Wisdom's Log
If you have any wonderful words of wisdom, toss them this way!
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Thu 
03/22/2007 09:53:31
 jim  Misc One Liners
Oscar Wilde
"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Mark Twain
"First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure."
Benjamin Disraeli
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."
W. I. E. Gates
"Then there was the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches".
Jim Cutlar
"There is sanity in knowing you are insane."
"The four most important things you should learn in life are: To listen, to pay attention to detail, and to count".
Wed 
03/21/2007 11:56:59
 jim  Marcus Aurelius One Liners
Good and Bad
-A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions.
-A good man judges himself by a higher ideal.
-A bad man judges himself by a lower ideal.
-Be content with what you've become.
-Anything good is possible.
-Poverty is the mother of crime.
-Do good to others without thinking about what you have lost, like a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes.
Fate
-Accept and love your fate.
-Adapt yourself to what fate has dealt you.
-Love those who destiny brought to you.
-Each day provides its own gifts.
-Everything that happens, happens as it should.
-Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future.
-All victory lies in the organization of its secrets.
Work
-Do every task as if it were your last act.
-When in Rome, do as the Romans.
-If it is not right do not do it.
-If it is not true do not say it.
-Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than those who constantly read.
-Where a man can live, he can also live well.
The Mind
-You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
-Anger cannot be dishonest.
-Beauty comes from within. Beauty is not made better or worse by praise.
-Aptitudes come from understanding. Aptitudes are often inherited.
-Genius comes from reason and imagination. Genius is rarely inherited.
-Confine yourself to the present.
-Desire make us its puppets.
-Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
-Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
-Every act has a purpose.
-Broaden your mind by investigating systematically all that comes to you.
-Reject your injuries and the injury will disappear.
-Happiness depends on the quality of your thoughts
-Happiness is a decision that you make.
Life
-Death releases us from our senses, desires, and mind. It frees us from the hard service of the flesh.
-Death is natural. Welcome it. It should not be feared.
-Not living life is worse than dying.
-Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.
-Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.
-Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
-Men exist for the sake of one another.
-Life is what we think it is.
-The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
-When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.  
Tue 
03/13/2007 19:16:11
 jim  Aristotle One Liners
  • Friends
  • A friend to all is a friend to none.
  • A man who has many friends, probably has none.
  • Love is when two bodies share the same soul.
  • Friendship is essentially a partnership.
  • Hope is the dream of a waking man.
  • A great city and a big city, are two different things.
  • Man's Nature
  • Man is by nature a political animal.
  • Great men always surface from depression.
  • All men, by nature, desire to know.
  • Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.
  • Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.
  • Bad men are full of repentance.
  • Man may be the noblest of all animals, but without law and justice he is the worst.
  • God and Religion
  • Men create gods in their own image, in their own form, and in their own mode of life.
  • Politics
  • Tyrants usually claim an uncommon devotion to religion.
  • People will suffer illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing.
  • People are not likely to move against a ruler if they believe god is on his side.
  • Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.
  • Democracy is the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects.
  • Democracy believes that because men are equally free, they are equal.
  • Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
  • Democracy gives the poor more power than the rich, because they will always be the majority.
  • Liberty and equality will be best attained when all people share in government.
  • One should do without being commanded, what others do only from fear of the law.
  • Republics decline into democracies. Democracies decline into tyranny.
  • Nature
  • All actions are caused by one or more of these: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
  • Great ideas make their appearance in the world many times.
  • Change in all things is sweet.
  • If one way is better than another, it is nature's way.
  • There is something marvelous in all of nature creations.
  • Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
    Work
  • Beauty is always better than a letter of reference.
  • All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
  • Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
  • All virtue is summed up by dealing justly.
  • Anybody can become angry - that is easy.
  • Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
  • Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit.
  • Youth
  • Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.
  • Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.
    Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
  • Education
  • Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.
  • Education is the best provision for old age.
  • It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
  • Emotions
  • Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
  • Fear is anticipation of pain before it exists.
  • Happiness depends on ones point of view.
  • With beauty and poverty, comes suffering.
  • Fighting
  • A man who conquers his desires is braver than a man who conquers his enemies.
  • The hardest victories are fought within one's self.
  • Women are almost always better off showing more affection than she feels.
  • In poverty, old age and misfortune, true friends are the surest refuge.
  • Misfortune shows us who our true friends.
  • It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
  • It is unbecoming for the young to speak of truth.
  • We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
  • Most people would rather get than get affection.
  • Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
  • My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
  • Nature does nothing uselessly.
  • Nobody is exempt from some mixture of madness.
  • No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.
  • No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.
  • It is not possible to love someone you fear.
  • No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.
  • Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.
  • Beauty is always better than a letter of reference.
  • Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.
  • Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
  • Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself.
  • A Politicians nature is to seek power, glory, or happiness.
  • Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
  • That in the soul which is called the mind is, before it thinks, not actually any real thing.
  • The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
  • The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.
  • The appropriate age for marriage is around eighteen for girls and thirty-seven for men.
  • The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.
  • The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
  • The end of labor is to gain leisure.
  • The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
  • The gods too are fond of a joke.
  • The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.
  • The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.
  • The law is reason, free from passion.
  • The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
  • The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
  • The more thou dost advance, the more thy feet pitfalls will meet. The Path that leadeth on is lighted by one fire- the light of daring burning in the heart. The more one dares, the more he shall obtain. The more he fears, the more that light shall pale - and that alone can guide.
  • The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
  • The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
  • The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
  • The secret to humor is surprise.
  • The soul never thinks without a picture.
  • The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
  • The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.
  • The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
  • The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life - knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.
  • The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
  • There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.
  • There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
  • Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.
  • This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.
  • Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.
  • Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
  • Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
  • Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.
  • To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.
  • To the query, ''What is a friend?'' his reply was ''A single soul dwelling in two bodies.''
  • Tragedy is thus a representation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself and of some amplitude... by means of pity and fear bringing about the purgation of such emotions.
  • We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action. We make war that we may live in peace.
  • We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.
  • We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.
  • Well begun is half done.
  • What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.
  • What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.
  • Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
  • Wit is educated insolence.
  • Tue 
    03/13/2007 14:18:44
     jim  One Liners from Stephen Hawking
  • My goal is simple: to understand the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.
  • I haven't known any mathematicians who could reason
  • Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?
  • I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
  • Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
  • It is not clear if intelligence has any long-term survival value.
  • Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
  • Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would half the sales.
  • Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?
  • Events do not happen in an arbitrary manner. They seem to reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.
  • There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.
  • To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
  • We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
  • Tue 
    03/13/2007 08:44:20
     jim  The One Liners from Einstein
  • I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.
  • Few are those who see with their own eyes, and feel with their own hearts.
  • Genius has always encountered violent opposition from idiots.
  • Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
  • Equations live forever. Politics live for the moment.
  • I do not know what weapons World War 3 will be fought with, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
  • Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18
  • Ethical behavior should not be governed by the fear of punishment or hope of reward after death. It should be based on sympathy, education, and social ties.
  • Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
  • God does not play dice with the universe
  • When the solution is simple, God is answering.
  • When we face the world as free beings; admiring, asking and observing, we enter the realm of Art and Science.
  • Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
  • Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
    Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That is relativity.
  • Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.  
  • Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
  • Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
  • Peace is achieved through understanding, not by violence.
  • Sun 
    09/17/2006 07:08:00
     jim  Plato - The Republic
    Plato wrote in his "The Republic"
    Each member of a society ought to do what they are best at and be alleviated from responsibility of those things they are not good at, which can be done by others.
    I often wonder what kind of world this philosphy would create.
    How would it be, if Johnny started school in the fifth grade, past the grade of his olderer sister in the second?
    I think right now, capitolism and free enterprise tries to allow us to find our own levels in society. And I wonder how well that is working.
    To me, the levels we find still seem to be determined by wealth and locations that present opportunity; and not merit.
    Brilliant minds are rarely discovered in Podunk and feeble minds often have highly financed degrees.

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