Some Favorite quotes:"...'Living with death on our shoulder', not as gloomy presentiment but as reminder of the short & ephemeral nature of our visit here, is a bracing experience. When we are in the presence of dying, of someone close to us, our experiencing acquires an intensity, a sharp edge. If this were how we experienced all of our everyday living, how very different the quality of our lives might be. Small moments hold our attention, suffused with meaning, value & significance. ...this reinforces the poignancy of knowing that, when opportunities were available, how few were fully seized. Not guilt, not sadness, but perhaps time to allow & even encourage, remorse. Remorse of conscience: how easy the words; yet a powerful shoulder on the door to a finer world." - - RF ************************************************************ ************************* “My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species. I can’t cry about it. In a way I’m inoculated. I’ve suffered this pain for so long. We were expelled from Eden. What keeps us out of Eden? I tried to tell everybody, but I could not get it across. Well, I’m being more specific now: The West has packed the whole world on a runaway train. We are on the road to extincting ourselves as a species. That’s what I meant when I said that we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.†- Joni Mitchell**************************************************** *********************************"The school system that is costing so much is not delivering the goods. I think one of the reasons it doesn't deliver the goods is that it's ideologically more appealing to the right-wing elements in this country to create a nation of stupid people who are dumb enough to swallow their rhetoric so those right-wing elements can run an election campaign which is not based on facts and figures, but on bunting and sound bites that don't really tell you anything. You need a docile, stupid electorate in order for a person to be elected. And how do you keep them that way? You starve the educational system so that it doesn't really work. You control the content of the school books which are used in the educational system. You rewrite history to suit your ideology." - Frank Zappa******************************************************* ****************************** "People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar." -Thich Nhat Hanh******************************************************** ***************************** “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.â€- Thich Nhat Hanh ************************************************************ **************---------------------------------------------- -------------"Aside from the fact that it can be hazardous to your health, which wasn't always the case, I dislike the feeling that you experience during the daytime, when so many of the world's souls are awake, being industrious. It's a bad feeling and I don't want to participate. But at night it's a whole different thing. The people who are awake at night are my kind of people. The animals that are awake at night are the better animals: owls, raccoons, bats, the insects that don't want to show off. The ones with the bright colors have to go out in the daytime to get their money's worth, but the nighttime is natural for the drab, beetle-like, slug-like, monastic kinds of life forms. Superior life forms, like silverfish." - Frank Zappa******************************************************* ******************************“Awakening is not the conquest of a state of higher consciousness. It is a movement, repeatedly attempted and repeatedly denied, a return to the consciousness of what is.†-Henri Tracol****************************************************** *******************************“The Americans are good people, not nasty rotten, but good. But that not enough. They [are] sheep, good sheep, responding obediently to anything suggested, but not take course by themselves. Question—which is better: good sheep or bad dog? They must show more initiative … in daily life—all for exercise of Will†- G. I. Gurdjieff*************************************************** ********************************** "In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - Orwell ************************************************************ ************************* “We don’t understand the importance of our attitude. My attitude at any point is like the sunken part of the iceberg. I start out from the conscious affirmative part which is like the tip. I’m quite surprised—and unprepared—to meet resistance from this unconscious part. Yet my attitude is largely governed by this resistance. You have to see the resistance. You have to be more aware of the wish to not work—at the same time as you are holding the wish to work.†- John Pentland ************************************************************ *************************