Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
- Lao Tzu
If you believe that anything other than you can control you, you are wrong.
Once our eyes are opened to the truth, we suddenly realize that we outnumber them. Don’t let them close your eyes.
You are not under any tyranny and suppression of any government. Remember, their power depends on your fear and apathy.
- Yoko Ono
”Love is the cure, for your pain
will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love as
effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”
- Rumi
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.
To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.
A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labour and there is an invisible labour.
The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs. One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.
A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.
A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!
God manifests himself to us in the first degree through the life of the universe, and in the second degree through the thought of man. The second manifestation is not less holy than the first. The first is named Nature, the second is named Art.
You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.
In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.
It is man’s consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.
~ Victor Hugo (born 26 February 1802)
Put your heart, mind, intellect, and soul even into your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
– SWAMI SIVANANDA
There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people if he’s any good.
- Fitzgerald
If our spirit is turned towards kindness, the positive side of things, loving our neighbors, this is the best way to solve our problems.
- Dalai Lama
☮Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
Got no checkbooks, got no banks,
Still I’d like to express my thanks;
I’ve got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.
– IRVING BERLIN
Little darling,
I feel that ice is slowly melting.
Little darling,
It seems like years since it’s been clear.
Here comes the sun…
Here comes the sun,
And I say
It’s alright.
Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover.
Give me love, give me peace on earth, give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth, give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load, trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul.
~ George Harrison ~
(born 25 February 1943)
Every intelligent child is an amateur anthropologist. The first thing such a child notices is that adults don’t make sense. ~ John Leonard (born 25 February 1939)
When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things. ~ John Leonard
If there is victory in overcoming the enemy, there is a greater victory when a man overcomes himself. ~ José de San Martín
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
- Albert Camus
“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative, and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you”
- Mahatma Ghandi
“We may now care for each Earthian individual at a sustainable billionaire’s level of affluence while living exclusively on less than 1 percent of our planet’s daily energy income from our cosmically designed nuclear reactor, the Sun, optimally located 92 million safe miles away from us.”
- Buckminster Fuller
Despair says I cannot lift that weight. Happiness says I do not have to.
~ James Richardson
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
- Carl Sagan
“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.”
— Carl Sagan
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
- Carl Sagan
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
- T. S. Eliot
It’s enough to have faith in one aspect of God. You have faith in God without form. That is very good. But never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false. Know for certain that God without form is real and that God with form is also real. Then hold fast to whichever faith appeals to you.
- Sri Ramakrishna
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.
- G.K. Chesterton
The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.
Common men talk bagfulsof religion but do not practise even a grain of it. The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action.
Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him.
- Sri Ramakrishna
”To grasp God’s beauty, you must become God.”
- Rumi
Ethics and Aesthetics are one.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.
My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
I will admit that an artist may be great and limited; by one word he may light up an abyss of soul; but there must be this one magical and unique word.
The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
Terrible is the day when each sees his soul naked, stripped of all veil; that dear soul which he cannot change or discard, and which is so irreparably his.
- George Moore
My heart will never seek another heart,
Or smell another flower, knowing you.
Your love has made heart’s field a desert waste;
No love other than yours grows in that place!
- Rumi
If we want to help humanity in a practical way, we must begin by setting an example of mutual respect, harmony and cooperation.
Developing altruism is one of the most powerful methods for countering negative tendencies and destructive impulses.
To promote the idea of nonviolence, we must above all encourage people to foster in themselves an attitude of love and affection for others
- Dalai Lama
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
— Laozi
“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
— Laozi (Tao Te Ching)
On any given day, in any given moment, something could happen that opens up for you an entirely new path. Be still, be alert, be ready.
- Marianne Williamson
I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.
- Mahatma Gandhi
While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.
- Maya Angelou
☮Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
☮Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828-1910)
☮All we are saying is give peace a chance.
- John Lennon (1940-1980)
☮Peace is the only battle worth waging.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)
☮Peace is a daily,a weekly,a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures
- JFK
☮Peace is every step. – Thich Nhat Hahn
☮Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. – Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
☮… and if you think that one person can’t make a difference, you’re wrong, particularly young people. – Jimmy Carter
☮Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age. — Adlai E. Stevenson
☮Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. — John F. Kennedy
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
From there to here,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.
~ Dr. Seuss
If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up. ~ Hunter S. Thompson
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process… ~ Karl Jaspers (born 23 February 1883)
The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois
There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.
There is always a certain glamour about the idea of a nation rising up to crush an evil simply because it is wrong. Unfortunately, this can seldom be realized in real life; for the very existence of the evil usually argues a moral weakness in the very place where extraordinary moral strength is called for.
~ W. E. B. Du Bois
We cannot avoid conflict, conflict with society, other individuals and with oneself. Conflicts may be the sources of defeat, lost life and a limitation of our potentiality but they may also lead to greater depth of living and the birth of more far-reaching unities, which flourish in the tensions that engender them.
One who would influence the masses must have recourse to the art of advertisement. The clamour of puffery is to-day requisite even for an intellectual movement.
The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life…
Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward.
Philosophy seemed to me the supreme, even the sole, concern of man.
~ Karl Jaspers
How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily. ~ W. E. B. Du Bois (Born February 23, 1868)
There are two ways to slide through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both save us from thinking.
- Korzybski
The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the mind.
– MAHATMA GANDHI
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
- Alice Walker
Your earthly lover
can be very charming and coquettish
but never very faithful.
The true lover is the one who on your final day
opens a thousand doors.
- Rumi
Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.
~ Stevie Wonder
The light which shines in
the eye is really the light of the heart !
- Rumi
“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Be quiet and tear the thorn from your heart.
Uncover in silence your soul’s own rose garden.
- Rumi
Don’t be afraid. Open your minds. They belong to the world.
- Yoko Ono
The power to move the world is in the subconscious mind.
♥ William James
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
♥ William Blake
It is only when we FORGET our learning…that we begin to KNOW.
♥ Henry David Thoreau
What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
– John Ruskin
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
– Oscar Wilde
“Always keep your mind as bright and clear as the vast sky, the great ocean, and the highest peak, empty of all thoughts. Always keep your body filled with light and heat. Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.”
—
Morihei Ueshiba
This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.
– THE BUDDHA
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat — the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain … Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay ~
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.
- Elizabeth Drew
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~ Isaac Asimov
I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. ~ George Washington (born 22 February 1732)
Promote… as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. ~ George Washington
Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.
Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wants.
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
“Being myself on fire I set others on fire.”
- Anais Nin
He is the reason
and all that brings reason to naught.
- Rumi
When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.
~ Langston Hughes
Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
- Helen Keller
We are all part of the rivers running into the great wide ocean.
The fenceless and doorless world is soon to come. It’s our fear which is keeping the doors closed and the fences high.
- Yoko Ono
Everything you can imagine is real.
– Pablo Picasso
Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.
– Groucho Marx
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.
– Lily Tomlin
I’ve always thought people write because they are not living properly.
- Tom Stoppard
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.
– THE BUDDHA
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose
comes round in another form.
- Rumi
We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh … without destroying that moment.
Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.
The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.
The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.
Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds.
Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.
I seek the real stuff of life. Profound drama.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there 0is a choice to be made, a selection of elements…
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
All writers have concealed more than they revealed.
The writer’s responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness.
All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives…
You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences…
The dream has to be translated into reality.
The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything.
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.
~ Anaïs Nin ~
Careful the things you say, children will listen. Guide them along the way, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will look to you for which way to turn; to learn what to be! Careful before you say “Listen to Me.” Children will listen. ~ Into the Woods (Sondheim/Lapine)
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
~ W. H. Auden (born 21 February 1907)
When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. ~ Anaïs Nin (born 21 February 1903)
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
If, in order to hear some music, a man has to wait for six months and then walk twenty miles, it is easy to tell whether the words, “I should like to hear some music,” mean what they appear to mean, or merely, “At this moment I should like to forget myself.”
The idea of a sacrificial victim is not new; but that it should be the victim who chooses to be sacrificed, and the sacrificers who deny that any sacrifice has been made, is very new.
~ W. H. Auden ~
Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods. ~ W. H. Auden
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
~ W. H. Auden (born 21 February 1907)
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ~ Anaïs Nin
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
♥ Ralph Waldo Emerson
☮Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence.
— Mahatma Gandhi
“To stumble twice against the same stone is a proverbial disgrace”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Explanation:
This Swimming
within
the boundaries of the prominent on the left;
the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue,
spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470.
The faint, wide arcs or shells
of NGC 474 could have been formed by a
gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470.
Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a
smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across
the surface of a pond.
Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image,
NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too,
evidence of another interacting
galaxy system.
Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around
the field that also includes Milky Way Galaxy.
The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky.
A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him.
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.
Freely we serve,
Because we freely love, as in our will
To love or not; in this we stand or fall.
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all liberties.
One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good.
All belongs to all. All things are for all men … All is for all!
A different conception of society, very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. … Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past … it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst — not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association.
Man is appealed to to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle — has had the leading part.
We take men for what they are worth — and that is why we hate the government of man by man, and that we work with all our might — perhaps not strong enough — to put an end to it.
A ship in port is safe; but that is not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.
- Grace Hopper
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong. I do not say give them up, for they may be all you have, but conceal them like a vice lest they spoil the lives of better and simpler people.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
Explanation:
One of the brightest galaxies in planet Earth’s sky and similar in size
to the Milky
Way, big, beautiful spiral M81
lies 11.8 million light-years away in the northern constellation
Ursa Major. This
deep image of the region reveals
details in the bright yellow core, but at the
same time follows fainter features along the galaxy’s gorgeous blue
spiral arms and sweeping dust lanes.
It also follows the expansive, arcing feature, known
as Arp’s loop, that seems to rise from the galaxy’s disk at the right.
Studied in the 1960s, Arp’s loop has been thought to be a tidal tail,
material pulled out of M81 by gravitational interaction with its large neighboring galaxy M82.
But a recent investigation
demonstrates that much of Arp’s loop likely lies within our own galaxy.
The loop’s colors in visible and infrared light
match the colors of pervasive
clouds of dust, relatively unexplored
galactic cirrus
only a few hundred light-years above the plane of the Milky Way.
Along with the Milky Way’s stars, the dust clouds lie in
the foreground of this remarkable view.
M81′s dwarf companion galaxy, Holmberg IX,
can be seen just above and left of the large spiral.
On the sky, this image spans about 0.5 degrees,
about the size of the Full Moon.
Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play and pray, where nature heals and give strength to body and soul alike
- John Muir
A small body of determined spirits, fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission, can alter the course of history
- Mahatma Gandhi
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion
- Dalai Lama
Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
- Marcus Aurelius
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain
The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.
Bling bling with no end and no aim is nothing but a form of idolatry.
Non-marketplace values, like LOVE, struggle against a market-driven culture.
LOVE can change the world.
Freedom fighters keep track of the indescribable scars & bruises but refuse to be victims.
FYI: Black women are going to be the crucial part of the next wave of our collective leadership.
- Cornel West
As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
We are but the instrument of heaven. Our work is not design but destiny.
- Owen Meredith ♡
Peace begins with a smile.
- Mother Theresa
Beauty is being in harmony with what you are.
- Peter Nivio Zarlenga
There is no brilliant single stroke that is going to transform the water into wine or straw into gold.
- Coleman Young
Anything that you can imagine is yours to be or do or have.
- Abraham Hicks
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
- Guy de Maupassant
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Even modern medical researchers have come to the conclusion that peace of mind is vital for good health.
Once you encourage the thought of compassion in your mind, once it becomes active, then your attitude towards others changes automatically.
- Dalai Lama
Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.
- Clint Eastwood
Poetry is a sort of homecoming.
- Paul Celan
Where thou art, that is home.
- Emily Dickinson
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
- Charlie Chaplin
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.
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 now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now 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.
The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctances, will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will come together as human beings.
We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one; I hope some day you’ll join us, and the world will live as one.
- John Lennon
It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people — that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
- James Thurber (born 8 December 1894)
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
- Delmore Schwartz (Born 8 December 1913)
A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can’t be a lasting thing. That’s not saying that people shouldn’t keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war.
- Jim Morrison (Born 8 December 1943)
I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.
- Horace
Better than a thousand hollow words
Is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
Is one verse that brings peace.
Better than a hundred hollow lines
Is one line of the law, bringing peace.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage… If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox.
Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.
- Gautama Buddha
in
Dhammapada
(Bodhi Day a traditional date of celebration of his enlightenment)
The essence of spiritual practice is your attitude toward others. When you have a pure, sincere motivation, then you have right attitude toward others based on kindness, compassion, love and respect.
Once you encourage the thought of compassion in your mind, once it becomes active, then your attitude towards others changes automatically.
Looking at the pattern of our existence from birth to death, we can see the way in which we are fundamentally nurtured by other’s affection.
Looking at various means of developing compassion, I think empathy is an important factor: the ability to appreciate others’ suffering.
I think that ethical behavior is another feature of the kind of inner discipline that leads to a happier existence.
We must insist on the observation that my right to happiness carries no more weight than others’ similar right.
I am convinced that everyone can develop a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility with or without religion.
All the major religious traditions carry the message of love, compassion and forgiveness.
The ultimate factor determining whether we have a healthy mind and a healthy body lies within.
- Dalai Lama
Give what you want to receive.
- Russell Simmons
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
- John Lennon
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
- Erich Fromm
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
- Chinese Proverb
Violence just hurts those who are already hurt…Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.
- César Chávez
We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while.
- Willa Cather
The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence
- Norman Vincent Peale
It is more difficult to organize a peace than to win a war; but the fruits of victory will be lost if the peace is not organized.
- Aristotle
Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. There is nothing to do but be.
- Stephen Levine
When the mind has thus vanished, you realize eternal Peace.
- Ramana Maharshi
That’s all nonviolence is – organized love.
- Joan Baez
Human Beings, indeed all sentient beings, have the right to pursue happiness and live in peace and freedom.
- The XIVth Dalai Lama
The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.
- Desiderius Erasmus
Treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born!
- Osho
It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.
- Albert Einstein
In the nearby galaxy known as the Small Magellanic Cloud, a massive star has exploded as a supernova and begun to dissipate its interior into a spectacular display of colorful filaments, reminiscent of fireworks display.
The supernova remnant (SNR), known as “E0102″ for short, is the greenish-blue shell of debris just below the center of this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This delicate structure, glowing a multitude of lavenders and peach hues, resides in the upper right of the image.
Determined to be only about 2,000 years old, E0102 is relatively young on astronomical scales and is just beginning its interactions with the nearby interstellar medium. Young supernova remnants like E0102 allow astronomers to examine material from the cores of massive stars directly. This in turn gives insight on how stars form, their composition, and the chemical enrichment of the surrounding area. As well, young remnants are a great learning tool to better understand the physics of supernova explosions.
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a nearby dwarf galaxy to our own Milky Way. It is visible in the Southern Hemisphere, in the direction of the constellation Tucana, and lies roughly 210,000 light-years distant.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and J. Green (University of Colorado, Boulder)
“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Extreme star cluster bursts into life in new Hubble image
The star-forming region NGC 3603 – seen here in the latest Hubble Space Telescope image – contains one of the most impressive massive young star clusters in the Milky Way. Bathed in gas and dust the cluster formed in a huge rush of star formation thought to have occurred around a million years ago. The hot blue stars at the core are responsible for carving out a huge cavity in the gas seen to the right of the star cluster in NGC 3603′s centre.
Credit:
NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Fresh starbirth infuses the galaxy NGC 6503 with a vital pink glow in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, a smaller version of the Milky Way, is perched near a great void in space where few other galaxies reside.
This new image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys displays, with particular clarity, the pink-coloured puffs marking where stars have recently formed in NGC 6503′s swirling spiral arms. Although structurally similar to the Milky Way, the disc of NGC 6503 spans just 30 000 light-years, or just about a third of the size of the Milky Way, leading astronomers to classify NGC 6503 as a dwarf spiral galaxy.
NGC 6503 lies approximately 17 million light-years away in the constellation of Draco (the Dragon). The German astronomer Arthur Auwers discovered this galaxy in July 1854 in a region of space where few other luminous bodies have been found.
NGC 6503 sits at the edge of a giant, hollowed-out region of space called the Local Void. The Hercules and Coma galaxy clusters, as well as our own Local Group of galaxies, circumscribe this vast, sparsely populated region. Estimates for the void’s diameter vary from 30 million to more than 150 million light-years — so NGC 6503 does not have a lot of galactic company in its immediate vicinity.
The isolation of NGC 6503 inspired the stargazer Stephen James O’Meara to name it the Lost-In-Space Galaxy in his book Hidden Treasures.
This Hubble image was created from exposures taken with the Wide Field Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. The filters were unusual, which explains the peculiar colour balance of this picture. The red colouration derives from a 28-minute exposure through a filter that just allows the emission from hydrogen gas (F658N) to pass and which reveals the glowing clouds of gas associated with star-forming regions. This was combined with a 12-minute exposure through a near-infrared filter (F814W), which was coloured blue for contrast. The field of view is 3.3 by 1.8 arcminutes.
“I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
- Mark Twain
“Free love? As if love is anything but free! … Love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.
There are…some potentates I would kill by any and all means at my disposal. They are Ignorance, Superstition, and Bigotry — the most sinister and tyrannical rulers on earth.
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration.
The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.”
- Emma Goldman
“All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality.
The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation — and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.
My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”
- Joseph Conrad (Born December 3, 1857)
Explanation:
The small, northern constellation Triangulum
harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33.
Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just
the Triangulum
Galaxy.
M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local
Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our
own Milky Way.
About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way,
M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers
in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of
each other’s grand spiral star systems.
As for the view from planet Earth, star forming regions that
trace the galaxy’s loosely wound spiral arms.
In fact, the cavernous
NGC 604 is the
brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 4 o’clock position
from the galaxy center.
Like M31, M33′s population of well-measured variable stars
have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic
yardstick for Read more at apod.nasa.gov
“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
- Orson Welles
“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
- Winnie the Pooh
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.”
- Charlotte Whitton
“They always talk who never think.”
- Matthew Prior
“Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent.”
- Aung San Suu Kyi
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
- Pericles
“Don’t be concerned that things appear to be falling apart: this has to happen in order for something new and wonderful to emerge.”
- Marianne Williamson
“The one who moves the mountain is the one who starts moving the small stones. The mountain could be the self, a relationship, a challenging task or situation. All challenges are opportunities in disguise. An opportunity to elevate the universe one person at a time.”
- Roozbeh Bahramali
“My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.
It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.
Those who trust us educate us.
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.
It is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium.
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men’s search
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
This is life to come, —
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, — be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
The realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
The heart must break
For lack of voice, or fingers that can wake
The lyre’s full answer; nay, its chords were all
Too few to meet the growing spirit’s call.
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.”
- George Eliot (Born November 22, 1819)
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad
“Kisses, even to the air, are beautiful.”
- Drew Barrymore
“There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.”
- Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
- Star Trek
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Laws are not invented. They grow out of circumstances.”
- Azarias
“The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.
If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom…
Anything we take in the Universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way, the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.
Everything that consists in generation, decay, alteration and change is not an entity, but a condition and circumstance of entity and being…
This whole which is visible in different ways in bodies, as far as formation, constitution, appearance, colors and other properties and common qualities, is none other than the diverse face of the same substance…
What you receive from others is a testimony to their virtue; but all that you do for others is the sign and clear indication of your own.
That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me.
Divinity reveals herself in all things… everything has Divinity latent within itself.
The fools of the world have been those who have established religions, ceremonies, laws, faith, rule of life…
The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.
Eternity maintaineth her substance throughout time, immensity throughout space, universal form throughout motion.
The single spirit doth simultaneously temper the whole together; this is the single soul of all things; all are filled with God.”
- Giordano Bruno
“This poetry. I never know what I’m going to say. I don’t plan it. When I’m outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
Love is the ark appointed for the righteous, Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.
I died as a mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was Man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.
I want a heart which is split, part by part, because of the pain of separation from God, so that I might explain my longing and complaint to it.
You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?
God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly, not one.
The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
Whoever gives reverence receives reverence.
If you wish to shine like day, burn up the night of self-existence. Dissolve in the Being who is everything.
What is the body? That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe.
There is a community of the spirit Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.
There is no reality but God, says the completely surrendered sheik, who is an ocean for all beings.
I can’t stop pointing to the beauty. Every moment and place says, “Put this design in your carpet!”
Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being.
Every object and being in the universe is a jar overflowing with wisdom and beauty, a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained by any skin.
Christ is the population of the world, and every object as well.
The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did about the future.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don’t have both,you don’t belong with us.
Learn from Ali how to fight without your ego participating.
God’s lion did nothing that didn’t originate from his deep center.
This that we are now … The human body and the universe grew from this, not this from the universe and the human body.
Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
Observe the wonders as they occur around you. Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry moving through, and be silent.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.
Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation? What do you know of Love except the name? Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain, and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.
That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.
To Love is to reach God.
Love rests on no foundation. It is an endless ocean, with no beginning or end.
My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown.
This is a gathering of Lovers. In this gathering there is no high, no low, no smart, no ignorant, no special assembly, no grand discourse, no proper schooling required…
Love said to me, there is nothing that is not me. Be silent.
Even if you lose yourself in wrath for a hundred thousand years, at the end you will discover, it is me, who is the culmination of your dreams.
Didn’t I tell you?They will accuse you of all the wrongdoings, they will call you ugly names, they will make you forget it is me, who is the source of your happiness.
The branch might seem like the fruit’s origin: In fact, the branch exists because of the fruit.
The Astronomy of the Spirit
The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.
Your soul is so close to mine
I know what you dream.
Friends scan each other’s depths;
Would I be a Friend, if I didn’t?
A Friend is a mirror of clear water;
I see my gains in you, and my losses.
Silence is an ocean. Speech is a river.”
- Mevlana Rumi
“No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists…
Whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing.
I’m sorry that my voice was hard. Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried, look down on yourselves from the stars…
We, my lord, are your dream, which finds you innocent for now.
Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
How can we talk of order overall when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?
Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light…
We call it a grain of sand but it calls itself neither grain nor sand…
The view doesn’t view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless.
There’s no life that couldn’t be immortal if only for a moment…
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan…
For the sake of research, the big picture and definitive conclusions, one would have to transcend time, in which everything scurries and whirls.
I’d have to be really quick to describe clouds — a split second’s enough for them to start being something else.”
- Wislawa Szymborska
“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
There is a thing inherent and natural,
Which existed before heaven and earth.
Motionless and fathomless,
It stands alone and never changes;
It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted.
It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe.
I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.
The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.
A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say, “We did this ourselves.”
Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.
A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
Without the laughter, there would be no Tao.
By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.
A journey of a thousand li starts with a single step.
The mark of a moderate man
is freedom from his own ideas.
Tolerant like the sky,
all-pervading like sunlight,
firm like a mountain,
supple like a tree in the wind,
he has no destination in view
and makes use of anything
life happens to bring his way.
Wise men don’t need to prove their point;
men who need to prove their point aren’t wise.
The Master has no possessions.
The more he does for others, the happier he is.
The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is.
The Tao nourishes by not forcing.
By not dominating, the Master leads.”
- Laozi
“If you want love, be love. If you need hope, be hope. If you long for a hero, be heroic.”
- Cory Booker
“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.”
- Albert Einstein
“Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
- Albert Schweitzer
“Love cannot remain by itself; it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action & that action is service.
Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
- Mother Teresa
“If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”
- Frank A. Clark
“Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?”
- Sai Baba
“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”
- Holocaust Museum
“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
– Thomas Mann
“Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow.”
– Arthur Stringer
“Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”
– Isaac Asimov
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
- Victor Hugo
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
- Henry David Thoreau
Smaller, dimmer galaxies appear to flit like moths around a radiant street light in this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The brilliant central object is a supergiant elliptical galaxy, the dominant member of a galaxy cluster with the mouthful of a name MACSJ1423.8+2404. This great swarm of galaxies is located about five billion light-years away in the constellation Boötes (the Herdsman). MACSJ1423.8+2404 and other distant galaxy clusters offer astronomers a peek into the earlier days of our Universe when these colossal groupings were still taking shape. Over the 13.7 billion-year history of the cosmos, such galaxy clusters have emerged as the largest observed gravitationally bound structures.
But there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to galaxy clusters — they also hint at the vast majority of the Universe’s substance that we have not yet directly detected. Astronomers study clusters such as MACSJ1423.8+2404 to better understand the influence of dark energy, a mysterious force credited with accelerating the expansion of the Universe and accounting for some 72 percent of the mass of the Universe.
The application of what we can see and detect to the study of what we cannot does not end there with MACSJ1423.8+2404 and its ilk. Dark matter, estimated to account for about 23 percent of the mass of the Universe, exists in great quantities in galaxy clusters. The “normal” matter that comprises stars, planets and us trickles in at less than 5 percent.
Astronomers observe clusters to study how this dark matter gravitationally gathers visible matter and underpins these vast cosmic metropolises. The galactic moths are drawn to the clusters not by their light, but by the vast unseen reservoir of dark matter.
This image was created from images taken using the Wide Field Channel of Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. The exposures were 75 and 76 minutes respectively, through yellow (F555W) and near-infrared (F814W) filters. The field of view is 3.2 arcminutes across.
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.”
- Maya Angelou
“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.”
- David Viscott
“An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in “inventing” something. It’s an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered.
My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern.”
- Benoît Mandelbrot (Born November 20, 1924)
“A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.
Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly. … Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”
Quoting George Bernard Shaw
- Robert F. Kennedy (Born November 20, 1925)
“The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.”
- Margot Fonteyn
Explanation:
The first identified compact galaxy group, this
eye-catching image constructed with data drawn from
the extensive Hubble Legacy Archive.
About 300 million light-years away, only four galaxies of the group
are actually locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.
The odd man out is loops and tails, grown under the
influence of disruptive gravitational tides.
But the larger bluish galaxy, NGC 7320,
is much closer than the others.
Just 40 million light-years distant, it isn’t part of the
interacting group.
In fact, individual stars in the foreground galaxy can be seen in
the sharp Hubble view, hinting that it is much closer than
the others.
Stephan’s Quintet lies within the boundaries of the high flying constellation
Pegasus.
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
The time is always right to do what is right.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Obama follows the advice of Kissinger, Nunn, Schultz, Reagan, Matlock, Gorbachev, Kennedy, et al ad infinitum and reduces the role of nuclear weapons in foreign policy, with the goal and vision of complete abolition and disarmament. This is a very very very positive step in the right direction, and will help future efforts to negotiate in the common interest of all countries and all people to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle and achieve total elimination of nuclear weapons, “the scourge of humanity” as described by Jack Matlock, former Reagan ambassador to the Soviet Union. I really don’t understand arguments against nuclear abolition and disarmament. By changing the Nuclear policy of the United States, along with signing the new START treaty with Russia, the upcoming Nuclear Security Summit next week as well as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference in May are strengthened and it will be easier to work toward the shared goal and vision of a world free from the danger and threat of nuclear weapons, that President Obama articulated last year in Prague.
“Finally, this day demonstrates the determination of the United States and Russia — the two nations that hold over 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons — to pursue responsible global leadership. Together, we are keeping our commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which must be the foundation for global non-proliferation.
While the New START treaty is an important first step forward, it is just one step on a longer journey. As I said last year in Prague, this treaty will set the stage for further cuts. And going forward, we hope to pursue discussions with Russia on reducing both our strategic and tactical weapons, including non-deployed weapons.
President Medvedev and I have also agreed to expand our discussions on missile defense. This will include regular exchanges of information about our threat assessments, as well as the completion of a joint assessment of emerging ballistic missiles. And as these assessments are completed, I look forward to launching a serious dialogue about Russian-American cooperation on missile defense.
But nuclear weapons are not simply an issue for the United States and Russia — they threaten the common security of all nations. A nuclear weapon in the hands of a terrorist is a danger to people everywhere — from Moscow to New York; from the cities of Europe to South Asia. So next week, 47 nations will come together in Washington to discuss concrete steps that can be taken to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years.
And the spread of nuclear weapons to more states is also an unacceptable risk to global security — raising the specter of arms races from the Middle East to East Asia. Earlier this week, the United States formally changed our policy to make it clear that those [non]-nuclear weapons states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and their non-proliferation obligations will not be threatened by America’s nuclear arsenal. This demonstrates, once more, America’s commitment to the NPT as a cornerstone of our security strategy. Those nations that follow the rules will find greater security and opportunity. Those nations that refuse to meet their obligations will be isolated, and denied the opportunity that comes with international recognition.
That includes accountability for those that break the rules — otherwise the NPT is just words on a page. That’s why the United States and Russia are part of a coalition of nations insisting that the Islamic Republic of Iran face consequences, because they have continually failed to meet their obligations. We are working together at the United Nations Security Council to pass strong sanctions on Iran. And we will not tolerate actions that flout the NPT, risk an arms race in a vital region, and threaten the credibility of the international community and our collective security.
While these issues are a top priority, they are only one part of the U.S.-Russia relationship. Today, I again expressed my deepest condolences for the terrible loss of Russian life in recent terrorist attacks, and we will remain steadfast partners in combating violent extremism. We also discussed the potential to expand our cooperation on behalf of economic growth, trade and investment, as well as technological innovation, and I look forward to discussing these issues further when President Medvedev visits the United States later this year, because there is much we can do on behalf of our security and prosperity if we continue to work together.
When one surveys the many challenges that we face around the world, it’s easy to grow complacent, or to abandon the notion that progress can be shared. But I want to repeat what I said last year in Prague: When nations and peoples allow themselves to be defined by their differences, the gulf between them widens. When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp.”
President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Prague. The treaty commits the U.S. and Russia to reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads by one-third and decrease the number of missiles, bombers, and submarines carrying them by more than one-half. Following the signing, the two leaders took questions from reporters. President Obama in his comments said, “It sends a signal around the world that the United States and Russia are prepared to once again take leadership.”
Verification and Transparency: The Treaty has a verification regime that combines the appropriate elements of the 1991 START Treaty with new elements tailored to the limitations of the Treaty. Measures under the Treaty include on-site inspections and exhibitions, data exchanges and notifications related to strategic offensive arms and facilities covered by the Treaty, and provisions to facilitate the use of national technical means for treaty monitoring. To increase confidence and transparency, the Treaty also provides for the exchange of telemetry.
Saying that “the pursuit of peace and calm and cooperation among nations is the work of both leaders and peoples in the 21st century” and that “we must be as persistent and passionate in our pursuit of progress as any who would stand in our way,” President Barack Obama just joined Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in signing a new arms control deal that cuts both their nations’ nuclear arsenals by about one-third.
“I fully support Obama’s proposal to cut nuclear weapons. This needs to be done because it reduces the risk of nuclear war,” Arkady Brish, 92, said when asked if he backed Obama’s call for a world free of atomic weapons.
“We hope humanity will reach the moment when there is no need for nuclear weapons, when there is peace and calm in the world,” he told reporters at a Moscow atomic research institute in a rare public appearance.
Foreign journalists were given an opportunity to speak with Brish during a Kremlin-organized tour of two nuclear-related sites ahead of the signing Thursday of a new US-Russia nuclear disarmament treaty.
The point is to have a phased and verifiable reducing of arms by all nuclear powers as part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty with the ultimate goal of complete global nuclear abolition and disarmament, which makes us much much much safer in the context of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.
Global Zero leaders reacted to the President Obama’s signing of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in Prague earlier in the day and responded to reporter’s questions. The group supports the elimination of nuclear weapons. They also discussed President Obama’s upcoming April 12-13, 2010, Nuclear Security Summit. Film producer Lawrence Bender showed a clip of his new documentary film on nuclear danger, Countdown to Zero.
It is interesting that a broad range of foreign policy experts and former ambassadors, politicians, and public figures including Colin Powell, George Schultz, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger (!), Nuclear Threat Initiative, Jack Matlock (former Reagan ambassador to Soviet Union), and many many many others, including about eighty percent of Americans and thousands of mayors across the world and even Reagan himself supported the goal and vision of complete global nuclear abolition and disarmament. So, for all the people that are against the promise and possibility of nuclear disarmament, I ask you, “why?” Why oppose the majority of people of the world? Why oppose Reagan, the patron saint of conservatives?
According to Matlock, Putin offered to help the United States deal with terrorism before 9/11 happened, but Bush essentially ignored the offer of support from the Russians. The Russians are our friends, not our adversaries.
As Reagan himself quoted many times from the Russian proverb, “Trust, but verify . . . .”
The treaty contains verification framework, much more advanced and detailed than the first START treaty negotiated by Reagan and Gorbachev.
“We live in a troubled world, and the United States and China, as two great nations, share a special responsibility to help reduce the risks of war. We both agree that there can be only one sane policy to preserve our precious civilization in this modern age: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of this Earth.” Ronald Reagan, 1984, China
With 23,000 nuclear weapons worldwide, experts are clear: we either eliminate all nuclear weapons or accept living in a world where virtually any country or terrorist group can get one.
Last year, over 115,000 of us helped secure a historic commitment by Russia and the US to reduce their nuclear arsenals by a third–a commitment affirmed in the new US-Russia treaty.
But only a massive surge of people power can persuade world leaders to take bolder steps to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. We cannot miss this historic opportunity! Sign the declaration below, then spread the word — the petition numbers will be announced at the summit in 4 days!:
“WE believe that to protect our children, our grandchildren and our civilization from the threat of nuclear catastrophe, we must eliminate all nuclear weapons globally. We therefore commit to working for a legally binding, verifiable agreement, including all nations, to eliminate nuclear weapons by a date certain.”
MR. GIBBS: Good afternoon. Let’s start with a few quick announcements. As you all know, the President will host, on April 12-13, the Nuclear Security Summit at the Washington Convention Center here in D.C. I wanted to list for you all a couple of different things — first, the 47 countries including the United States that will participate in the summit.
They include Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Vietnam. The United Nations, the IAEA, and the European Union will also be represented.
As part of the Nuclear Security Summit, the President is currently planning to host a number of bilateral meetings. Those include President Sargsian of Armenia; President Hu Jintao of China; Chancellor Merkel of Germany; Prime Minister Singh of India; King Abdullah II of Jordan; Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia; Prime Minister Gilani of Pakistan; President Zuma of South Africa; and President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.
“The two leaders [Presidents Obama and Hu] reached a new and important consensus on U.S.-China relations and other matters of common concern. They agreed to respect each other’s core interests, appropriately handle disputes and sensitive issues and increase dialogue and cooperation in all areas.” – China’s Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai
“The New START treaty is a modest, but good step toward reducing the threat from nuclear weapons. The Senate should quickly and deliberately advise and consent to its ratification. Fewer nuclear weapons makes Americans safer and sends the right message to the rest of the world. President Obama should continue his push for a nuclear weapons-free world not by beginning another round of negotiations for a further incremental cut to 1,000 nuclear weapons on each side, as has been reported, but by taking executive actions to reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile.”
And, so, to change that adversarial relationship, to build the trust and build the confidence, and also, over time, seek to reduce what are huge, huge still, and very large nuclear weapons, I think, is a significant step forward.
Yet John Kyl does not argue for making new weapons, at the very least, yet he wants funding to “modernize.”
Sen. AL. FRANKEN. Madam President, I rise today to speak about arms control and the President’s negotiations with Russia over a replacement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START. This new treaty will be an important enhancement to American national security, and I look forward to considering it on the Senate floor once it has been signed.
As you may recall, the original START treaty was ratified by the Senate in 1992 by a bipartisan vote of 93 to 6. It went into force in late 1994, with a predetermined life of 15 years, causing it to expire this past December.
Soon after taking office, the Obama administration began careful and diligent work to negotiate a successor treaty with Russia. As START was expiring in early December,
President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia issued a joint statement making clear that our two countries would effectively abide by the expiring treaty until the new one comes into force.
I think we can all agree that the original START was a landmark achievement. It brought about historic reductions in nuclear weapons. Its verification measures and the communication between the United States and Russia that they fostered served to build confidence between the two countries at an uncertain moment. It helped our nations to move toward a post-Cold-War mentality, providing strategic stability between the world’s two greatest nuclear powers.
I am confident the successor to START will be equally historic. The world has changed, and this will be a new treaty for a new world with a new set of nuclear challenges. But the bottom line for the new treaty remains the same as it was for the original START: The treaty must–and it will–advance our national security interests.
When the new treaty is signed and presented to the Senate, there will be plenty of opportunity to discuss and debate in detail the specific numerical limitations on strategic offensive arms. President Obama and President Medvedev determined these would be in the range of 500 to 1,100 for strategic delivery vehicles, and in the range of 1,500 to 1,675 for their associated warheads. Likewise, we will carefully examine the counting rules for those limitations, the monitoring and verification measures for implementing the agreement, and all its other provisions.
I look forward to discussing all these specific matters when the Senate fulfills our responsibility to offer our advice and, as appropriate, our consent. But the core reasons this treaty will make us safer are already clear.
The verifiable reduction of nuclear weapons by the United States and Russia will provide us with strategic stability and mutual confidence. In other words, it ensures transparency and predictability between the two countries that possess 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
The new treaty will do this while streamlining the elaborate and, in some cases, outdated and unnecessarily burdensome verification measures from the original treaty. The new treaty will also reduce the risk of nuclear theft or loss from our countries, and we know just how important this last point is in a world where terrorist groups would give anything to obtain a nuclear weapon.
This new treaty will also allow us to lead by example in arms reduction, and this will in turn greatly aid our vital nonproliferation efforts. Indeed, while the arms reductions in the treaty will be relatively modest, entering into the treaty will be a significant step in the renewal of our arms control and nonproliferation agenda for the 21st century. It will put us on firmer ground as we confront the dangers of nuclear weapons in this new world.
I want to dwell briefly on this last point. The centerpiece of the global nonproliferation framework is aptly named the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This treaty requires that states without nuclear weapons pledge not to acquire them. But it also imposes a responsibility on nuclear states which must pursue reductions in weapons.
When we fulfill that responsibility, it strengthens the global nonproliferation framework that centers on the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It strengthens our hand in dealing with nonnuclear states, whether they are allies pursuing civilian nuclear power or adversaries with unclear nuclear intentions.
The point is not that untrustworthy adversaries will suddenly be transparent about their intentions or fulfill their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Rather, we can negotiate with and pressure adversaries more effectively when we are meeting our own responsibilities. Likewise, we can work more effectively with our friends–and rely on them for multilateral support–when we ourselves lead by example. In other words, arms control agreements like the new START follow-on treaty are themselves powerful tools in our nonproliferation efforts.
The START follow-on treaty is only one element of President Obama’s ambitious nonproliferation and arms control agenda to reduce and ultimately eliminate the threat from nuclear weapons. But until we are able to realize this end goal, it remains important to maintain an effective deterrent. This treaty will in no way–in no way–take away that deterrent.
Likewise, it is critical for us to support the administration’s increased budget request for ensuring the safety and reliability of the nuclear stockpile and the complex and experts who maintain it. Such a commitment to a safe and reliable nuclear arsenal goes hand in hand with minimizing the danger from nuclear weapons through arms control and nonproliferation. We must pursue the limitation of nuclear weapons while maintaining an effective deterrent. And that is just what the START follow-on treaty will do. It will make us safer without jeopardizing our effective deterrent.
I look forward to a robust discussion and ultimately, I hope, to bipartisan consent to the resolution of ratification.
We shall see if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were and will be able to come to an agreement to ensure speedy ratification of the treaty.
Abolition 2000, a global network calling for a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons, is supported by concerned individuals, citizen action groups, religious leaders, political and civic leaders, retired military leaders, nobel laureates, municipalities, and colleges and universities. The Abolition Global Caucus promotes international dialogue on key nuclear issues and provides a forum for individuals and organizations to contribute action alerts, news bulletins and ideas that will lead to a more secure and peaceful world, free from the threat of nuclear weapons.
“You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression … If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. – Address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955)
Inspirational Educational Martin Luther King, Jr. Quotes for Liberals, Progressives, Creative Radicals, Positive Extremists, Leftist Anarchists, etc., etc., etc.:
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.
At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love.
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: “If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?”
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate; they cannot communicate because they are separated.
The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hopes for the next week’s Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC are high. With the U.S. and Russia leading the way, 2010 could mark the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. But public support at this crucial moment is critical to build the foundation of a binding and verifiable global zero agreement. If the world fails to come together now, when the biggest nuclear powers are taking unprecedented steps, we might lose our best chance yet to do away with one of the greatest threats to our civilization. Achieving global zero will take years and require tremendous amounts of political will. Leaders at the summit need to hear that we, their constituents, care about this issue.
Today we have a chance to tell them when it matters most.
We invite you to join our partner Global Zero, an international movement of activists, experts, political and religious leaders, in calling for immediate steps the leaders at the summit can take now. Global Zero activists will hold a rally outside the Summit and deliver the petition and action plan. Click to sign the petition!
The Global Zero petition and action plan are backed by hundreds of former heads of state, foreign ministers, national security advisers and military commanders, supported by grassroots activists from around the world.
“The leaders at the Nuclear Security Summit have the power to take immediate steps to begin eliminating all remaining nuclear weapons,” say Global Zero organizers. “But they need to hear from us first. Please sign the petition and forward it to all your friends and family — we need to have as many signatures as possible when we deliver it April 12.”
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.” – Gautama Buddha
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi
“As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.” – Henry David Thoreau
All I’m saying is simply this: that all mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be – this is the interrelated structure of reality. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… And then he goes on toward the end to say: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. And by believing this, by living out this fact, we will be able to remain awake through a great revolution.
I would like to mention, secondly, that we are challenged to work passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of racial injustice in all its dimensions. Anyone who feels that our nation can survive half segregated and half integrated is sleeping through a revolution. The challenge before us today is to develop a coalition of conscience and get rid of this problem that has been one of the nagging and agonizing ills of our nation over the years. Racial injustice is still the Negro’s burden and America’s shame. We’ve made strides, to be sure. We have come a long, long way since the Negro was first brought to this nation as a slave in 1619. In the last decade we have seen significant developments – the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing segregation in the public schools, a comprehensive Civil Rights Bill in 1964, and, in a few weeks, a new voting bill to guarantee the right to vote. All of these are significant developments, but I would be dishonest with you this morning if I gave you the impression that we have come to the point where the problem is almost solved.
We must face the honest fact that we still have a long, long way to go before the problem of racial injustice is solved. For while we are quite successful in breaking down the legal barriers to segregation, the Negro is now confronting social and economic barriers which are very real. The Negro is still at the bottom of the economic ladder. He finds himself perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. Millions of Negroes are still housed in unendurable slums; millions of Negroes are still forced to attend totally inadequate and substandard schools. And we still see, in certain sections of our country, violence and man’s inhumanity to man in the most tragic way. All of these things remind us that we have a long, long way to go. For in Alabama and Mississippi, violence and murder where civil rights workers are concerned, are popular and favorite pastimes.
Let nobody give you the impression that the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression that only time will solve the problem. That is a myth, and it is a myth because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. And I’m absolutely convinced that the people of ill will in our nation – the extreme rightists – the forces committed to negative ends – have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic works and violent actions of the bad people who bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, or shoot down a civil rights worker in Selma, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.” Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals. Without this hard work, time becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always right to do right.
There is another reason why we must get rid of racial injustice. Not merely because it is sociologically untenable or because it is politically unsound, not merely to meet the communist challenge or to create a good image in the world or to appeal to African and Asian peoples, as important as that happens to be. In the final analysis racial injustice must be uprooted from American society because it is morally wrong. Segregation is morally wrong, to use the words of the great Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, because it substitutes an I-it relationship for the I-thou relationship. Or to use the thinking of Saint Thomas Aquinas, segregation is wrong because it is based on human laws that are out of harmony with the eternal natural and moral laws of the universe. The great Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, said that sin is separation. And what is segregation but an existential expression of man’s tragic estrangement – his awful segregation, his terrible sinfulness? And so in order to rise to our full moral maturity as a nation, we must get rid of segregation whether it is in housing, whether it is a de facto segregation in the public schools, whether it is segregation in public accommodations, or whether it is segregation in the church. We must see that it is morally wrong. We must see that it is a national problem. And no section of our country can boast of clean hands in the area of brotherhood. We strengthen our nation, above all we strengthen our moral commitment; as we work to get rid of this problem.
Now there is another problem facing us that we must deal with if we are to remain awake through a social revolution. We must get rid of violence, hatred, and war. Anyone who feels that the problems of mankind can be solved through violence is sleeping through a revolution. I’ve said this over and over again, and I believe it more than ever today. We know about violence. It’s been the inseparable twin of Western materialism, the hallmark of its grandeur. I am convinced that violence ends up creating many more social problems than it solves. This is why I say to my people that if we succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness. There is another way – a way as old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth and as modern as the techniques of Mohandas K. Gandhi. For it is possible to stand up against an unjust system with all of your might, with all of your body, with all of your soul, and yet not stoop to hatred and violence. Something about this approach disarms the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses, weakens his morale, and at the same time, works on his conscience. He doesn’t know how to handle it. So it is my great hope that, as we struggle for racial justice, we will follow that philosophy and method of non-violent resistance, realizing that this is the approach that can bring about that better day of racial justice for everyone.
In international relations, we must come to see this. We must find some alternative to war and bloodshed. In a day when man-made vehicles are dashing through outer space, and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death in the stratosphere, no nation can win a world war. It is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence; it is either non-violence or non-existence. The alternative may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, our earthly habitat transformed into a tragic inferno that even Dante could not imagine. So this is our challenge: to see that war is obsolete, cast into limbo.
I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the problems to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But we shall not have the courage, the insight, to deal with such matters unless we are prepared to undergo a mental and spiritual change. It is not enough to say we must not wage war. We must love peace and sacrifice for it. We must fix our visions not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man’s creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race.
All that I’ve said is that we must work for peace, for racial justice, for economic justice, and for brotherhood the world over. We have inherited a big house, a great world house in which we have to live together – black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, Moslem and Hindu. If we all learn to do this we, in a real sense, will remain awake through a great revolution.
In summer 2008, the Cohens conducted a forum on race relations in America with a long list of participants. That forum is encapsulated in their book, which they discuss with Congressman, civil rights activist and forum participant John Lewis of Georgia.
There is a definite connection between the inhumanity of racism and the inhumanity of war / murder / elimination of whole peoples. Janet Cohen wrote a play that is a theoretical conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till, both young victims of their respective societies that could not protect them from evil / darkness.
Beyond that, Martin Luther King’s message and vision is really a continuation of Gandhi and Thoreau‘s message and vision, and many many many people before that. Among other things, it takes good people standing up to darkness in order to not only make a change toward good, but also ensure that war / murder / oppression does not happen in the future, also by remembering the lessons of history. As George Santayana so famously said, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” It is a fact that we cannot have another world war or the earth and humanity as we know it would cease to exist, as well as the rest of life on earth. So, in order to ensure the future survival and health of the human race as well as the earth, we must learn to control the dark side of our own natures, and live in peace, as Martin Luther King Jr. says in the speech at Oberlin college.
“Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”" – Martin Luther King, Jr.
O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath–
America will be!”
“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” – Bruce Lee
“The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.” – Cesar Chavez
“Come, come, come
My endless desires
Come, come, come
Come my beloved
Come my sweetheart
Come, come, come
Don’t talk about the journey
Say no more of the path
The path one must take
You are my path
You are my journey
Come, come, come
You stole from this earth
A bouquet of roses
I am hidden in that bouquet
Come, come, come
As long as I am sober
And keep talking about good and bad
I am missing the most important event
Seeing your face
Come come come
I must be a moron
Missing this life
If I don’t cast my mind
In the fire of love
Come, come, come”
- Mawlana Rumi
Translated by Nader Khalili
Rumi, Fountain of Fire
“An affectionate disposition not only makes the mind more peaceful and calm, but it affects our body in a positive way too. On the other hand, hatred, jealousy and fear upset our peace of mind, make us agitated and affect our body adversely. Even our body needs peace of mind and is not suited to agitation. This shows that an appreciation for peace of mind is in our blood.” – Dalai Lama
“The greatest oak was once a little nut who held it’s ground.” – Buddhist Proverb
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Jimi Hendrix
“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says: I`m possible.” – Audrey Hepburn
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule.” – Gautama Buddha
“Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.” – Zhuang Zi
“The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility.”
- Charles Caleb Colton
“You may encounter many defeats,
but you must not be Defeated.
In fact, the Encountering may be
the very Experience which Creates the
Vitality and the Power to Endure.”
- Maya Angelou
“Keep going until your efforts start to make things better in your hometown.”
- Yoko Ono
“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” – William Butler Yeats
“There is a tendency for things to right themselves”. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You can spend your time agonizing or organizing.” – Dorothy Day
“The Jesus of your spirit is inside you now.
Ask that one for help, but don’t ask for body-things…
Don’t ask Moses for provisions
that you can get from Pharaoh.
Don’t worry so much about livelihood.
Your livelihood will turn out as it should.
Be constantly occupied instead
with listening to God.”
- Maulana Rumi
Mathnawi II:450-454
“Please stop waiting for a better and more appropriate time to become happy and focus on the moment you live in. Happiness is not an arrival, it is the journey itself. Many people seek for happiness above the height of human beings, some below. Yet, happiness is exactly at the exact height of human beings.” – Confucius
“We are taught that the most important gift of our natures is the reaching out to another” – Master Po
“A more altruistic attitude is very relevant in today’s world. If we look at the situation from various angles, such as the complexity and inter-connectedness of the nature of modern existence, then we will gradually notice a change in our outlook, so that when we say ‘others’ and when we think of others, we will no longer dismiss them as something that is irrelevant to us. We will no longer feel indifferent.” – Dalai Lama
“The earth is too small a star and we too brief a visitor upon it for anything to matter more than the struggle for peace.” – Colman McCarthy
“Nothing from outside can stop you from enjoying lasting peace and joy in life – it is the essential nature of your own soul.” – Maharishi
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