www.jobollen.be

  What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.

~ Henry Adams ~

 

  A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.

~ Alfred North Whitehead ~

 

  Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

~ William Shakespeare ~
in
Sonnet 116

 

  Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots.

~ Eleanor Farjeon ~

 

  I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~

 

  The people who have sufficient passion for the truth to give the truth a chance to prevail, if it runs counter to their bias, are in a minority. How important is this "minority?" It is difficult to say at this point, for, at the present time their influence on governmental decisions is not perceptible.

~ Leó Szilárd ~

 

  Reason gains all men, by compelling none.
Mercy was always Heaven's distinguished mark:
And he, who bears it not, has no friend there.

~ Aaron Hill ~

 

  I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. But that does not make me angry any more. They are all dear to me now even while they laugh at me — yes, even then they are for some reason particularly dear to me. I shouldn't have minded laughing with them — not at myself, of course, but because I love them — had I not felt so sad as I looked at them. I feel sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only man to know the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they will not understand.

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky ~

 

  Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

~ John Ruskin ~

 

  Extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion.

~ Thomas More ~

 

  Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same...

~ Ronald Reagan ~

 

  Enforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.
~ Roger Williams ~  

  If I had to choose, I would rather have birds than airplanes.

~ Charles Lindbergh ~

 

  Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.

~ Simone Weil ~

 

  I'm not playing by their rules anymore!

~ Bill Murray ~
as "Phil" in
Groundhog Day

 

  What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore —
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over —
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

~ Langston Hughes ~

 

  Anybody can they say they are being "spiritual" — and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern. Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature.

~ Ken Wilber ~

 

  Is there not glory enough in living the days given to us? You should know there is adventure in simply being among those we love and the things we love, and beauty, too.

~ Lloyd Alexander ~

 

  Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or three external signs.

~ Anton Chekhov ~

 

  Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate.

~ José Martí ~