A:
“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.”
--(debated on who said this first, from 19th century rabbis, to anonymous monks)
B:
The path to our destinaton is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark.
--Barbara Hall, Northern Exposure, Rosebud, 1993
Being busy doesn't always mean doing real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
--Thomas Edison
C:
The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.
--Don Marquis (1878 -1937)
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
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D:
“….The next planet was inhabited by a drunkard. This visit was a brief one, but it plunged the little prince into a deep depression.
“What are you doing there?” he asked the drunkard, whom he found sunk in silence before a collection of empty bottles and a collection of full ones.
“Drinking,” replied the drunkard, with a gloomy expression.
“Why are you drinking?” the little prince asked.
“To forget,” replied the drunkard.
“To forget what?” inquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
“To forget that I am ashamed,” confessed the drunkard, hanging his head.
“What are you ashamed of?” inquired the little prince, who wanted to help.
“Of drinking!” concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into silence for good.
And the little prince went on his way, puzzled. “Grown-ups certainly are very, very strange,” he said to himself as he continued his journey….”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince
E:
“If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love, poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of lige’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are significant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
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F:
If you have come to help me, than you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
--Aborigines activists
