“How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?” Charles de Gaulle
12. Quote of the Week
“The Tragedy of Obama: a corporatist centrist giving endless concessions to Republicans who (successfully) portray him as a radical leftist.” Anatoly Karlin
12. Quote of the Week (Thanks, Gabe!)
“Developing our reverence for mystery as we explore and map the universe, inside and outside, is the best safeguard against fanaticism and totalitarianism.” Alan Clements
12. Quote of the Week
Study is not the goal, doing is.
Do not mistake “talk” for “action”
Pity fills no stomach.
Compassion builds no house.
Understanding is not yet justice
Whoever multiplies words causes confusion.
The truth that can be spoken
is not the Ultimate Truth.
Ultimate Truth is wordless,
the silence within the silence.
More than the absence of speech,
More than the absence of words,
Ultimate Truth is the seamless being-in-place
that comes with attending to Reality.
Shimon ben Gamliel, Pirke Avot, Talmud, I:17 (roughly 30 CE)
12. Quote of the Week
Bird’s Eye: I was asked by a Tikkunista reader where the Talmudic quote at the bottom comes from, and the search led me to the pirke avot, a section of the Talmud (where I learned that Rabbi Tarfon said it, II:20). But it also led to many other lovely discoveries including this, which was too fine to abridge.
“It is not within our grasp to explain
the prosperity of the wicked
or the suffering of the righteous.
All we are called upon to do
is to act justly ourselves.
Reality is more complex than we would like.
If we insist upon it making sense,
we will find ourselves despairing.
Reality cannot be neatly packaged,
bound with the ribbon of morality.
Reality is greater than our ideas of good and evil
Reality is beyond our right and wrong.
Reality is all that is, and this is often at odds
with what we imagine it should be.
Where we can stand up for justice, let us act.
Where we are confounded by Truth,
let us keep silent.”
Rabbi Yannai Pirke Avot, Talmud
12. Quote of the Week
“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.” Rilke
12. Quote of the Week
“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.” Alden Nowlan
12. Quote of the Week
“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
12. Quote of the Week
“Folks, if you’re a moderate, issues are obviously not the most important thing to you. Otherwise you’d be in one camp or the other.” Rick Santorum
12. Quotes of the Week
* “The state has no place in the hard drives of the nation” Rick Mercer, from his weekly rant
* Every Bart Simpson Chalkboard Quote Ever To celebrate The Simpsons 500th show.
12. Quote of the Week
“It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.” John Andrew Holmes
12. Quote of the Week
“When the axe came into the forest the trees said, ‘The handle is one of us.’” Turkish proverb
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