw his bow, he felt this terror and sickness in his stomach because he realized that he had grabbed the wrong violin, a far inferior one. And then deep inside himself he heard, "Play with what you've got." And so he drew back his bow and he began to play. And he asked that even in this instrument, something might happen that would make a difference for the gift of music.
As Paganini maximized what he had, the audience rose to ovation after ovation after ovation. He said: "Before tonight, I always thought the music came from my violin. Tonight I realized the music comes from me." Often we have thought our miracle comes from the world, when the truth is, the only miracle that's real must come through us, from that place in us where the spirit of God truly resides. The music is within you. --Mary Manin Morrissey

If you ask a kindergarten class how many of them are artists, they'll all raise their hands. Ask the same question of sixth-graders, and maybe one-third will respond. Ask high school grads, and few will admit to it. --Brian Singer

Birds sing after a storm, why shouldn't we? --Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

Some people think it's holding on that makes one strong. Sometimes, it's letting go! --Sylvia Robinson

We are much better at preparing to live than at living. --Thich Nhat Hanh

Important social change frequently begins with a single entrepreneurial author: one obsessive individual who sees a problem and envisions a new solution, who takes the initiative to act on that vision, who gathers resources and builds organizations to protect and market that vision, who provides the energy and sustained focus to overcome the inevitable resistance, and who -- decade after decade -- keeps improving, strengthening and broadening that vision until what was once a marginal idea has become a new norm. --David Bornstein

When love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom! --Laurie Anderson

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. --Richard Bach

Perhaps it would be a good idea, fantastic as it sounds, to muffle every telephone, stop every motor and halt all activity for an hour some day to give people a chance to ponder for a few minutes on what it is all about, why they are living and what they really want. --James Truslow Adams

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. --Gandhi

The thing you need most is always to be found where you least want to look. --Jordan Peterson

It isn't what we don't know that kills us, it's everything we know that ain't so. --Mark Twain

It's not what is poured into a student that counts, but what is planted. --Linda Conway