Quotes to inspire and reflect

Ignorance is more costly to the State than education.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It isabout simple awareness—awareness of what isso real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: “This is water, this is water.”

To those of my race who . . . underestimatethe importance of cultivating friendly relationswith the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say, “Cast down yourbucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of allraces by whom we are surrounded.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect votingfor the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting : you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspokenbelief that way deep down they are differentfrom everyone else.

Acceptance is mostly a matter of fatigue rather than anything else.

“You can trust me,” R.V. said, watching herhand. “I’m a man of my

I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.”

Resistance is the secret of joy!

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give thewhite man nothing else. But the fact is, you gotto give ’em something. Either your money, your land, your woman, or your ass.

The good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that’swho She thinks we all are.

We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. “My God, my God—” I said to myself, “it’s the Children’s Crusade.”

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

So it goes.

We Bokonists believe that humanity isorganized into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they are doing. Such a team is called a karass by Bokonon.

A seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the way God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon . Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.

I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.

Every passing hour brings the Solar Systemforty-three thousand miles closer to GlobularCluster M13 in Hercules—and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

I want my attorney, my tailor, my valets, andeven my wife to believe in God, and I fancy that then I’ll be robbed and cuckolded less.

Le sens commun est fort rare .

Toutes les histoires anciennes, comme le disait un de nos beaux esprits, ne sont que des fables convenues .

Very learned women are to be found, in thesame manner as female warriors; but they areseldom or never inventors.

In this world we run the risk of having tochoose between being either the anvil or thehammer.

If this is the best of all possible worlds, whatare the others like?

In Westphalie, in Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh’scastle, there was a young boy upon whom nature had bestowed the gentlest manners. His soul shined through his face. He had fairly sound judgment, with the simplest spirit; this is why, I believe, they called him Candide.

Ce Corps qui s’appellait, & qui s’appelle encor, le saint Empire Romain, n’était en aucune maniére, ni saint, ni Romain, ni Empire .

That generous maxim, that it is much moreprudence to acquit two persons, though actually guilty, than to pass sentence of condemnationon one that is virtuous and innocent.

Il meglio, è l’inimico del bene .

If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there weretwo, they would cut each other’s throats; butthere are thirty, and they live happily togetherin peace.

E pluribus unus .

Fugit inreparabile tempus .

Death twitches my ear. “Live,” he says; “I am coming.”

[ Of Lucretius :] Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas .

Audacibus annue coeptis .

Manibus date lilia plenis .

Geniumque loci primamque deorum

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes .

Arma virumque cano .