Leader

“Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace.”

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

New ratio

“War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.”

-H.L. Mencken

Lessons of history

“It was our own moral failure and not any accident of chance, that while preserving the appearance of the Republic we lost its reality.”

-Marcus Tullius Cicero

Measure up

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”

–Samuel Johnson

Eternally boring

“It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.”

–Robert Green Ingersoll

Pays together, stays together?

“Money isn’t everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch.”

–seen on a bumper sticker

Reason enough

“I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and—I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.”

-Lorraine Hansberry

On books and reading

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
-Ray Bradbury

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
-Groucho Marx

“Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind; it forces you to stretch your own.”
-Charles Scribner, Jr.

“Never judge a book by its movie.”
-J. W. Eagan

“A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.”
-Salman Rushdie

“To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.”
-Robertson Davies

Inspiration

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

-J.M. Barrie

Transform

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

-Pablo Picasso

Faults

“Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.”

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Rapt in awe

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”

-Albert Einstein

Spend wisely

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

-Carl Sandburg

Kinetic sculptor

Scientist-turned-artist Theo Jansen has crafted ‘animari’ that walk on the wind. Check out this amazing short clip.

“The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds.”

-Theo Jansen

Fear

“If leaders exploit public fears to herd people in directions they might not otherwise choose, then fear itself can quickly become a self-perpetuating and freewheeling force that drains national will and weakens national character, diverting attention from real threats deserving of healthy and appropriate fear and sowing confusion about the essential choices the every nation must constantly make about is future.”

-Al Gore
from The Assault on Reason