On the Difference between Optimism and Pessimism

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out? - Rene Descartes

On Wisdom.

The wisest mind has something yet to learn. - George Santayana

Seasons.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. - Albert Camus

Possibilities

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. - Arthur C. Clarke

On Tact.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy. - Sir Isaac Newton.

A Timely Word of Warning.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire.

Making Crazy Pay.

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.

A Grand Irony.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road -- Stephen Hawking.

On Learning.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. --  Douglas Adams

A Timely Thought.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -- Bertrand Russell

Kant on War.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.' -- Immanuel Kant

Sign of the Times

Due to rising energy costs, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off. -- Author Unknown.

On the Origin of Myth.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. -- Bertrand Russell

On Memories

Every man's memory is his private literature. -- Aldous Huxley

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. -- Saul Bellow

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it. -- Michel de Montaigne