But men aren't ...

"If all men were angels we would have no need of laws, much less of government."
James Madison

Broken Places

“The world breaks everyone ... but some people get strong in the broken places.”
-Ernest Hemingway

Itself

Gratitude is Heaven itself.
William Blake

Canvas

The world is but a canvas for the imagination.
Henry David Thoreau

In between ...

"Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows."
Nisargadatta Maharaj

Awesome journey

"Our evolution has been an awesome journey of fifteen billion years. Every entity that ever moved or swam or crawled or flew, every being that lived to reproduce itself, all the vast numbers of species now extinct and presently living who have invented the amazing capability which we have inherited as our eyes, our ears, our organs, our very atoms, molecules and cells - all of those preceding us are represented in our emergence now. We bow down in awe and gratitude for the past. Without all that came before us, none of us would be awakening now!"
- Barbara Marx Hubbard

Deliberate Positioning

"It is a commonly held view that meditation is a way to shut off the pressures of the world or of your own mind, but this is not an accurate impression. Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them."
Jon Kabat-Zinn

Self-preservation

Self-preservation is only the second law of life. The first law is that you and the other are one.
- Joseph Campbell

Good Government

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government. 
- Thomas Jefferson

Together

The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics.
- Albert Schweitzer



There lies before us ...

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings, to human beings: remember your humanity and forget the rest. 
- Bertrand Russell



Ram Dass

"I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion --and where it isn't that's where my work lies."
Ram Dass (aka Richard Alpert)

Mental act

"The mental act of focusing attention stabilizes the associated brain circuits...Over time, paying enough attention to any specific brain connection keeps the relevant circuitry open and dynamically alive...The power is in the focus."
- Daniel Siegel, UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center