Explain Quotes

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Thank You,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A politician needs the ability to
foretell what is going to happen
tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.
And to have the ability afterwards
to explain why it didn't happen.
- Winston Churchill

The Four Stages of Public Opinion
I (Just after publication): The novelty is absurd
and subversive of Religion and Morality.
The propounder both fool and knave.
II (Twenty years later): The Novelty is absolute Truth
and will yield a full and satisfactory
explanation of things in general -
The propounder a man of sublime genius and perfect virtue.
III (Forty years later): The Novelty won't explain
things in general after all, and therefore is a wretched failure.
The propounder a very ordinary person advertised by a clique.
IV (A century later): The Novelty a mixture of truth and error.
Explains as much as could reasonably be expected.
The propounder worthy of all honor
in spite of his share of human frailties,
as one who has added to the permanent possessions of science.
- Thomas Henry [T. H.] Huxley

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward

When we remember we are all mad,
the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain

Never ascribe to malice that which is
adequately explained by incompetence.
- Napoleon

Time to Die:
A Zen teacher had a rare and priceless teacup.
One day, his precocious student accidentally broke the cup.
Hearing the footsteps of his teacher,
the student held the pieces of the cup behind his back.
When the master appeared, he asked: "Why do people have to die?"
"This is natural," explained the teacher.
"Everything has to die and has just so long to live."
The student showed the shattered cup, saying,
"It was time for your cup to die."
- Traditional Zen Koan

For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken

The African is my brother but he is
my younger brother by several centuries.
- Albert Schweitzer

Interesting.
You Earth people glorify organized violence for 40 centuries,
but you imprison those who employ it privately.
- the character Spock in the television series Star Trek

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.
- West African proverb famously quoted by Theodore Roosevelt

See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil.
- Japanese pictorial maxim (the Three Wise Monkeys)

Trees are the earth's endless effort
to speak to the listening heaven.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Speak when you are angry -
and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
- Laurence J. Peter

Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer,
in my mind I am free.
- Stephen Hawking

Every thought you think
and every word you speak
is affirming something.
- Louise L. Hay

Kind words can be short and easy to speak,
but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Teresa

We are formed and molded by our thoughts.
Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts
give joy when they speak or act.
Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them.
- The Buddha

We have two ears and one mouth so that
we can listen twice as much as we speak.
- Epictetus

It is the province of knowledge to speak,
and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason
if we dig deep in our history and remember
that we are not descended from fearful men,
not from men who feared to write, to speak,
to associate and to defend causes
which were for the moment unpopular.
- Edward R. Murrow

When angry, count to ten before you speak.
If very angry, count to one hundred.
- Thomas Jefferson

Be Impeccable With Your Word.
Speak with integrity.
Say only what you mean.
Avoid using your word to speak against yourself
or to gossip about others.
Use the power of your word
in the direction of truth and love.
- don Miguel Ruiz

I confess that there is nothing to teach:
no religion, no science, no writings
which will lead your mind back to Spirit.
Today I speak this way, tomorrow that,
but always the Path is beyond words and beyond mind.
- Lao Tzu
(paraphrase)

One can never speak enough of the virtues,
the dangers, the power of shared laughter.
- Francoise Sagan

Christian voters should start looking
at global warming and extreme poverty
as religious issues that speak to the culture of life.
- Al Franken

Do not save your loving speeches
For your friends till they are dead;
Do not write them on their tombstones,
Speak them rather now instead.
- Anna Cummins

Ask why this task is on your to-do list.
Consider discarding those items to which
you are not truly committed.
For the tasks which do speak
to the longings of your own heart,
begin now, today, this moment.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

However many holy words you read, however many you speak,
what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?
- The Buddha

Always speak the truth,
think before you speak,
and write it down afterwards.
- Lewis Carroll

If you can speak what you will never hear,
if you can write what you will never read,
you have done rare things.
- Henry David Thoreau

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person
walks in the woods and listens carefully,
he can learn more than what is in books,
for they speak with the voice of God.
- George Washington Carver

It takes two to speak the truth:
one to speak, and another to hear.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is a sacredness in tears.
They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of overwhelming grief ...
and unspeakable love.
- Washington Irving

Character is always known.
Thefts never enrich;
alms never impoverish;
murder will speak out of stone walls.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Keep silence for the most part,
and speak only when you must,
and then briefly.
- Epictetus

I am the Wizard. This world is mine.
I speak. It's done. My realm is fine.
My wand, my tongue. My sword, my voice.
It's good. It's bad. I speak my choice.
I say happy, or I say mad.
I say angry, or I say glad.
I name that drawing on the wall.
It's not graffiti after all.
The past has been broken. The prison's not real.
My word holds the magic - the power to heal.
Intent is my weapon - a sword from above.
Cruel hate, fear, and anger transmute into love.
This world's my joy. This mouth's my toy.
Reborn -I'm a brand new girl or boy.
I choose. I speak. My will is done.
Come join. Come play. This can be fun.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A man cannot speak to his son, but as a father;
to his wife, but as a husband;
to his enemy, but upon terms:
whereas a friend may speak, as the case requires,
and not as it sorteth with the person.
- Francis Bacon

Do not speak to me of rules.
This is war! This is not a game of cricket!
- from the movie The Bridge On The River Kwai

When people speak to you about a preventive war,
you tell them to go fight it.
After my experience, I have come to hate war.
War settles nothing.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Oh, if only God would give me some sign.
If He would just speak to me once. Anything.
One sentence. Two words. If He would just cough.
- the movie Love and Death

Liar is a strong word, but we are all liars.
Not in the sense of intentionally speaking untruths,
but in the sense of carrying so much historical
and emotional baggage that none of us is believable.
To lie means to speak an untruth,
and virtually everything that comes out of our mouth
is an untruth - an opinion, an assumption,
a point-of-view based on our past.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak;
courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Winston Churchill

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool,
than to speak and remove all doubt.
- sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, or Samuel Johnson

I feel impelled to speak today in a language
that in a sense is new-one which I,
who have spent so much of my life in the military profession,
would have preferred never to use.
That new language is the language of atomic warfare.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

We will not walk in fear, one of another.
We are not descended from fearful men,
Not from men who feared to write, to speak,
To associate and to defend causes
which were for the moment unpopular.
This is no time... to keep silent.
- Edward R. Murrow

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University
and learned within 24 hours to be ready
to speak at the drop of a hat,
and I learned something more, the trustees were expected
to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Training - training is everything; training is all there is to a person.
We speak of nature; it is folly; there is no such thing as nature;
what we call by that misleading name is merely heredity and training.
We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own;
they are transmitted to us, trained into us.
All that is original in us, and therefore fairly creditable
or discreditable to us, can be covered up and hidden
by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms
contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors
that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam
or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been
so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed.
And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage,
this pathetic drift between the eternities,
is to look out and humbly live a pure and high and blameless life,
and save that one microscopic atom in me that is truly me:
the rest may land in Sheol and welcome for all I care.
- Mark Twain in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Faith is taking the first step,
even when you don't see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow,
you gotta put up with the rain.
- Dolly Parton

There is beauty and adventure in the commonplace
for those with eyes to see beyond.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends,
of most of the people you see every day,
is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
- Theodore H. White

Choose the World You See,
and See the World You Choose.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We must become the change we wish to see in the world.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

I am a Passionate Observer of Life.
I See the events, feel the emotions,
and recognize the difference.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

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