QUOTES --- SERIOUS

(philosophical, social,
political, etc.)

 
(with LINKS to more)

Home page > This SERIOUS-QUOTES (and LINKS) page

Humorous quotes are on a different page.

Some quotes are both philosophical and humorous
and may appear on either page, or both.

Example:
"Life is like a box of chocolates ..." - Forrest Gump movie

! NOTE !
Like most 'LINKS' pages on the web, there will, no doubt,
be more and more dead links on this page over time.
It may be years at a time before I return to this page to
remove dead links and replace some links with better links.
In the meantime, try 'WEB SEARCH' links provided on this page.

INTRODUCTION :

The following quotes are not in groups at this time --- i. e. they are not collected into categories, yet. And the quotes are in no particular order at this time.

However, some keywords, that classify each quote, are placed near each quote --- to help find it, as follows.

As a flexible and comprehensive way of locating quotes of interest :

You can use an option like 'Find in This Page ...' of your web browser to find keywords, such as

'persistence'   OR   'persist'   OR   'try'   OR   'age'   OR   'money'   OR   'courage'.

Generally, there will be links to web sites that provide information on the author or source of the quote.

There are links to 'sites that specialize in quotes' available near the bottom of this page.

And there are 'WEB SEARCH' links on this page, to do web searches on keywords like 'philosophical quote' and 'serious quote'.

If there appear to be a lot of quotes collecting on certain topics --- such as 'medicine' or 'health' or 'government' or 'politics' --- then the quotes on this page may, eventually, be grouped together according to such topics.

When a quote could be assigned to multiple topics, a single topic will be chosen, to avoid maintenance of duplicates. You will still be able to find the quote with a keyword search.

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine,
but rather
interest their patients in the care of
the human frame through lifestyle and diet,
and in the cause and prevention of disease."

- Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

(Boy, was he ever wrong!
Lots of pill-pushing-FIRST going on nowadays
--- by pharmaceutical companies and the doctors
who are 'over-influenced' by those companies!)

(Keywords: doctor, medicine, patient, lifestyle, diet, prevention, disease)

"Inactivity weakens, exercise strengthens, excess harms."

- Bavarian priest Sebastian Kneipp (1821-1897) ---
a re-inventor and promoter of hydrotherapy for healing & health.

(Keywords: inactivity, exercise, excess ; weaken, strengthen, harm ;
hydro, water, therapy, healing, health)

"Now this is not the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

- Winston Churchill (at an early stage in World War II)

(Keywords: beginning, end, persistence, war)

"I don't use words like 'can't'. I prefer words like ...
if a mosquito tells you he can pull a plow, don't question him.
Hitch him up."

- Carl Brashear (1931-2006),
the Navy's first black deep-sea diver

(Keywords: persistence, "can do", question, determination, courage, strength)

"The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have
given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been
Kindness, Beauty, and Truth."

- Albert Einstein, physicist (1879-1955)

(Keywords: ideals, courage, life, cheer, kindness, beauty, truth)

"Our government doesn't speak too clearly.
This administration makes a policy of
speaking funny to the general public.

The Clean Air Act is putting more pollutants
in the air, the Healthy Forest Act promotes drilling,
No Child Left Behind ... everything is convoluted.

Black is white, up is down.
It needs to be changed and that's something
people can relate to and understand."

- Joan Jett
of the Joan Jett and the Blackhearts rock group,
in talking about her song "Riddles",
to Jerome Spencer in an interview which appeared
in the "Portfolio" weekly magazine of
Hampton Roads, VA, 8 Aug 2006.

(It's 'too bad' that no one, in Congress or
elsewhere, seems to want to stop this 'inverse-speak'.
It seems to be destined to continue 'forever more'.)

(Keywords: government, administration, general public,
speaking funny, black, white)

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing,
those who count the votes decide everything."

- Joseph Stalin (1878-1953)

Yes. And this is why we cannot depend on
results from electronic voting machines ---
which can be programmed to report any vote desired,
including narrow margins, to avoid raising suspicions.

There need to be random audits of
selected precincts around the country
or voting region
--- after every major election.

That is necessary to help preserve a democracy.
(Of course, the re-counters may decide everything.
So the re-counters need to be impartial.
How to assure that?)

(Keywords: vote, cast, count, decide)

"It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it
to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to
act according to the wickedness of their spirits
whenever they have free scope."

- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

(Republicans apparently do not agree with Niccolo.
They believe in the inherent goodness of ALL [rich] men.
Republicans believe in tough laws for 'blue collar' crime, but
assure weak laws, or none at all, for 'white collar' crime.
As a result:
You can go to jail for 20 years for stealing a loaf of bread,
but go about your monkey-business after fleecing hundreds and
even millions of people of billions of dollars.)

(Keywords: government, laws, men, evil, wicked, spirits, free)

"Over all, I think the main thing a musician
would like to do is give a picture to the
listener of the many wonderful things that
he knows of and senses in the universe.

That's what I would like to do.
I think that's one of the greatest things
you can do in life and we all try to do it
in some way. The musician's is through his music."

- John Coltrane (1926-1967)

(Keywords: convey, picture, wonderful, experiences, knowledge, music)

"Faced with apathy, I will take action.
Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.
Faced with adversity, I will perservere."

- part of the Americorps pledge.

( Brad Meltzer, novelist and Columbia law school graduate,
was asked to help write the Amricorps pledge when he was an intern to
Eli Segal, who helped establish Americorp. Meltzer wrote a
non-fiction book called 'Heros for My Son', which could provide
content for a 'Wall of Heros' page, to counter my 'Wall of Shame' page.)

(Keywords: apathy, action, conflict, common ground, adversity, perservere)

"If you think you are too small to make a difference,
try sleeping with a mosquito!"
- Dalai Lama (the 14th)

"Perhaps like me you are tired of suffering and talking about suffering,

up to your neck with suffering, of counting the rains of blood but not the rains of flowers. Like me, you may be tired of making a tragedy of our lives. Let's abandon this auto-cannibalism: rage, sadness, fear. Enough of shouting against the wind --- all words are noise if not accompanied with action. Let's work not talk, let's say nothing until we've made the world luminous and active. Enough of passivity and passing time while waiting for the boy friend, the girl friend, the Goddess, or the Revolution. We can't afford to stop in the middle of the bridge with arms crossed."

by Gloria Anzaldua
from the foreward to the 2nd edition of the book
'This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color'
(1981/1983)

(The Spanish version of these sentences was interspersed among these English sentences.)

"Give peace a chance."

and

"Gimme some truth."

and

"Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one."
- John Lennon

The caring world misses you, John. The world needs someone active and peacefully-brave like you were. No one says "Give peace a chance" any more --- just "Send more troops and guns".

"It's in your nature to destroy yourselves."

- The Terminator robot
in the movie 'Terminator 2',
in speaking about mankind.

(Keywords: mankind, nature, destroy, self)

"When evil men plot, good men must plan.

When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind.

When evil men shout ugly words of hatred,
good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

Where evil men seek to perpetrate an unjust 'status quo',
good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice."

- Martin Luther King
(in the book 'The Words of Martin Luther King'
by Coretta Scott KIng, 1985, page 51)

Many more great quotes from MLK could be added here.
See the MLK memorial in Atlanta.
MLK was strongly inspired by
the nonviolent protest methods of Mahatma Gandhi.
This loving nature is why MLK will be remembered
long after all but the most horrible of haters.

(Keywords: men, evil, good, plot, plan, burn, bomb, build, bind, hatred, love, justice)

QUOTES (Philosophical) -
SOME EXTERNAL LINKS

< Go to Top of this page, above. >


In other words, math is usually used
as an approximation to reality,
not an exact prediction. Example:
Predicted storm tracks of hurricanes.

On the other hand, math can be more precise
than reality --- for example, the mathematical
concept of a circle is more exact than
we can ever draw or manufacture a circle ---
a fact that microscopes can clearly demonstrate to us.

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SERIOUS QUOTES (with LINKS to more) page.

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Page history:

Page was created 2006 Jul 26.

Page was changed 2013 Dec 02.

Page was changed 2015 Jun 19.
(Removed dead links to the old Google and Yahoo 'web-directories'. Added some 'WEB SEARCH' links and some images.)

Page was changed 2015 Jun 28.
(Quote added.)

Page was changed 2015 Oct 04.
(An image was added.)

Page was changed 2016 Oct 15.
(Quote added.)

Page was changed 2018 Sep 25.
(Added css and javascript to try to handle text-size for smartphones, esp. in portrait orientation.)

Page was changed 2021 Feb 19.
(Specified the width of images in proportion to the width of the browser window. Some minor re-formatting.)