You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. Begin as a mere apprentice and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master of the art.
S:St Francis De Sales
We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one "less traveled by" — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.
S:Rachel Carson
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
S:Valclav Havel
If we, as a society, lose our voice completely, and corporations start doing all the talking, then we’ll be utterly lost. To some degree, this has already happened. Our ability to envision a future collectively has already been severely compromised.
S:Kalle Lasn (founder of Ad Busters)
It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people,white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred; he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. . . . The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.
S:Nelson Mandela
We will choose an economy of sustainable energy when we realize that our happiness depends on our relationships with people and with nature, as well as our individual, material well-being. We will choose a life of social responsibility when we realize that caring for others is not a sacrifice, but instead enhances our quality of life. One by one, we will create an economy of sustainable energy, as we realize that working and living sustainably is simply a better way to work and a better way to live.
S:John Ikerd, economist and author, in a speech at the 2nd Annual US Peak Oil Conference
The best cure for battle fatigue is not to battle. Although you may find it difficult not to inject a little sanity into the lemminglike rush toward death you see all around you, do not intercede. The old world is dying. It must and will come down. The best you can do is allow it to die as gracefully as possible. Whatever you put your attention on increases. For the sake of the ecosystem and the new emerging civilization, remove your attention from the death process and place it on the process of birth instead. Misplaced attention will just act to prolong the ending’s agony and delay your inevitable, exalted future.
S:quoted from E.T. 101: The Cosmic Instruction Manual for Planetary Evolution
If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.
S:Chinese Proverb
The love of one's country is a natural thing. But why should love stop at the border?
S:Pablo Casals
Number of children who could be educated for life in a developing country for the cost of a jet fighter: 3 million
S:from Numbers by David Boyle and Anita Roddick
What if the purpose of architecture were not primarily to surprise with unexpected shapes, awe the viewer with the genius of the architect, or keep up with glamourous trends - but rather to add life to our environment by finding and using patterns that are charged with the spirit of life?
S:Eric Utne, writing about humane architecture in the Utne Reader (Nov-Dec 2004)
Kids can help to change the world, you know, but we can’t do it by ourselves. And whether it’s clean water or something else, what is important is that we all make a difference… I think the world is like a huge puzzle and we all have to figure out where our puzzle piece fits. I think that my piece fits with clean water. I just hope every one of you finds out where your puzzle piece fits too.
S:Ryan Hreljac, age 13, founder of Ryan's Well Foundation
I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
S:Rainer Maria Rilke
I started as a scientist. Now I feel I am becoming an artist assembling scientific ideas like a painter assembles colors on a canvas.
S:John Todd, Designer of the Living Machine
"If the Great Spirit wanted men to stay in one place He would make the world stand still; but He made it to always change..."
S: Chief Flying Hawk, OGLALA SIOUX
The Elders tell us change occurs in two directions. They say, "That which is built is constantly being destroyed; that which is loose is being used to build the New." In other words, change is constantly going on. Many times we hear people say, "I hate change." Does it make sense that the Great Spirit would design people to hate it? The Great Spirit designed people with change abilities such as visioning, imagery and imagination. Maybe we need to learn to use these tools and then we'll look forward to change.
S:From Elder's Meditation of the Day May 17 at WhiteBison.org
In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.
S: Marianne Williamson
Space and time are not conditions in which we live. They are modes in which we think. Because you were thinking that you were living in space and time, the quantum field of subatomic particles congealed to create a reality that fulfilled your desire. The observer effects what is being observed. Science made a radical shift and became aware that, at a deeper level of reality that gives rise to the large level of reality, mind does effect matter. In fact, mind (and the observation and intent of mind) gives rise to the manifestation of the material reality that is then experienced. The observer effects what is being observed.
S:Mike Wright, "Nonlocality and the Observer: A New Model for your World"
S:ISBN: 1578730546
Nichts kann der Mensch so schlecht ertragen als eine Reihe guter Tage.
(Old German saying loosely translated by a friend to mean: There is nothing man endures as poorly as a succession of good days.)
Alles in der Welt lässt sich ertragen,
Nur nicht eine Reihe von schönen Tagen.
S: J.W. Goethe
Thomas Merton once gave this description of spiritual communities: Groups of people who would never have chosen to be together in an ordinary human way (who) find themselves living together. It is a test of faith. It puts God's love to the test and it is meant to. It is what Saint Paul means. It isn't just a question of whether you are building community with people that you naturally like, it is also a question of building community with people that God has brought together.
S:Evan Farrar
Deep change requires more than the identification of the problem and a call for action. It requires looking beyond the scope of the problem and finding the actual source of the trouble. The real problem is frequently located where we would least expect to find it, inside ourselves. Deep change requires an evaluation of the ideologies behind the organizational culture.
S:Robert Quinn
We have reached the phase in cultural evolution where we must assume full responsibility for our power... Knowing and reaching our fullest potential within the constraints of the Biosphere must be the ultimate goal - the driving vision of the 21st century. And the Noosphere concept suggests a philosophy for such a necessary balance.
S:Mikhail Gorbachev
Spirituality in the ecological epoch will be based on a sense of deep communion with all beings – through empathy, through the power of the heart, through our deepest intuition of the sacred pulse of life and the sacred nature of the cosmos.
S:Henryk Skolimowski
Collaborating is both assertive and cooperative - the opposite of avoiding. When collaborating, an individual attempts to work with the other person to find a solution that fully satisfies the concerns of both. It involves digging into an issue to identify the underlying concerns of the two individuals and to find an alternative that meets both sets of concerns.
S:Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann
Causality is only a measure of subjective expectation.
S:Hume
A disease process is evidence that something is amiss in the workings of the mind where the power to effect change resides. Treating an illness is a physical process only and doesn't correct the origin of dysfunction. It is possible to heal rapidly or miraculously with a mere shift in attitude but even if this shift may seem to occur in a split second, it may actually take years of inner preparation. When the mind is ready, the body will follow.
S:from the book Power vs Force by David R. Hawkins