This edition of Cosmic Brownie Bites is a small collection of quotations from the famous, infamous, and the unknown that I have found thought provoking. I hope you do as well.
From the Man in the Arena Speech…
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
— Theodore Roosevelt
The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.
— Will Rogers
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
— John F. Kennedy
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
― John F. Kennedy
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
― John F. Kennedy
When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.
― C. S. Lewis
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
— Thomas H. Huxley
It has always been easy to hate and destroy. To build and to cherish is much more difficult.
— Queen Elizabeth II
When life seems hard, the courageous do not lie down and accept defeat; instead, they are all the more determined to struggle for a better future.
— Queen Elizabeth II
No state commands such fierce pride and loyalty; lesser mortals are pitied for the misfortune in not being born Texan.
— Queen Elizabeth II
Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
— Joseph Goebbels
This was but a prelude; where books are burnt, human-beings will be burnt in the end.
― Heinrich Heine
(Heine was an early 19th century German poet. This quote was in a book that was among the first burned in Nazi Germany.)
The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Human nature, always elusive to ideologues, has brought down every Communist plan for world domination before, not through force of arms, but the hubris of its miscalculations.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
— William Arthur Ward
We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy our economy…
Most government is by the rich for the rich. Government comprises a large part of the organised injustice in any society, ancient or modern. Civil government, insofar as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, and for the defence of those who have property against those who have none.
― Adam Smith
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
— Henry Ford
One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.
— Gustave Flaubert
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
— John 1:5