Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system. ~P.J. O'Rourke

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. ~P.J. O'Rourke

Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that. All we need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics. ~Leighann Lord

All religions must be tolerated... for... every man must get to heaven his own way. ~Frederick the Great

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. ~Dalai Lama

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world — its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles. The more you understand, the more you look, the greater is your enjoyment of life and your sense of peace. That's all there is to it. If an activity is not grounded in 'to love' or 'to learn,' it does not have value. ~ Anne Rice

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language or culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time. ~ Edward Abbey

I made a decision to stop being unconscious. And how you do that is you give yourself the keys to the unconscious room and you walk in and you go, ‘What´s up?’ and all the little monsters come out with their party hats. ~ Tori Amos

We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace? ~J. Ramsay MacDonald

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~Robert Fulghum

Let us love the world to peace. ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994

Soul-mates are people who bring out the best in you. They are not perfect but are always perfect for you. ~Author Unknown

A true friend is one who thinks you are a good egg even if you are half-cracked. ~Author Unknown

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me. ~Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from "The Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Neibuhr

"The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment." ~Bertrand Russell

"If you don't know what you want... you end up with a lot you don't." ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

"People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them." ~Dave Barry

"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." ~Wilson Mizner

Loneliness... is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. ~Thomas Wolfe

I am much better employed from every point of view, when I live solely for my own satisfaction, than when I begin to worry about the world. The world frightens me, and a frightened man is no good for anything. ~George Gissing

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other? - George Eliot

Women are angels. When someone breaks our wings, we simply continue to fly...on a broomstick. We are flexible like that! ~ Unknown

I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. ~William S. Burroughs

As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. ~ Julia Butterfly Hill

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~ Marianne Williamson from A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles."

"Ideals are not something I can control. It’s not logic that convinces me of something, it’s what my heart says.” ~ Michelle Shocked

"If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within, secondary reality without."

"If someone you love hurts you, cry a river, build a bridge, and get over it." ~Author Unknown

"A woman who seeks to be equal with men lacks ambition."

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

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. ~Elwyn Brooks White

The barn has burned down, now I can see the moon.

There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

‎If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

‎"I don’t understand how a nation can ask people to pay taxes but they don’t get certain rights that everyone else does. It’s not ‘All men are created equal, except homos.’ If gays can’t get marriage, why should they have to pay into the system? Why should they have to pay any tax if the government isn’t going to acknowledge them as human beings?" ~ Tori Amos

‎"The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours - it is an amazing journey - and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins." ~ Bob Moawad

Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people. ~André Dubus

Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum. (I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am)

We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, & we fortify it with our concepts of who's right & wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems. It's a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft & open & tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find comfortable ground. ~ P. Chodron

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." ~ Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7

"Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it’s all over." – Gloria Naylor

“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.” – Edvard Munch

“Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree, in the midst of them all.” ~ Buddha

"We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom." ~ Leo Tolstoy

"Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man." ~ Erica Jong

“THE USES OF SORROW Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” ~ Mary Oliver

"You see the people ― they are miserable because they have compromised on every point, and they cannot forgive themselves because they have compromised. They know that they could have dared, but they proved cowards. In their own eyes they have fallen, they have lost self-respect. That´s what compromise does." ~ Osho

"In my thought there is only one universal religion, whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being." ~ Kahlil Gibran♥

“Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again.” ~ Finn Butler

"I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong." ~ John Lennon

"Be strong enough to stand alone, be yourself enough to stand apart, but be wise enough to stand together when the time comes."

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.'" -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

"Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place." —Kurt Vonnegut

“We are told “no,” we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. “Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.” And then you’re a player, you don’t want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.” — Terence McKenna

“Being born a woman is an awful tragedy. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording —all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.” — Sylvia Plath

"The only real failure is the failure to try. And the measure of success, is how we cope with disappointment, as we always must..." ~ Leesa Burnett

"Some people won't love you no matter what you do and some people won't stop loving you no matter what you do. Go where the love is."

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”~ Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet

"There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too." ~ Kurt Vonnegut

"It isn't the date on either end that counts But how they used their dash For that dash between the dates Represents all the time they spent alive on earth And now only those who loved them know, What that little line is worth." Epitaph on headstone somewhere

"Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." ~ Arundhati Roy

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” ~ Virginia Woolf

“We're so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fuckin' planet? . . . And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin' great. It's been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn't goin' anywhere, folks. We are! We're goin' away. Pack your shit, we're goin' away. And we won't leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we'll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.” ~ George Carlin

“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there's still going to be somebody who hates peaches.” ~ Dita Von Teese

"To be loved by a horse, or by any animal, should fill us with awe -- for we have not deserved it..." ~ Marion Garretty

"It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui." ~ Helen Keller

“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.” ~ Helen Keller

“What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.” ~ Helen Keller

“I no longer have the energy for meaningless friendships, forced interactions or unnecessary conversations. If we don’t vibrate on the same frequency there’s just no reason for us to waste our time. I’d rather have no one and wait for substance than to not feel someone and fake the funk.” ~ Joquesse Eugenia

"It became increasingly clear to me how our prejudices about drug use and our punitive policies toward users themselves made people who take drugs seem less human and less rational. Drug users' behavior was always first ascribed to drugs rather than considered in light of other, equally prominent factors in the social world, like drug laws.

And in reality, virtually all of us sometimes find ourselves in situations where we persist in behavior despite negative consequences, just like addicted people do. Most people can't stick to a diet, many continue to eat fatty and sweet foods when they are gaining weight, or have had periods of heaving drinking or stayed in bad relationships and ignored the negative results, which is the same pattern of behavior seen in drug addiction. Sure, there are extreme cases where addicted people commit absurd crimes - but there are plenty of equally stupid crimes planned or committed by people who are stone-cold sober." ~ from the book, High Price by Dr. Carl Hart

"…throw roses into the abyss and say: ‘here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive.’" ~ Nietzsche

"Bigotry disguised as religious liberty is still bigotry." ~ Protest sign for marriage equality

"There is a fine line between what I’m calling melancholia and what society calls depression. In my mind, what separates the two is degree of activity. Both forms are more or less chronic sadness that leads to ongoing unease with how things are — persistent feelings that the world as it is is not quite right, that it is a place of suffering, stupidity, and evil. Depression (as I see it, at least) causes apathy in the face of this unease, lethargy approaching total paralysis, an inability to feel much of anything one way or another. In contrast, melancholia (in my eyes) generates a deep feeling in regard to this same anxiety, a turbulence of heart that results in an active questioning of the status quo, a perpetual longing to create new ways of being and seeing.

Our culture seems to confuse these two and thus treat melancholia as an aberrant state, a vile threat to our pervasive notions of happiness — happiness as immediate gratification, happiness as superficial comfort, happiness as static contentment." ~ From the book "Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy," by Eric G. Wilson