"The purpose of life is not to be happy.  It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference, that you have lived and lived well."  Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Live simply that others may simply live."  Mahatma Gandhi

"You are only young once.  But you can stay immature indefinitely."  Odgen Nash, Poet

"I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries.  My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself.  There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever.  When people die, they cannot be replaced.  They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate - of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death."  Oliver Sacks - My Own Life - New York Times Essay - February 19, 2015

"The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."  F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Crackup, 1936

"At the end of the day, people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel."  Maya Angelou

"Everything happens to everybody, sooner or later, if there is time enough."   George Bernard Shaw

"I intend to live forever.  So far, so good."  Steven Wright

"If you're gonna make decisions, you're gonna make mistakes."  John McKay, Tampa Bay Coach, September, 1979

"You live only as long as the last person who remembers you"  Akecheta, Westworld

"While the political discourse of the present time concerns me greatly - the language is vulgar, lies plentiful, and politicians' commitment to statesmanship and common good, scarce - I am also hopeful that the progress we have made in many arenas, including respect for and appreciation of religious diversity, will continue to grow, benefit many more people, and endure regardless of the times that are before us."  Father Richard Mauthe, Mauthe Center, 2015

"When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following:  That which you are was never born and will never die."   Joseph Campbell

"The children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatters in place of exercise.  Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households...  They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers."  Socrates, circa 400 B.C.

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."  Robert Louis Stevenson, El Dorado

"Some people change because they see the light, others because they feel the heat."  David Thornburg 

"The most empowering relationships are those in which each partner lifts the other to a higher possession of their own being."  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"I love the big fresh starts, the clean slates like birthdays and new years, but I also really like the idea that we can get up every morning and start over."  Kristin Armstrong

"We keep being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality.  On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid." Christopher Hitchens

"If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it."  Stephen Colbert

"There was no respect for youth when I was young, and now that I am old, there is no respect for age, I missed it coming and going."  J. B. Priestly, English Novelist 

"Jesus’s teachings are so radical, they’re just insanely generous and apocalyptic. Christians become more fascinated by the dead Jesus. They don’t like the living Jesus."  Barbara Ehrenreich, Author 

"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it."  Harry S. Truman

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened"   Theodor Suess Geisel 

"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."  Albert Einstein

"We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."  Lee Iacocca

"There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system.  For the initiator has the enmity of all those who would profit by the preservation of the old system and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one."  Machiavelli, 1513, The Prince

"Books will soon be obsolete in our schools.  ...Our school system will be completely changed in the next 10 years."  Thomas Edison in 1913 speaking about motion pictures.

"Even in good programs, the users - teachers, students and administrators understand only between 50 and 60 percent of the services library media specialists claim to provide."  J. Liesener and D. Loertscher - Wisconsin Library Bulletin, May/June 1979

"Nothing could be more absurd than an experiment in which computers are placed in a classroom where nothing else is changed."  Seymour Papert 

"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."   William James

"No light, no energy, no love is ever lost from the universe."  Mark M. Baldwin, Borealis Press 

"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."  Lily Tomlin

"Worrying does not take away tomorrow's troubles.  It takes away today's peace."  Randy Armstrong

"From the time you were very little, you've had people who have smiled you into smiling, people who have talked you into talking, sung you into singing, loved you into loving."  Fred Rogers

"Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed."  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy.  The amount of work is the same."   Carlos Castaneda