"Der Planet braucht keine erfolgreichen Menschen mehr, der Planet braucht dringend Friedensstifter, Heiler, Erneuerer, Geschichtenerzähler und Liebende aller Arten. Er braucht Menschen mit Zivilcourage, bereit, sich dafür einzusetzen, die Welt lebenswert und menschlich zu gestalten. Diese Qualitäten haben wenig mit der Art Erfolg zu tun, die in unseren Kulturen verbreitet ist."
- Dalai Lama
A collection of quotes.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
- J. Krishnamurti
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
"Longest is the life that contains the largest amount of time-effacing enjoyment."
- John Muir
"Wer ein Urteil ohne Anhören der zweiten Seite fällt, ist ungerecht, wenn er auch ein gerechtes Urteil fällte."
- Sen. Med. 199–200
"As reason is the substance and origin of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring everything by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be, in time, master of every mechanic art."
- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
"A hobby is a form of consumption, the marvelous pursuit on the other hand, is a rejection of commodifed convenience."
- The Marvellous Pursuit
"But the most important things about being an anarchist are: treating other people with respect, as masters of their own lives; and taking control of your life, seizing freedom, but remaining responsible to yourself and those you care about."
- Life Without Law
"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."
- Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
"So laufen wir nach dem, was vor uns flieht
Und achten nicht des Weges den wir treten,
und sehen neben uns der Ahnherrn Tritte
Und ihres Erdelebens Spuren kaum."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris
"Man arrives penniless in this world, and departs without a single rupee."
- Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
"Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady. Ssraightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon's knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable."
- Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
"Good and positive suggestions should instruct the sensitive ears of children. Their early ideas long remain sharply etched."
- Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
"Look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you."
- Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
"The city dweller finds the keen edge of hospitality blunted by superabundance of strange faces."
- Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
"Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others."
- Kakuzo Okakura 1906
"In this state of total consumerism - which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves - all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken."
- Wendell Berry, Think Little
"Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato."
- Wendell Berry, Think Little
"No Person is free except in the freedom of other persons. Our only real freedom is to know and faithfully occupy our place - a much humbler place than we have been taught to think - in the order of creation."
- Wendell Berry, Think Little
"We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us."
- Wendell Berry, Think Little
"The main problem with this great obsession for Saving Time is very simple: you can't save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly."
- Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitched to-day to save nine tomorrow."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
"I have a well-deserved reputation for being something of a gadget freak, and am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise would take me a good ten seconds to do by hand. Ten seconds, I tell myself, is ten seconds. Time is valuable and ten seconds' worth of it is well worth the investment of day's happy activity working our a way of saving it."
- Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See...
"We live in capitalism. It's power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be changed and resisted by human beings."
- Ursula K. Le Guin
"When we sleep in a house our thoughts are as high as the ceiling but when we sleep outside, our thoughts are as high as the stars."
- Bedouin Anecdote
"It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses."
- G.K. Chesterton, The New Jersusalem
"Jeder dumme Junge kann einen Käfer zertreten. Aber alle Professoren der Welt können keinen herstellen."
- Arthur Schopenhauer