Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract."
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

[poohbear_nc]

"Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values."
Ralph Ellison

[WT Sharpe]

.....When I am attacked, I fight like a devil; but I am a good devil, and I end by laughing.
..........— Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694-1778), French philosopher. Letter to Formey, The Life of Voltaire V2 by S.G. Tallentyre, page 252.

[TenaciousBadger]

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

---Arthur Schopenhauer aka Mr. Sunshine

[covingtoncat73]

"Oh. Well as my friend the dean observes," Marinus says, leaning on the rail, "we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love." from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

[WT Sharpe]

.....Nor am I less persuaded, that you will agree with me in opinion, that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.
..........— George Washington (1732-1799), 1st President of the United States. Address to Congress (January 8, 1790).

[pilotbob]

You go George. Good quote Tom!

BOb

[WT Sharpe]

Thanks, BOb!

[WT Sharpe]

.....A nation can not teach its youths to think in terms of destruction and oppression without brutalizing and blunting the tender conscience and sense of justice of the youths of that country. More and more we must learn to think not in terms of race or color or language or religion or of political boundaries, but in terms of humanity. Above all races and political boundaries there is humanity. That should be considered first; and in proportion as we teach the youths of this country to love all races and all nations, we are rendering the highest service which education can render to the world.
..........— Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), African-American leader, educator. Address at the Fourth American Peace Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, May 1, 1913. The Booker T. Washington Papers Volume 12: 1912-14, University of Illinois Press (1983).

[BenG]

I used the spoiler tag because it's a little long.

A Poet's Advice
by E.E. Cummings

Spoiler:

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.

This may sound easy. It isn't.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel - but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling - not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why?

Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenever we do it, we are not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem, you'll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world - unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn't.

It's the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by BenG

I used the spoiler tag because it's a little long.

A Poet's Advice
by E.E. Cummings

That is absolutely fantastic. I love e.e. cummings, and even have a record of some of his poems that was recorded in the local Unitarian Church in the 60s by the then pastor accompanied by a small jazz ensemble.

[Dean M. Cole]

If I had cared to live, I would have died.
—John Myers Myers
Opening line of Silverlock.

[WT Sharpe]

Those of you who have been MobileRead members for a while may remember this as an early signature line I used here. It's my favorite line from the book Mental Floss: Genius Instruction Manual by the Editors of Mental Floss and edited by Will Pearson, Mangesh Hattikudar, and John Green (2006):

.....There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

[GeoffC]

To paraphrase you Tom

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who wear the trousers and those who give the orders ...."

[Billi]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Those of you who have been MobileRead members for a while may remember this as an early signature line I used here. ...

.....There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

If I remember right, there is still someone here who uses this line as his signature.