(essential pull-quotes)

What we do in life echoes in eternity. [Maximus Decimus Meridius]

Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible conclusions. [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]

The exaltation and happiness of any community, goes hand in hand with the knowledge possessed by the people, when applied to laudable ends; whereupon we can exclaim like the wise man; righteousness exalteth a nation; for righteousness embraces knowledge and knowledge is power. [Times and Seasons, 15 August, 1842 <- Joseph Smith]

The Spirit of God speaking to the spirit of man has power to impart truth with greater effect and understanding than the truth can be imparted by personal contact even with heavenly beings. Through the Holy Ghost, the truth is woven into the very fibre and sinews of the body so that it cannot be forgotten. [Joseph Fielding Smith]

Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong. [Joel 3:10]

I desire the Spirit of God to know and understand myself, that I might be able to overcome whatever of tradition or nature that would not tend to my exaltation. [Emma Smith]


Cultures don't blend; they clash. [Thomas Sowell]

What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.' [The Problem of Pain <- C.S. Lewis]

When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers. [NOT Socrates]

The one who learns and learns and doesn't practice is like the one who plows and plows and never plants. [Plato]

Yea, he [Satan] saith unto them: Deceive and lie in wait to catch, that ye may destroy; behold, this is no harm. And thus he flattereth them, and telleth them that it is no sin to lie that they may catch a man in a lie, that they may destroy him. [Doctrine & Covenants 10:25 <- Joseph Smith <- God]

The right question is usually more important than the right answer. [Plato]

Evil appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction. [Antigone <- Sophocles]

Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. [Prometheus <- The Masque of Pandora <- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration, and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter. [Max Planck]

History doesn't repeat; it rhymes. [Various]

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. [Will Durant]

Creativity is intelligence having fun. [Various]

If you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't, then you might as well be damned for doing. [Mea Culpa]

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers. [The Wise Man's Fear <- Patrick Rothfuss]

Noah came before the flood. I have come before the fire. [Joseph Smith]

Money is the god of our time, and Rothschild is his prophet. [Heinrich Heine]

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth. [NOT Plato]

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. [NOT Mark Twain]

This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man
[Polonius <- Hamlet <- Shakespeare]

What you never do once, you'll never do twice. [Mea Culpa]

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes. [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]

Rebuke flattery; compliments are insults in disguise. [Mea Culpa]

Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein: "To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby." That is what I would have liked to say about my work. [Ludwig Wittgenstein] [and echoed by me]


Those with more dollars than sense will acquire sense at the cost of many dollars. [Mea Culpa]

If you would not be forgotten,
as soon as you are dead and rotten;
Either write things worthy of reading
or do things worthy of writing.
[Benjamin Franklin]

Science advances one funeral at a time. [Max Planck]

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. [Hypatia]

The Phoenix only ever rises from the ashes of what went before. [Mea Culpa]

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant. [Quintus Horatius Flaccus]

You'll never get to heaven until you're sick and tired of hell. [Mea Culpa]

Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the gate:
And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?"
[Lays of Ancient Rome <- Thomas Babington Macaulay]

If we subscribe to Benjamin Franklin's assertion that, 'Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.', then how can we expect any less of those we would 'liberate'? How can we justify surrendering our safety to buy their liberty, a gift whose value is only fully appreciated by those who've had to sacrifice for it? Send them your hopes, your prayers, perhaps even the means needed to free themselves, but do not send them your sons, and do not let them shirk their duty in your lands. Demand of them that they free themselves in their own. [Mea Culpa]

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. [Robertson Davies]

While it is patently true that there must be opposition in all things, it is just as true that mercy must never rob justice. [Mea Culpa]

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. [Hosea 4:6]

Corporal punishment is to physical abuse what medicine is to drug abuse. There is no fine line between them; they are worlds apart. [Mea Culpa]

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. [Adam Smith]

We will not be the lesser sons of greater fathers, in whose mighty company we will then not be ashamed to stand. [J.R.R. Tolkien (via Théoden, king of Rohan)]

There is no heavier burden than a 'great potential'. [Linus van Pelt]

Lo, There do I see my Father.
Lo, There do I see my Mother and my Brothers and my Sisters.
Lo, They do call to me.
They bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla;
Where thine enemies have been vanquished;
Where the brave shall live Forever;
Nor shall we mourn, but rejoice for those that have died the glorious death.
[1st century Norse prayer]

My name is Gladiator. [Maximus Decimus Meridius]

~~ Marcus Aurelius ~~