Quotes on humor and truth

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859


The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. ~Tommy Smothers

Love
The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts.
Author: Robert Ingersoll, 1877

whisper wrote:

trennie wrote:

whisper wrote:

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha

I agree with that, Whisper. I have difficulty holding grudges, primarily, because anger isn't natural to me and hard to sustain.

Me too though I fight for fairness. I remember a mystic friend of mine saying
" We humans are strange we put a person in the dungeon of our heart and take them out beat them and put them back. We could be free if we just opened the door and let them leave."
I never have forgotten that wisdom. I do feel however righteous indignation when I see wrong done to others.

Oh yeah. I can do righteous indignation. Sometimes, OTT. But I find it hard to sustain for a long period of time. That's the grudge part, "held in the dungeon of (my) heart. I, too, believe in opening the door.

The door sticks when you try to open it, though, sometimes. And then there's always the danger that you'll open the door to the same abuse you suffered previously from that imprisoned one! In other words,---"Open with care!" Actually,---I don't believe in imprisoning wrong-doers in my heart. Mine's much too soft and easy to damage. Generally I banish them to my mind,----which is a much more severe punishment.--

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“Now and then, hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
- B. Russell

WAMcKinley wrote:

The door sticks when you try to open it, though, sometimes. And then there's always the danger that you'll open the door to the same abuse you suffered previously from that imprisoned one! In other words,---"Open with care!" Actually,---I don't believe in imprisoning wrong-doers in my heart. Mine's much too soft and easy to damage. Generally I banish them to my mind,----which is a much more severe punishment.--

Hahaha. I'll just bet it is.

The sage said, "The best thing is not to hate anyone, only to love. That is the only way out of it. As soon as you have forgiven those whom you hate, you have gotten rid of them. Then you have no reason to hate them; you just forget.
Author: Hazrat Inayat Khan

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeds to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weights their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded.
Author: Judge Learned Hand

The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.” “It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light
Author: swami vivekananda

I hope we shall... crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country--Thomas Jefferson


That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied. Thomas Jefferson


Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.Thomas Jefferson

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"A clever verse from ancient India describes the mind as a restless monkey that is stung by a scorpion, drunk, and possessed by a demon, all at the same time.
"We are all proud owners of this monkey, which gives us a clue as to why it is so incredibly difficult to bring our mind under control. Yet control it we must if we are to go beyond the conditioning of the mind.
- Eknath Easwaran,

Effort is its own reward. We are here to do. And through doing to learn; And through learning to know; And through knowing to experience wonder; And through wonder to attain wisdom; And through wisdom to find simplicity; And through simplicity to give attention; And through attention To see what needs to be done…
Author: Ben Hei Hei

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Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.
- Leonardo da Vinci

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“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.”
- Herbert Hoover

The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter - it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.
Author: Morihei Ueshiba

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Author: Salman Rushdie, writer (b. 1947)

tonnie_rocca wrote:

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“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.”
- Herbert Hoover

This needs to be posted EW

nevermore wrote:

tonnie_rocca wrote:

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“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.”
- Herbert Hoover

This needs to be posted EW

Actually it was directed there...

Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.
Author: Charles Bradlau

Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise.
Author: Pierre Beaumarchais, playwright (1732-1799)

That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
Author: John Stuart Mill,

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise -- you know!
Emily Dickinson

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha

whisper wrote:

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
Buddha

Couldn't agree more.

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
Hafiz of Persia

whisper wrote:

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
Hafiz of Persia

I'm afraid that one has to find it by him/herself...

tonnie_rocca wrote:

whisper wrote:

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
Hafiz of Persia

I'm afraid that one has to find it by him/herself...

I agree Tonnie....

whisper wrote:

tonnie_rocca wrote:

whisper wrote:

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
Hafiz of Persia

I'm afraid that one has to find it by him/herself...

I agree Tonnie....

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And sometimes it's pretty damned hard to find!!

Ezra Pound-
Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.

Sir Josiah Stamp--
Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. - Thomas Jefferson

“I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it... The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”
Woodrow T. Wilson

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies”
Abraham Lincoln

“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”
― Abraham Lincoln