REFLECTIONS

"A billion words; the endless chatter. Yet, at the core of
civilization, a deep pathology: The slaughter of young men."

Richard A. Koenigsberg

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act
but a habit.
--- Aristotle

Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648
in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible
under English law at that time.
-- Garrison Keillor

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization,
it expects what never was and never will be."
--- Thomas Jefferson

Carnac The Magnificant:
OPEC
Hmmm

What does an Irish chicken do?

Johnny Carson

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."

- Albert Einstein

The difference between genius and stupidity
is that genius has limits.
- Anonymous

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has
forgotten the gift.
~ Albert Einstein

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Every[one] must decide whether he [or she] will walk in the light of
creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is
the
judgment. Life's most precious and urgent question is, What are you
doing
for others?"

"To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope. . Being a Negro in
America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to
hold
on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of
watching
your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies.
It
means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a
cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by
the
slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being
an
orphan." Martin Luther King, Jr., "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or
Community?," 1967

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."

—Voltaire

Banish care, it's no time for it now-on with the dance, let joy be unconfined is my motto...

- Mark Twain

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
-- Voltaire


"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion.
Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom
they
consider god-fearing and pious.
On the other hand, they do less easily move against
him, believing that he has the gods on his side"
--Aristotle

Over the expanse of five
continents throughout the coming years an endless strugle is going to
be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in
which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success
than that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his
hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circum-
stances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be
to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful
than munitions.
Albert Camus

CONTRIBUTION TO PEACE:

I contribute to Peace when I strive to express the best of myself in my
contacts with others.

I contribute to Peace when I use my intelligence and my abilities to
serve the good.

I contribute to Peace when I feel compassion toward all those who
suffer.

I contribute to Peace when I look upon all men and women as my brothers
and sisters, regardless of race, culture or religion.

I contribute to Peace when I listen with tolerance to opinions that
differ from mine, or even oppose them.

I contribute to Peace when I resort to dialogue, rather than to force,
to settle any conflict.

I contribute to Peace when I respect Nature and preserve it for
generations to come.

I contribute to Peace when I do not seek to impose my conception of God
upon others.

I contribute to Peace when I make Peace the foundation of my ideals and
philosophy.

"Spirituality lets meaning flow into daily life."
Brother David Steindl-Rast, OSB
www.gratefulness.org

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of
words.
If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who
must use the words."
-Philip K. Dick

For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.
Susan Sontag