quotes

“We step into the future with less connection to ancestral guidance than any human generation before us. Although we have invented amazing technologies for saving data, we are at risk of forgetting our personal, family and cultural stories. We broadcast our voices over vast distances, but talk less to our neighbours. Haunting these changes are the spectres of continuing violence, planetary degradation and, above all, the danger that we'll come to believe the implacable message of the powerful: that resistance is futile. The old stories teach us that resistance is never futile.” Dan Yashinsky, American-born storyteller and writer, Suddenly They Heard Footsteps, 2004

“A child on a farm sees a plane fly by overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home.” Carl Burns

“Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens.” Jimi Hendrix

“Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.” Oprah Winfrey

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for.” Georgia O'Keeffe

“Either a soul is cheerful by nature, or is made cheerful by work, love, art and knowledge.” Friedrich Nietzsche

“Only weak messages need strong messengers.” unknown

“The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.” Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist and writer (1825-1995)

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.” Jules de Gautier

“In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touch-starved.” Diane Ackerman, writer

“Spend all you have before you die, and do not outlive yourself.” George Bernard Shaw

“What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English poet & philosopher, 1772-1834)

“The higher the ape climbs the more he shows his rump.” French proverb

“Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.” James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)

“The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself - and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.” Agatha Christie

“Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.” Frank A. Clark

“Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave.” Constantin Brancusi

“More than anything trees are metaphors. Firmly rooted, genuinely patient and content, willing to undergo insult and humiliation, they also open themselves to all manner of creatures and make a home for many. These oldest of living beings have nobility in every leaf. They bring warmth to the northern cabin, and shade to the southern traveler. Daily, they do the breathing for our increasingly fragile planet. If they were to disappear, we would soon be dead. To honour trees is to grasp life.” Robert Genn

“Every so often, I like to go to the window, look up, and smile for a satellite picture.” Steven Wright

“If you don’t stand for something, you will stand for anything.” Ginger Rogers

"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are." unknown

“Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.” Lady Bird Johnson

“We don't know who we are until we see what we can do.” Martha Grimes