Quotations
Used in the 'WMail' Newsletter
and the Dateline Chamesa blog

Page Five

Alphabetical by Author
A thru C • D thru F • G thru J • K thru N

here on Page Five: O • P • Q • R

S thru Z • Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life

Books of Quotations Page

Working Minds Homepage
free monthly 'WMail' Philosophy Newsletter [2000-2007]
Index of All Issues

After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the
Dateline Chamesa weblog

Authors O thru R

Conan O'Brien
“There are few things more liberating in life than having your worst fear realized.”  {blog 8/2011}

pro blogger Matt O'Brien
“Just because a problem is obvious doesn’t mean it’s going to get solved.”  {blog 12/2018}

Irish playwright Sean O'Casey [1880-1964]
• • “It is my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to keep it.”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “All the world's a stage, and most of us are desparately unrehearsed.”  {blog 11/2013}

Flannery O'Connor [1925-64]
• • “Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers.
My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “Never second-guess inspiration.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “You have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.”  {blog 7/2021}

Sandra Day O'Connor [1930-2023], U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1981-2006
“I don't know that there are any shortcuts to doing a good job.”  {blog 12/2015}

TV pundit Lawrence O'Donnell
“[President Trump] is morally oblivious. He is, by an order of magnitude, the most amoral creature to ever
occupy the White House.”  {blog 6/2018}

Seb O'Driscoll
“Research shows that 6 out of 7 dwarfs aren't Happy.” - in 2009  {blog 12/2023}

painter Georgia O'Keeffe [1887-1986]
• • “My painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”  {blog 6/2017}
• • “All men and women stand equal under the sky.”  {blog 7/2018}

Austin O'Malley [1858-1932]
“The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.”  {blog 3/2011}

playwright Eugene O'Neill [1888-1953]
• • “Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself –
ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity – before he can learn the truth behind
the facts. And the truth is never ugly.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all tried to lie out of that but life won't let us.”  {blog 11/2014}
• • “One should either be sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers.”  {blog 5/2018}

U.S. Congressman Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O'Neill [1912-94] of Massachusetts
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1977-87
“All politics is local.”  {Issue #60}

Simon O'Riordan
• • “The only thing . . . that Objectivism should not tolerate is any political threat
to the freedom necessary to make choices in living.”  {Issue #36}
• • “I would define Freedom as the complete absence of coercion.”  {Issue #38}

P.J. O'Rourke
• • “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Everybody wants to save the earth. Nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”  {blog 11/2011}

Robert Francis 'Beto' O'Rourke
“Either everyone counts in America or no one does.”  {blog 10/2018}

British poet Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy [1844-81]
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”  {blog 4/2024}

Joyce Carol Oates [b. 1938]
“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin,
another's voice, another's soul.”   {blog 8/2013 & 5/2022}

Barack Obama
Illinois State Senator, 1997-2004
United States Senator from Illinois, 2005–2008
44th President of the United States, 2009-2017
Barack Obama Quotations Page at Working Minds
Barack Obama Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

Michelle Obama
• • “I tell this to my girls all the time: This journey we're on is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”  {blog 5/2015}
• • “Being President doesn't change who you are, it reveals who you are.”  {blog 8/2017}

astrophysicist Hermann Oberth [1894-1989]
“[The German] educational system is like an automobile which has strong rear lights, brightly illuminating the past.
But looking forward, things are barely discernible.”  {blog 4/2016}

William Obler [1849-1919]
“The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinquishes man from animals.”   {blog 3/2011}

Congresswoman Alexandria 'A.O.C.' Ocasio-Cortez [Dem NY-14 in The Bronx]
• • “No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars.”  {blog 3/2020}
• • “The Supreme Court is looking less like a bench and more like an auction house.”  {blog 8/2023}

Occupy Democrats [est. 2012]
“Apparently Trump supporters think [that] God meant for marriage to be between a man, his third wife, and several porn stars.”  {blog 1/2018}

musician Frank Ocean
• • “Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.”  {blog 10/2018}
• • “Whatever you do, never run back to what broke you.”  {blog 10/2018}

folk singer Phil Ochs [1940-76]
“Ah, but in such an ugly time the true protest is beauty” - in the liner notes for album "Pleasures of The Harbor" [1967]  {blog 3/2018}

Clifford Odets [1906-63]
“It's the Twentieth Century . . . no more miracles.” – in the stageplay "Golden Boy", 1937  {blog 5/2013}

Frank Ogden [1920-2011] - free-spirited futurist known as Dr. Tomorrow
“Any law, rule, regulation, or sanction conceived with industrial age thinking
reverses itself in a communications age environment.”  {Issue #28}

New Mexico poet Mary Oishi
“Maybe it’s better to regulate railroads and banks instead of uteruses and drag shows.”  {blog 3/2023}

Amanda Okoli
“I don't intend to be the richest person in the cemetary; my wealth is the legacy [that] I leave behind.”  {blog 4/2014}

Keith Olberman
• • “Success is overrated.”  {Issue #55}
• • “[President Trump] does not have a running war with the media, he has a running war with reality.” - on his G.Q. TV show  {blog 2/2017}

Old Farmer's Almanac [est. 1792]
“A bad oyster, like a bad marriage, is not known until too late.”  {blog 8/2019}

American poet Mary Oliver [1935-2019]
• • “Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “Someone [that] I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “Instructions for living a life. / Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”  {blog 6/2017}
• • “Tell me, what is it [that] you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  {blog 1/2023}

Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis [1906-75]
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”   {blog 4/2015}

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis [1929-94]
“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.”  {blog 7/2015}

Yoko Ono {Lennon}
• • “Life is like a suitcase, you can squeeze a lot in.”  {blog 4/2016}
• • “Each time we don't say what we wanna say, we're dying.”  {blog 4/2024}

physicist Frank Oppenheimer [1912-85]
“Scientists and artists are the world's noticers. Their job is simply to notice what other people cannot."

physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer [1904-67]
• • “Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.”  {Issue #57}
• • “There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science.
The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion,
to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “The atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up
those last few steps to the mountain pass, and beyond that there is a different country.”  {blog 8/2023}

Rafael E. Ortega
“[Removing street mailboxes is] how to win an election . . . who needs Russians?” - on Facebook  {blog 11/2020}

José Ortega y Gassett [1883-1955]
• • “We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness, it is always urgent,
here and now without any possibility for postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.”  {Issue #11}
• • “The stone and the tiger have no choice of life: the stone must gravitate and the tiger must pounce. Only human beings
are faced with the mind-boggling responsibility of having, at each and every moment of their lives, to choose what to do and
what to be. It is both a necessity and an invitation.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “Create a concept, and reality leaves the room.”  {blog 4/2016}

Texas politician Solomon P. Ortiz
“Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students.”  {blog 5/2017}

British playwright Joe Orton
“The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste.”  {blog 12/2012}

George Orwell [1903-50]
{ real name Eric Arthur Blair }
George Orwell Quotations Page at Working Minds

Sir William Osler [1849-1919]
“Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day absorb all your interest, energy and enthusiasm.
The best preparation for tomorrow is to live today superbly well.”  {blog 8/2018}

Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
“Over the next three to four weeks, we are going to see the number of [COVID-19] cases in this country rise so dramatically
that we're gonna have a hard time keeping everyday life operating.” - in late 2021  {blog 1/2022}

author Ouida [1839-1908]
“To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.”  {Issue #68}

Dutch composer George Overmeire
“The map is not the territory / the menu is not the meal / the score is not the music.”  {blog 12/2009}

Ovid [43 B.C.E. – 17 or 18 C.E.]
• • “Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “Everything changes, nothing is lost.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.”  {blog 1/2018}

reporter Shira Ovide, Washington Post 'Tech Friend' newsletter, 3/2024
“If these chatbots are supposed to be magical, why are so many of them dumb as rocks?”  {blog 4/2024}

Jim Owen
“The best things in life aren't 'things' at all.”  {blog 5/2013}

Erol Ozan
“Some beautiful paths can't be discovered without getting lost.”  {blog 8/2015}

novelist Cynthia Ozick
“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”  {blog 12/2011}

George Packer, columnist at The New Yorker Magazine
• • “Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another . . .
Inequality undermines democracy.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “We will have a more just society as soon as we want one.”  {blog 9/2015}

children's character Paddington Bear
“A wise bear always keeps a marmalade sandwich in his hat in case of emergency.”  {blog 1/2023}

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina [1887-1968]
“Why fly like a hen when you can soar like an eagle?”  {blog 4/2015}

Silent Era actress Anita Page [1910-2008]
“Nothing hurts like your own pain.”  {blog 6/2012}

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, Inc.
“Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting.”  {blog 3/2016}

baseball great Leroy Robert 'Satchel' Paige [1906-82]
• • “Ain't no man can avoid being born average, but there ain't no man got to be common.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.”  {blog 10/2021}

Thomas Paine [1737-1809]
• • “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”  {Issue #56}
• • “Ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth!”  {Issue #69}
• • “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “Character is much easier kept than recovered.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” in 1776  {blog 3/2014}
• • “The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust [that] I never shall.”  {blog 5/2016}
• • “Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.”  {blog 9/2018}
• • “If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.”  {blog 9/2018}
• • “When it shall be said, in any country in the world, my people are happy, my jails are empty, the aged are not in want,
the taxes are not oppressive . . . then may that country boast of its constitution and government.”  {blog 12/2019}
• • “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” - in "The Crisis" pamphlets, 1776-83  {blog 7/2021}
• • “It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.”  {blog 11/2022}
• • “Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as possess.”  {blog 11/2022}

journalist Chuck Palahniuk
• • “The answer is [that] there is no answer.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “This is your life and it is ending one moment at a time.”  {blog 3/2018}

Grace Paley [1922-2007]
“If you say what's on your mind in the language that comes to you from your parents and your street and friends,
you'll probably say something beautiful.”  {blog 10/2017}

Dan Pallotta, reader and T.E.D. speaker
• • “Your [Working Minds] website has always had the best collection of thoughtful quotations anywhere, ever.”  {blog 1/2017}
• • “The first step to becoming bold is to stop believing that boldness is meant for other, better leaders.”  {blog 9/2017}

author Christopher Paolini of Montana
“Without fear there cannot be courage.”  {blog 4/2024}

British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst [1858-1928]
“I would rather be a rebel than a slave.”  {blog 8/2023}

Paracelsus [1493-1541]
“I am different. Let this not upset you.”  {Issue #70}

mystery author Sara Paretsky [b. 1947]
• • “[It is] hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking our liberties overseas,
or those who are suppressing them at home.”   {Issue #67}
• • “Nothing kinder than strangers. Nothing stranger than kindness.”  {blog 5/2008}

Paul Park
“This Christmas, every Christmas, Santa Claus is everywhere and
Jesus is nowhere to be found.”  {Issue #48}

Georgia Parke
“Mass incarceration is a form of voter suppression.”  {blog 6/2019}

jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker [1920-55]
“If you don't live it, it won't come out your horn.”  {blog 3/2017}

writer Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]
• • “I require only three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Wit has truth in it. Wisecracking is merely calisthenics with words.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “Take care of the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed'.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “You think you're frightening me with your hell, don't you? You think your hell is worse than mine.”  {blog 5/2015}
• • “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”  {blog 10/2017}
• • “One more drink and I'd have been under the host.”  {blog 1/2018}
• • “I hate almost all rich people, but I think [that] I'd be darling at it.”  {blog 10/2022}

author Robert B. Parker [1932-2010]
• • “Coincidence exists, but believing in it never did me any good.”  {Issue #36}
• • “Martinis taste like John Coltrane sounds.”  {Issue #50}
• • “If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms,
and somehow you need to live up to them.”  {Issue #64}

Cyril Northcote Parkinson [1909-93]
• • “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” (aka "Parkinson's Law")  {blog 5/2010}
• • “The man who is denied the opportunity of making decisions of importance begins to regard as important
the decisions [that] he is allowed to make.”  {blog 8/2017}

civil rights activist Rosa Parks [1913-2005]
“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right.”  {blog 1/2018}

Turkish novelist Orhan Parmuk
“The real choice we have to make is between peace and nationalism.”  {blog 1/2014}

blogger Shane Parrish
“You don’t need to be smarter than others to outperform them if you can out-position them.”
- in his new book "Clear Thinking" [10/2023]  {blog 12/2023}

labor activist Lucy Parsons [1853-1942]
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”  {blog 10/2015}

Richard Parsons, former Citigroup board chairman
“To some extent what we saw in the 2007, 2008 crash was the result of the throwing off of Glass-Steagall.”  {blog 5/2012}

country music performer Dolly Parton
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”  {blog 8/2019}

philosopher & mathematician Blaise Pascal [1623-62]
• • “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.”  (in "Pensees")  {Issue #65 & blog 4/2009}
• • “It is force, not opinion, that queens its way over the world, but it is opinion
that looses the force.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in others.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “Evil is easy, and has infinite forms.”  {blog 11/2015}
• • “All of man's misery comes from his incapacity to sit alone in an empty quiet room.”  {blog 9/2016}
• • “Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs
on whatever gets beyond it either way.”  {blog 1/2017}
• • “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once.”  {blog 8/2017}

Nobel-laureate Boris Pasternak [1890-1960]
“Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.”  {blog 11/2013}

Louis Pasteur [1822-95]
• • “Chance favors the trained mind.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.”  {blog 2/2018}

Susan S. Pastin of Chicago, Illinois
“Didn't we settle the question of Divine Right in 1776?”
- in a Letter to TIME Magazine, August 2011  {blog 9/2011}

cartoonist Stephan Pastis, creator of the "Pearls Before Swine" daily strip [est. 2001]
• • “The purpose of life is eating donuts.”  {blog 3/2020}
• • “Failure is not an option. It's a lifestyle.”  {blog 7/2021}

poet Kenneth Patchen [1911-72]
“The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.”  {blog 12/2017}

author Richard North Patterson
“Politics, like rust, never sleeps.”  {Issue #32}

Gen. George Smith Patton, Jr. [1885-1945]
• • “You don't win wars by giving up your life for your country, you win by
making the other s.o.b. give up his.”  {Issue #64}
• • “Success is measured by how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”  {blog 12/2010}
• • “A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes later.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “Politicians are the lowest form of life on Earth. Liberal democrats are the lowest form of politicians.”  {blog 1/2017}
• • “Better to fight for something than live for nothing.”  {blog 11/2017}
• • “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”  {blog 8/2019}

Dr. Linus Pauling [1901-94]
“How do you have a good idea? Have a lot of ideas and keep the good ones.”  {Issue #48}

Cesare Pavese [1908-50]
“One ceases to be a child when one realizes that telling one's troubles
does not make it any better.”  {blog 12/2008}

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov [1849-1936]
“Possibilities are like the wings of birds; they allow man to soar and to climb to the heavens.
And facts are like the atmosphere against which those wings must beat, and without which
the soaring bird will surely plummet back to earth.”  {blog 12/2008}

poet Vera Pavlova
“Poetry should be written the way [that] adultery is committed: on the run, on the sly, during the time not accounted for.
And then you come home, as if nothing ever happened.”  {blog 12/2012}

John Pavlovitz
“Donald Trump isn't a President. He's a motivational speaker for racists.”  {blog 12/2018}

Zane Paxton
“I’m at a bit of a loss in how to successfully negotiate with an angry, hurting faction [of the GOP] that doesn’t like critical thinking, facts, science,
or reason. I suspect it might take a few generations for them to die off, but they are indoctrinating their kids . . .” - on Facebook  {blog 2/2019}

one of the backup musicians for Johnny Paycheck [1938-2003]
“There's nothing worse than a hillbilly with a hit record.”  {blog 8/2018}

Norman Vincent Peale [1898-1993]
• • “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”  {blog 8/2014}
• • “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”  {blog 4/2017}

Allison Pearson
“The great thing about unrequited love is that it's the only kind that exists.”  {blog 3/2011}

writer Carol Lynn Pearson
“Heroes take journeys, confront dragons, and discover the treasure of their true selves.”  {blog 12/2013}

Eric Pearson, president/CEO, El Paso [TX] Community Foundation
“A mentor in broadcast journalism once told me, 'To find the real story, sometimes you have to
turn your back on the fire, and look around'.”  {blog 3/2020}

British biographer Hesketh Pearson [1887-1964]
“Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.”  {blog 2/2014}

author M. Scott Peck [1936-2005]
“Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you won't do anything.”  {blog 4/2013}

movie director Sam Peckinpah [1925-84]
• • “Life is awful. Ain't it fun to watch?”  {Issue #57}
• • “The end of a picture is always an end of a life.”  {blog 10/2017}

cartoonist Lincoln Peirce
“Things don’t always go your way just because you’re awesome.”  {blog 5/2018}

retired soccer star Pelé
“Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.”  {blog 8/2017}

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
• • “Cruelty is not wit.”  {blog 3/2020}
• • “[Donald Trump] shredded the truth, so I shredded his speech.”  {blog 3/2020}
• • “You know [Trump is] crazy. He's crazy and what he did [January 6] is further evidence of his craziness.”
- in a phone call with U.S. Army Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley  {blog 10/2021}

Native American teen water protector Autumn Peltier
“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, we can’t eat money, or drink oil.” - addressing the United Nations General Assembly, 9/2019  {blog 12/2019}

Native American activist Leonard Peltier
“I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all of Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive – nor will we deserve to.”  {blog 9/2017}

The Pen at Peace Team activism website [est. 2004]
• • “These are not spontaneous chants [of 'Lock her up!'] at the Republican convention. They are led by hundreds of synchronized
Trump Bronx cheerleader whips on the convention floor. This is a choreographed lynch mob.”  {blog 7/2016}
• • “In upside-down Republican justice land, no evidence of a crime is proof of a crime.”  {blog 9/2016}
• • “Obamacare hysteria [by the Republican Party] was never anything other than racial hatred [disguised] as a policy dispute.”  {blog 2/2017}
• • “If they were honest they would call their [TrumpCare] bill the 'Give Us All Your Money or Die Act'.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “[This is the] first administration to have top people taking the Fifth in the first 100 days. Let Trump brag about that one.”  {blog 5/2017}
• • “Oh, November 6th, hasten the day. There is a blue tsunami coming.”  {blog 3/2018}
• • “Comey will not be prosecuted.”  {blog 5/2018}
• • “In coming months, the place [that] one would be most likely to be infected with the coronavirus
will be one of Trump's own Make America Sick Again campaign rallies.”  {blog 3/2020}

William Penn [1644-1718]
“Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”  {blog 12/2007}

Nobel-laureate physicist Arno Penzias
D“The world is most consistent with purposeful creation.”  {blog 9/2018}

Tom Perez, Chair of the Democratic National Committee
“Civil rights is the unfinished business of America, and it’s all our responsibility to see that work to completion.”  {blog 11/2020}

Pericles [495–429 B.C.E.]
• • “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.” (430 B.C.E.)  {Issue #43}
• • “The worst thing is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated.”  {blog 2/2008}

John Perkins
“The marketplace is democratic.”  {blog 3/2011}

railroad tycoon Alfred E. Perlman [1902-83]
“After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion.
And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.”  {blog 7/2017}

Stephanie Pero
“Behind every successful woman . . . is a substantial amount of coffee.”  {blog 12/2007}

H. Ross Perot [1930-2019]
“People cannot be managed. Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.”  {Issue #43}

Debbie Perry
“The difference between government bonds and men is that government bonds mature.”  {blog 1/2014}

Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935]
• • “Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.”  {blog 10/2015}
• • “The value of things is not the time [that] they last, but the intensity with which they occur.”  {blog 4/2016}
• • “No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it.”  {blog 12/2017}

the Peter character, in "The Railway Children" [1906 novel]
“Stick to it. Everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on.”  {blog 7/2016}

Laurence J. Peter [1919-90]
“The expression 'as a matter of fact' precedes many an expression that isn't.”  {blog 10/2011}

mystery author Ellis Peters [1913-95]
• • “The mountains of today are the molehills of tomorrow.”  {Issue #21}
• • “Chance is very, very methodical in its distribution of probabilities, and uses sheer coincidences
only very sparingly.” – in "Rainbow's End" [1978]  {blog 7/2016}
• • “The success of a [vacation] depends on what you find for yourself on the spot, not what you bring with you.”  {blog 2/2017}

Thomas J. 'Tom' Peters III
“Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.”  {blog 9/2017}

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• • “The archetypal hero is the person whose eyes are open, and whose speech is true, and who faces the chaos of the unknown and
the tyranny of the known and balances them – that's the meta-solution to the meta-problem (of Life).”  {blog 1/2018}
• • “You wake up in the morning and you say, 'There are dragons to slay and giants to fight'.”  {blog 6/2018}

Denne Bart Petitclerc [1929-2006]
• • “The best part of anything is working to get it.”  {Issue #65}
• • “Each of us owes a death to the world.”  {blog 10/2012}

Michael Phelan, deputy director at Social Security Works
“The greed of the drug companies is boundless.”  {blog 7/2017}

Edward John Phelps [1822-1900]
“The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.”  {blog 8/2014}

William Lyon Phelps [1865-1943]
“I divide all readers into two classes: those who read to remember and those who read to forget.”  {blog 7/2015}

comedian Emo Phillips
“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body.
Then I realized who was telling me this.”  {blog 4/2011}

composer H.I. Phillips [??-1965]
“Oratory [is] the art of making deep noises from the chest sound like important messages from the brain.”  {blog 5/2013}

Julia Phillips [1944-2002]
“Reagan and Bush . . . made the world safe for hypocrisy.”  {Issue #33}

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune writer
“2002 will not enter history's ledger as a good year for civil liberties.”  {Issue #27}

football coach Oail Andrew 'Bum' Phillips [1923-2013]
“You fail all of the time. But you're not a failure until you start blaming someone else.”  {blog 9/2016}

folk singer-activist Utah Phillips [1935-2008]
• • “You are about to be told, again, that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Have you seen
what this country does to its valuable natural resources?” – addressing a high school class  {blog 6/2012}
• • “It isn't the X generation [now], it's the Y generation, because everybody is asking 'why?'.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “The most American thing [that] you can do is to dissent; the most un-American thing [that] you can do is to stifle dissent.”  {blog 3/2013}

Wendell Phillips [1811-84]
“The heart is the best reflective thinker.”  {blog 5/2015}

Eden Philpotts [1862-1960]
“The Universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for your wits to grow sharper.”  {Issue #66}

Jean Piaget [1896-1980]
• • “The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable
of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse,
whether violent, or gradual.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Scientific thought, then, is not momentary; it is not a static instance; it is a process.”  {blog 9/2008}

Tom Piazza
“Some things are still, at this late hour, not for sale and never will be.”
(Oxford American Magazine Nov-Dec 2000)  {Issue #16}

artist Pablo Picasso [1881-1973]
• • “Everything you can imagine is real.”  {Issue #35}
• • “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”  {Issue #57}
• • “To be young, really young, takes a long time.”  {blog 2/2008}
• • “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized. People just
don't have that much vision.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I don't seek, I find.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “Computers are useless, they can only give you answers.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”  {blog 10/2015}
• • “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.'
Instead, I was a painter and became Picasso.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”  {blog 10/2022}
• • “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”  {blog 8/2023}

Mary Pickford [1892-1979]
“This thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.”  {Issue #48}

'Pickles' daily comic strip [est. 1990]
“Sometimes I'm consistent and sometimes I'm not.”  {blog 8/2023}

novelist Jodi Picoult
• • “Forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else. It’s something you do for yourself. It’s saying, ‘You’re not important enough to have a stranglehold
on me’. It’s saying, ‘You don’t get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future’.” - in the 2013 novel "The Storyteller"  {blog 11/2016}
• • “The answer is that there is no good answer. So as parents, as doctors, as judges, and as a society, we fumble through and make decisions that allow us
to sleep at night – because morals are more important than ethics, and love is more important than law.”  {blog 9/2017}

Charles Pierce
“You will note that the Bill of Rights is now apparently a Bill of Concerns.” – in Esquire Magazine, Feb 2014  {blog 3/2015}

Franklin Pierce [1804-69]
“Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.”   {blog 12/2011}

Joseph H. Pilates [1880-1967]
“Fitness is the first requisite to happiness.”  {Issue #36}

British journalist John Pilger
• • “It is time we recognized that the real terrorism is poverty.”  {Issues #21 & 36} full text of article
• • “It's not enough for journalists and broadcasters to see themselves as mere messengers without
understanding and revealing the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.
We ought never to be agents of power, always of the people.”  {blog 7/2011}

Greek poet Pindar [522?–443 B.C.E.]
“Unsung, the noblest deed will die.”  {blog 7/2010}

Nuyorican actor & poet Miguel Piñero [1946-88]
“I believe the future is simply the past, entered thru another gate.”  {blog 2/2017}

baseball manager Lou Piniella
“Statistics are like bikinis. They show a lot but not everything.”  {blog 11/2012}

cognitive scientist Steven Pinker
• • “We will never have a perfect world, but it's not romantic or naïve to work toward a better one.”  {blog 3/2015}
• • “The main lesson of thirty-five years of A.I. {artificial intelligence} research is that the hard problems are easy and
the easy problems are hard.”  {blog 1/2023}

cartoonist Dan Piraro, who draws the "Bizarro" daily panel
“Remember kid: With great power comes zero accountability.” - (1/2020)  {blog 3/2020} {view the panel}

Prof. Elly Pirocacos of Greece & Canada
“When the other is lacking in fidelity in any and all of its forms, loyalty is foolish and as such speaks to vice, not virtue.”  {blog 4/2017}

philosopher Robert M. Pirsig [1928-2017]
“The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.”  {blog 5/2017}

British prime-minister William Pitt [1759-1806]
• • “Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants;
it is the creed of slaves.”  {blog 2/2012 & 7/2015}

writer Sylvia Plath [1932-63]
• • “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “Dying is an art, like everything else.”  {blog 7/2016}
• • “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”  {blog 11/2017}
• • “Being born a woman is my awful tragedy . . . Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars – to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording – all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night . . .”  {blog 1/2023}
• • “August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”  {blog 8/2023}

Ancient Greek philosopher Plato [427-347 B.C.E.]
Plato Quotations Page at Working Minds
Greek philosopher Plato Page at Maison d'Être Philosophy Bookstore

golfer Gary Player
“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”  {blog 2/2016}

B.O. Plenty character in the 'Dick Tracy' comic strip
“I'll never guess the number of buttons in a jar ever again – not ever!”  {blog 2/2017} {view the panel}

Pliny the Elder {Gaius Plinius Secundus} [23?-79 C.E.]
“God has no power over the past except to cover it with oblivion.”  {blog 3/2016}

Middle Platonist philosopher Plutarch [46?-127 C.E.]
• • “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”  {Issue #68 & blog 8/2013 & 11/2022}
• • “Character is simply habit long continued.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”  {blog 4/2015}

Edgar Allan Poe [1809-49]
• • “The people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “The pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense is derived,
I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “All that we see or seem / Is but a dream, within a dream”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
– in 'Eleonora' (1841)  {blog 3/2015}
• • “At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.”  {blog 8/2023}

actress Amy Poehler
“If you can speak about what you care about to a person [that] you disagree with without denigrating them
or insulting them, then you may actually be heard.”  {blog 11/2013}

Carol Pogash
“With one exception, [President Trump] doesn’t suffer fools lightly.”  {blog 11/2017}

sci-fi author Frederik Pohl [1919-2013]
“I am a sort of preacher. I like to talk to people and get them to change their views when I think
[that] their views are wrong. Why else would anyone write a book?”   {blog 9/2013}

French polymath Jules Henri Poincaré [1854-1912]
“Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either
we dispense with the need for reflection.”  {blog 1/2017}

Hercule Poirot character, written by Agatha Christie [1890-1976]
• • “The world is becoming a difficult place to live in – except for the strong.” - in 1948  {Issue #68}
• • “Unless you are good at guessing, it is not much use being a detective.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “[Stupidity] is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished.”  {blog 8/2008}
• • “With thought, all problems can be resolved.”  {blog 12/2010}

journalist Alfred Polgar [1873-1955]
“Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather. He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop.”  {blog 5/2013}

movie mogul Sydney Pollack [1934-2008]
“[Film] editing feels almost like sculpting, or a form of continuing the writing process.”  {blog 11/2014}

Katha Pollitt
“Old, in America, is not a good thing to be.”  {blog 8/2009}

James Poniewozik, TIME Magazine columnist
• • “Politics has always been a mud fight – better that citizens jump in the trough than lose interest.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “In the reality-TV era, unstable behavior [has] become a valid career choice.”  {blog 12/2009}

Mary Pettibone Poole [?-??]
“The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is.” (circa 1938)  {blog 10/2011}

philosopher Karl Popper [1902-94]
• • “Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.”   {blog 3/2013}
• • “There are uncertain truths – even true statements that we may take to be false – but there are no uncertain certainties. Since we
can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this
chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.” - in "In Search of A Better World" [1984]  {blog 2/2017}
• • “I may be wrong, and you may be right, and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth.”  {blog 2/2021}
• • “No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not adopt a rational attitude.”  {blog 3/2023}

Mary Poppins character, as written by P.L. Travers, OBE [1899-1996]
“In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and the job's a game.”  {blog 10/2015}

Franklin Porath, former business partner
“Darrell Issa is the most evil man I ever met.”  {blog 2/2011}

poet Antonio Porchia [1885-1968]
• • “The dream which is not fed with dream disappears.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “In a full heart, there is room for everything.”  {blog 11/2012}

Ferdinand Porsche [1875-1951]
“In the beginning I looked around and, not finding the automobile of my dreams, decided to build it.”  {Issue #37}

L. Aldin Porter
“Leave no question in anyone's mind as to where you stand.”  {Issue #65}

author Charles Portis
“Don't let your mouth write a check that you're ass can't cash.” - in the 1966 novel "Norwood"  {blog 2/2019}

comic strip character Pogo Possum, as drawn by Walt Kelly [1913-73]
• • “I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed [person].”  {blog 1/2014}
• • “We has met the enemy, and it is us.”  {blog 1/2014}

Neil Postman
“What's the problem to which this is a solution?”  {Issue #36}

Beatrix Potter [1866-1943]
“Believe [that] there is a Great Power silently working all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest.”  {blog 3/2014}

Wendell Potter
“We should be worrying about Wall Street-run health care.”  {blog 11/2009}

Lorrie B. Potters
• • “Everybody knows more than anybody.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “I've never seen turkey being sold as imitation tofu.”  {blog 6/2012}

poet Ezra Pound [1885-1972]
• • “What matters is not the idea [that] a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.”  {blog 7/2010}
• • “It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.”  {blog 9/2012}

Roscoe Pound [1870-1964]
“Civilization involves subjection of force to reason, and the agency of this subjection is law.”  {blog 10/2008}

Anthony Powell [1905-2000]
“There is no greater sign of innate misery than a love of teasing.”  {blog 12/2008}

Gen. Colin Powell [1937-2021]
• • “Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.”  {blog 4/2013 & 10/2017}
• • “If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception,
it is a prevailing attitude.”  {blog 2/2016}
• • “A dream doesn't become reality through magic. It takes sweat, determination, and hard work.”  {blog 9/2017}
• • “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”  {blog 6/2019}

writer Dawn Powell [1896-1965]
“For a genius to be a genius, he must have a selfless slave between himself and the world.”   {blog 4/2009}

British MP Enoch Powell [1912-98]
“For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship's captain complaining about the sea.”  {blog 12/2015}

Jerome H. Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve
“The threat of another global financial crisis, like the one that hit in 2008, is very, very low; the risk that we keep our eyes on
the most now is cyber risk.” - on 11 April 2021  {blog 7/2021}

J.M. Power
“If you want your dreams to come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.”  {blog 11/2020}

sculptor Hiram Powers [1805-73]
“Educate the heart. Let us have good men.”  {blog 3/2017}

radio talk show host Dennis Prager
“More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.”  {blog 3/2011}

sci-fi author Terry Pratchett [1948-2015]
• • “No matter how fast light travels it finds [that] the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “In ancient times, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”  {blog 8/2016}
• • “Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one."
• • “Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”  {blog 5/2017}

runner Steve Prefontaine [1951-75]
“To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift.”  {blog 3/2016}

Col. William Prescott [1726-95]
“An obstacle is often a stepping stone.”  {blog 5/2017}

rock legend Elvis Presley [1935-77]
• • “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away.”   {blog 4/2010}
• • “Ambition is a dream with a V-8 engine.”  {blog 1/2012 & 12/2015}

radio talk show host Bill Press
• • “The Justice Dept. is the new F.E.M.A.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Lobbying is the world's second-oldest profession.”  {blog 12/2007}

Robert E. Lee Prewitt character
in "From Here To Eternity" [1951 novel] by James Jones [1921-77]
“A man loves a thing, that don't mean it's got to love him back. You love a thing, you got to be grateful.”  {blog 8/2017}

Reynolds Price [1933-2011]
“The only thing more destructive than a tornado is a family.”  {blog 7/2012}

New Mexico, USA blogger V.B. Price
• • “Human rights and civil rights morally outrank states’ rights.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “Stupidity [is] a fellow traveler of catastrophe.”  {blog 12/2017}

poet-songwriter Robert Priest
“It is the curse of the competent not to be called upon.”  {blog 3/2016}

rock legend Prince [1958-2016]
“People fascinate me – they're amazing. Life fascinates me. And I'm no more fascinated by my own life than by anyone else's.”  {blog 5/2016}

Principles NOT Parties, on Facebook
“President Trump's negligence turned what would have been a challenge for any president into a national disaster.”  {blog 11/2020}

Annie Proulx
“The happy ending still beckons, and it is in great hope of grasping it that we go on.”  {blog 12/2017}

Marcel Proust [1871-1922]
• • “Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”   {blog 8/2009}
• • “The only true voyage of discovery would not be to visit strange lands but to behold the universe
thru the eyes of another.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.”  {blog 1/2017}

comedian Richard Pryor [1940-2005]
“A lie is profanity . . . A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth.”  {blog 10/2007}

Joseph Pulitzer [1847-1911]
• • “A newspaper that is true to its purpose concerns itself not only with the way things are
but with the way [that] they ought to be.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “Our republic and its press will rise or fall together.”  {blog 2/2021}

author Philip Pullman
“We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence.
'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever.”   {blog 4/2009}

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin
“Russia never lost the Cold War . . . because it never ended.”  {blog 6/2015}

Thomas Pynchon
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.”
(in "Gravity's Rainbow" 1973)  {Issue #58}

Nido Qubein
“Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.”  {blog 11/2017}

Queen Elsa of Arendelle character in the Disney movie "Frozen"
“The cold never bothered me anyway.”  {blog 12/2017}

Joe Queenan
“Every life, even the best ones, ends in sadness. Books hold out hope that things may end otherwise.”  {blog 11/2012}

musician & bandleader Questlove
“Decide who you're not before you decide who you are.”  {blog 4/2018}

Matthew Quick
“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.”
- in the 2008 novel "The Silver Linings Playbook"  {blog 11/2016}

journalist Robert Quillen
“Discussion is an exhange of knowledge; an argument is an exchange of ignorance.”  {blog 2/2012}

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch [1863-1944]
“We make our discoveries thru our mistakes; we watch one another's success, and where there is freedom
to experiment there is hope to improve.”  {blog 4/2014}

author Anna Quindlen
• • “The life [that] you have led doesn't need to be the only one [that] you have.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
– in "How Reading Changed My Life" [1998]  {blog 3/2014 & 8/2016}

James Quinn
“Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers
selling weapons to both sides.”  {blog 6/2012}

London banker Sir John Quinton
“Politicians are people who, when they see the light at the end of the tunnel,
go out and buy more tunnel.”   {blog 9/2011}

cartoon character Jessica Rabbit
“I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.”  {Issue #42}

John Raby of New Hampshire
“No one's wealth should come at the price of another's hunger, nakedness, or homelessness. Once that line is crossed, property
becomes theft, and the practitioners become thieves.” - letter to The Nation Magazine, August 2017  {blog 10/2017}

author Joyce Rachelle
“We all grow tired eventually; it happens to everyone. Even the sun, at the close of the year, is no longer a morning person.”  {blog 2/2019}

actor Daniel Radcliffe
“I used to be self-conscious about my height, but then I thought 'F*** that, I'm Harry Potter'.”  {blog 11/2013}

actor George Raft [1895-1980]
On bankruptcy: “Part of the loot went for gambling and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly.”  {blog 5/2009}

musician & activist Bonnie Raitt
“Life gets mighty precious when there is less of it to waste.”  {blog 2/2021}

Catherine Rampell, Washington Post columnist
“The G.O.P. tax plan is ridiculous.”  {blog 10/2017}

Dieter Rams
“Good design is as little design as possible.”  {blog 6/2015}

Ayn Rand [1905-82]
Ayn Rand Quotations Page at Working Minds
Ayn Rand Pages at Working Minds

stage magician and skeptic James Randi [1928-2020]
“No amount of belief makes something a fact.”  {blog 8/2016}

civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph [1889-1979]
“Freedom is never given; it is won.”  {blog 12/2018}

U.S. Congressman Charles B. Rangel of New York
“Well, I really think that [George W. Bush] shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all.”  {Issue #58}

U.S. Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin [1880-1973]
first female member of Congress, served 1941-1942
“Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn't make sense not to use both.”  {blog 9/2016}

Burton Rascoe [1892-1957]
“What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.”   {blog 3/2011}

former TV news anchor Dan Rather
• • “Courage.” (at the end of his last CBS Evening News broadcast)  {Issue #51}
• • “News is what the powerful want to keep hidden.”  {blog 1/2018}
• • “I have long believed [that] the 2018 elections will almost certainly be the most consequential midterms of my lifetime.”
- on twitter (@DanRather)  {blog 7/2018}

English naturalist John Ray [1627-1705]
“Learning makes the wise wiser and the fool more foolish.”  {blog 7/2011}

Tana Ray
“Divorce the story of your limitation and marry your unlimited capacity.”  {blog 5/2018}

longtime House Speaker Sam Rayburn [1882-1961]
“No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.”  {blog 11/2012}

actor Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
33rd Governor of California, 1967-1975
40th President of the United States, 1981-89
• • “Church and state are, and must remain, separate.”  {Issue #57}
• • “Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize
that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “There is a limit to what you can do in politics.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “The nearest thing to eternal life [that] we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses
had run them through the U.S. Congress.”  {blog 9/2013}
• • “I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is,
wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “Talk is cheap – except when Congress does it.”  {blog 2/2017}
• • “For this Nation to remain true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted, or defiled.
The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished.”  {blog 3/2023}

actor-director Robert Redford
• • “Whenever there's chaos, there's ambiguity, and where there's ambiguity, there's fear.
And fear gets manipulated.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “I think [that] the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources
is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise, what is there to defend?”  {blog 9/2018}
• • “America is still a world power. But in the past four years, it has lost its place as a world leader.” - in July 2020  {blog 11/2020}

beat writer Ambrose Redmoon [1933–96]
{real name James Neil Hollingworth}
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something
is more important than fear.”  {blog 9/2011}

Lou Reed [1942-2013]
• • “If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the price of a song?”  {blog 5/2009}
• • “The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not for the music?”  {blog 11/2013}

Cong. Thomas Brackett Reed [1839-1902]
“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”  {blog 1/2022}

Bette Reese
“If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.”  {blog 7/2013}

baseball great 'Pee Wee' Reese [1918-99]
“If you have talent, you don't have to tell people.”  {blog 5/2012}

Canadian scientist Hubert Reeves
“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature, unaware that the Nature
[that] he is destroying is this God [that] he is worshipping.”  {blog 10/2018}

William Rehnquist [1924-2005]
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1972-86; 16th Chief Justice of the United States, 1986–2005
“Conservatives are those who worship dead radicals.”  {blog 7/2013}

Berkeley political economist Robert B. Reich
• • “[The modern Republican Party] has become a party of hypocrisy masquerading as principled ideology.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “The federal budget deficit isn't the nation's major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn't be our major goal.
Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both.” – in 2013  {blog 8/2013}
• • “[We] need to raise the minimum wage so that nobody who's working full time lives in poverty.”  {blog 11/2013}
• • “Trump isn’t the cause of what’s happened to America. He’s the consequence – the product of years of stagnant wages
and big money’s corruption of our democracy.”  {blog 5/2018 & 7/2018}
• • “It is time to revive anti-trust [enforcement].”  {blog 5/2018}
• • “America's problems have nothing to do with what happens in bedrooms, or whether women are allowed to end their pregnancies. Our problems
have to do with what occurs in boardrooms, and whether corporations and wealthy individuals are allowed to undermine our democracy.”  {blog 7/2018}
• • “There's no Republican Party anymore, there's only Trump and Fox News.”  {blog 8/2018}
• • “We are now in a second Gilded Age. Giant firms at the center of the American economy are distorting the market
and our politics. We must resurrect antitrust.”  {blog 12/2018}
• • “The crux of the problem is [that] Americans now occupy two separate worlds – a fact-based pro-democracy world
and a Trump-based authoritarian one.”  {blog 2/2021}

Wilhelm Reich [1897-1957]
“It is the basic evasion of the essential which is the problem of man.”  {Issue #13}

Harry Reid [1939-2021]
Congressman [NV-01 1983-86], U.S. Senator [Dem NV since 1987], Senate Majority Leader [2007-2014]
• • “[Social Security] is not in crisis at this stage. Leave Social Security alone. We have a lot of other places
[that] we can look that are in crisis. But Social Security is not.” – in March 2011  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Addressing our climate crisis is not just a question of morality or ethics; it is a question of our own survival.”  {blog 3/2014}

actor-director Rob Reiner
“November 3 the nightmare ends.” - on Twitter, 22 May 2020  {blog 5/2020}

Mrs. Emile Renan
“Little things come in small packages.”  {blog 6/2012}

French author Jules Renard [1864-1910]
• • “Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.”  {blog 2/2017}

musician/activist Michael 'Killer Mike' Render
“No more 'incremental progress' bull****. It’s time for a wholesale political revolution.”  {blog 2/2019}

author Louise Rennison [1951-2016]
“Everyone is so obsessed with themselves nowadays that they have no time for me.”  {blog 4/2016}

French filmmaker Jean Renoir [1894-1979]
• • “Goodbye Mr. Zanuck: It certainly has been a pleasure working at 16th-Century Fox.”  {blog 12/2010}
• • “Is it possible to succeed without any act of betrayal?”  {blog 1/2011}
• • “A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.”  {blog 2/2011}

Philippine journalist Maria Ressa
“Without facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy,
and it becomes impossible to deal with the existential problems of our times: climate, coronavirus, now, the battle for truth.”
- in her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech delivered in December 2021  {blog 5/2022}

author James Reston
“[Richard Nixon] inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.”  {blog 1/2022}

labor leader Walter Reuther [1907-70]
“There is no power in the world that can stop the forward march of free men and women when they are joined
in the solidarity of human brotherhood.”  {blog 12/2018}

Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times reviewer
“It must be death-defying to write a novel.”  {Issue #36}

Randi Rhodes, radio talk show host [retired May 2014]
• • “Fight global warming! Be cool.”  {Issue #60}
• • “Vote like your nation's survival depends on it . . . because it does.”  {Issue #60}
• • “The emperor has no clue.”  {blog 12/2007}

Matthieu Ricard
“There is a dilemma, to reconcile three time scales: in the short term, the economy; in the middle range,
global well-being generally; and, in the long range, the environment.”  {blog 3/2012}

rock legend Keith Richards
• • “If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.”   {blog 5/2012}
• • “Everybody thinks [that] you reach a certain age and you're a grownup, but it's not true. Nobody grows up
until the day [that] they croak.”  {blog 9/2015}

Lisa Richards
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except for a cowgirl, cowgirls will kill you.”  {blog 2/2021}

poet James Richardson
• • “Too much apology doubles the offense.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “Sophistication is upscale conformity.”  {blog 5/2013}

American politician & diplomat William Blaine 'Bill' Richardson III [1947-2023]
“I choose bold. I choose action. I choose what’s right for the people. I choose to make a difference.”  {blog 12/2023}

Cardinal Richelieu [1585-1642]
“If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something
in them to have him hanged.”  {blog 3/2015}

Branch Rickey [1881-1965]
“Luck is the residue of design.”  {blog 1/2010}

E.C. Riegel [1879-1953]
“The greatest enemy of mankind is ignorance of the inherent money power in all of us. When the realization
of this comes to man he will, like Sampson, push down the walls of his prison.”  {blog 7/2010}

Jacob Riis [1849-1914]
“Some defeats are only installments to victory.”  {blog 6/2012}

Rainer Maria Rilke [1875-1926]
• • “And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.”  {blog 2/2019}
• • “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”  {blog 8/2023}

Chamtrul Rinpoche of Tibet
“The world tells you to follow your dreams. But Buddhism will tell you to wake up.”  {blog 6/2019}

baseball great Cal Ripken, Jr.
“Stubbornness usually is considered a negative; but I think that trait has been a positive for me.”  {blog 10/2021}

singer-songwriter Lionel Ritchie
“All artists are egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes.”  {blog 1/2017}

college professor Rodrigue Rizk
“Today's technology was yesterday's science fiction.”  {blog 12/2023}

Phil Rizzo of Valencia, California
“Every attempt in history to help labor's cause has been objected to. It seems to me that the object
of capitalism needs to be to bring prosperity to people on all levels. Otherwise, it simply becomes
a system based on greed that would be most enhanced by slavery.”  {Issue #48}

Steve Roach
“No brains, no headaches.”  {blog 3/2016}

Anthony 'Tony' Robbins
• • “If you always do what you have always done then you'll always have what you've already got.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”  {blog 11/2017}
• • “To make profound changes in your life, you need either inspiration or desperation.”  {blog 5/2018}

adapted from Tom Robbins
“Choice. It's the word that allows yes and the word that makes no possible. It's the word that puts the free in freedom
and takes obligation out of the mix. It's the word upon which adventure, exhilaration, and authenticity depend.
It's the word that the cocoon whispers to the caterpillar.”  {blog 11/2012}

Les Roberts
“You gotta have heart in this world, and compassion, or else you're
a piece of crap just taking up space.”  {Issue #37}

Paul Craig Roberts
• • “Justice is no longer a concern of the justice system.”  {Issue #20}
• • “There are enough fools in Washington to destroy the country
without any help from Muslim terrorists.”  {Issue #27}

Kent Allan Robertson of Hillsborough, North Carolina
“Staying the course in Iraq is tearing the military, the Iraqi people, and our hearts apart.”  {Issue #63}

French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre [1758-94]
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”  {blog 4/2018}

baseball great Jackie Robinson [1919-72]
“The most luxurious possession, the richest treasure [that] anyone has, is his personal dignity.”  {blog 5/2013}

Kelly Robinson
“Things are always darkest before they go pitch black.”  {Issue #42}

educator Sir Ken Robinson, PhD of Los Angeles, California
• • “You can be creative in anything – in math, science, engineering, philosophy – as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance.”  {blog 2/2018}
• • “The history of human achievement is that people have done remarkable things from very improbable beginnings.”  {blog 12/2018}

Maria Robinson
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”   {blog 10/2010}

novelist Marilynne Robinson
• • “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “The basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.”  {blog 10/2015}
• • “We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying: I will pass thru this, everyone [that] I have ever admired
has passed thru this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it.”  {blog 11/2016}
• • “A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest.”  {blog 12/2017}

Irish politician & activist Mary Robinson
“Climate change is the greatest threat to human rights in the XXIst Century.”  {blog 9/2015}

boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson [1921-89]
“To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when no one else will.”  {blog 6/2019}

Arthur Rock
#244 of the 2003 Forbes 400 Richest Americans list
“This country's going to have a revolution if something doesn't happen
[about] the haves and have-nots.”  {Issue #37}

actor-comedian Chris Rock
“I see [illegal immigration] as white people finding loopholes in the slavery laws.”
– interview in TIME Magazine, March 2007  {Issue #69 & blog 9/2014}

David Rockefeller, Jr.
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis
and the nations will accept the New World Order.”  {Issue #69}

oil baron John D. Rockefeller [1839-1937]
• • “A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “If you want to succeed, strike out on new paths – rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.”  {blog 6/2019}

Knute Rockne [1888-1931], football coach at Notre Dame
“The secret of winning football games is working more as a team, less as individuals. I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”  {blog 10/2016}

Gene Roddenberry [1921-91], creator of "Star Trek" [launched 1966]
“It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.”  {blog 8/2019}

Simon Rodia [1879-1965]
builder of the Watts Towers, 1921-1954
“You got to do something they don't got'em in the world."

sculptor Auguste Rodin [1840-1917]
“Patience is also a form of action.”  {blog 3/2008}

Abel Rodriguez
“I want the old Swamp back because this Trump Swamp is stinking it up now really badly.” - on Facebook  {blog 12/2019}

Carl Rogers [1902-1987]
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn – and [to] change.”  {blog 12/2007}

children's TV host Fred Rogers [1928-2003]
• • “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not my world,
not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”  {blog 4/2018}
• • “The greatest gift [that] you ever give is your honest self.”  {blog 9/2018}

American humorist Will Rogers [1879-1935]
Will Rogers Quotations Page at Working Minds
Will Rogers Pages at Spirit of America Bookstore

Sax Rohmer [1853-1959], author of the Dr. Fu Manchu novels
• • “Quality rather than quantity distinguishes the master.”  {Issue #32}
• • “There is no merit in a special talent unless its exercise is of use to others.”  {Issue #36}

motivational speaker Jim Rohn [1930-2009]
• • “Your life does not get better by chance. It gets better by change.”   {blog 9/2013}
• • “The book [that] you don’t read won’t help.”  {blog 7/2015 & 11/2022}
• • “Happiness is not by chance, but by choice.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. And ignorance is illness.
It all stems from ignorance.”  {blog 8/2017}
• • “Ambition is at the very core of success and extraordinary achievement. Unlike greed, [ambition] is a powerful,
creative, and constructive force.”  {blog 10/2022}

Henry Rollins
“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.”  {blog 10/2015}

Anthony D. Romero
executive director [since 2001] of the American Civil Liberties Union [est. 1920]
• • “Democracy must not be a spectator sport. The right to protest, the right to assemble freely, the right to petition
one's government - these are not just rights . . . these are obligations.”
May 2017 TED Talk 'This is what democracy looks like'  {blog 5/2017}
• • “This [Trump] administration poses one of the greatest threats to civil rights and liberties [that] the A.C.L.U. has faced
in our nearly 100 years.”  {blog 2/2018}
• • “In this new year, I choose optimism and insist on seeing brighter days ahead.” (in early 2021)  {blog 2/2021}

loser 2012 fascist presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney
U.S.Senator from Utah [since 2019]
• • “Corporations are people, my friend. Of course they are.” in August 2011  {blog 8/2011}
• • “I'm not concerned about the very poor.”  {blog 2/2012}
• • “[It’s] really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that.”  {blog 3/2023}

futbol/soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal
“Money does not make people wealthy. In fact, some people are so poor [that] all they have is money.”  {blog 1/2023}

Benjamine A. Rooge
“Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional
heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to.”  {blog 11/2009}

TV curmudgeon Andy Rooney [1919-2011]
• • “It's just amazing how long this country has been going to hell without ever having got there.”   {blog 10/2011}
• • “Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but many of the things [that] they make it easier to do don't need to be done.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “No one is perfect until you fall in love with them.”  {blog 7/2016}

(Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt [1884-1962]
wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945] from March 1905 to April 1945
held various offices at the United Nations, 1946 to 1962
Eleanor Roosevelt Quotations Page at Working Minds
Eleanor Roosevelt Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

Franklin Delano Roosevelt [1882-1945]
New York State Senator, 1911-1913 • Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1913-1920
44th Governor of New York State, January 1929 – December 1932
Democratic 32nd President of the United States, 1933-45
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Quotations Page at Working Minds
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

Theodore 'Teddy' Roosevelt [1858-1919]
33rd Governor of New York State, January 1899 – December 1900
25th Vice President of the United States, March 1901 – September 1901
Republican 26th President of the United States, September 1901 - March 1909
Theodore Roosevelt Quotations Page at Working Minds
Theodore Roosevelt Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

Elihu Root [1845-1937]
“About half the practice of a decent lawyer consists in telling would-be clients
that they are damned fools and should stop.”  {blog 3/2010}

New York City artist Flash Rosenberg
“I believe humans get a lot done, not because we're smart, but because we have thumbs so [that] we can make coffee.”  {blog 10/2015}

Roger Rosenblatt
“The God worth worshipping is the one who pays us the compliment of self-regulation, and we might
return it by minding our own business.” – Time Magazine essay 12/2001  {blog 9/2009}

attorney & mystery author David Rosenfelt
• • “I'm hoping for a return to at least partial sanity someday, but I'm not optimistic.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “The idea that trials are a search for the truth is a myth. Trials are a search for that which
the jury will believe is the truth.”  {blog 6/2015}

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist A.M. Rosenthal [1922-2006]
“When something important is going on, silence is a lie.”  {blog 10/2022}

Dr. Susan Rosenthal
“Socialism is the best medicine.”  {blog 7/2021}

painter & TV host Bob Ross [1942-95]
“Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you're willing to practice, you can do.”  {blog 8/2016}

Judith Rossner [1935-2005]
“A lie is something that hasn't happened but might just as well have.”  {blog 9/2014}

rock musician David Lee Roth
“I used to jog, but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.”  {blog 4/2017}

author Philip Roth [1933-2018]
• • “Old age isn't a battle, old age is a massacre.”  {Issue #59}
• • “For a pure sense of being tumultuously alive, you can't beat the nasty side of existence.”  {blog 4/2013}

movie exhibitor Samuel 'Roxy' Rothafel [1882-1936]
“Don't give the people what they want, give them something better.”  {Issue #49}

painter Mark Rothko [1903-70]
“Silence is so accurate.”  {blog 6/2010}

Rothschild Brothers of London
“The few who can understand the [Federal Reserve] system will be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors,
that there will be no opposition from that class; while on the other hand, the great body of the people, mentally incapable
of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without complaint,
and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.” – circa 1825  {blog 11/2009}>

Mayer Amschel Rothschild [1744-1812]
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes the laws.”  {blog 11/2009}

Matthew Rothschild
“At bottom, the 9/11 conspiracy theories are profoundly irrational and unscientific.”
– in The Progressive, October 2006  {Issue #66}

Prof. Nouriel Roubini, N.Y.U. Stern School of Business
“We are going to have a recession in 2007.”  {Issue #66}

Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]
• • “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”  {Issue #25 & blog 6/2015}
• • “Take the course opposite to custom and you will always do well.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that [we] can do what we want, but that
we do not have to do that which we do not want.” {paraphrased}  {blog 12/2011}
• • “It is impossible to live at peace with those [that] we regard as damned.”  {blog 5/2016}
• • “Liberty is not inherent in any form of government, it is in the heart of the free man.”  {blog 11/2016}
• • “I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth,
all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.”  {blog 5/2020}

(Philibert) Joseph Roux [1780-1854]
“We love justice greatly, and just men but little.”  {blog 2/2014}

Helen Rowland
“To be happy with a man, you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman,
you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.”  {blog 1/2011}

J.K. Rowling, author of The 'Harry Potter' Books
J.K. Rowling Quotations Page at Working Minds
J.K. Rowling Page at Spirit of America Bookstore,

Arundhati Roy
• • “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of
life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what
is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
– in 'The Cost of Living' [1999]  {blog 3/2015}
• • “There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”  {blog 5/2018}
• • “Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured to sell weapons.”  {blog 12/2018}

Robert Ruark [1915-65]
“Nothing works and nobody cares.”  {Issue #57}

Marty Rubin
“To keep a warm heart in winter is the real victory.”  {blog 2/2019}

Robert E. Rubin
a co-chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, was U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1995 to 1999
“Substantive fiscal policy work is essential, but all the good policy thinking in the world won’t matter unless the politics works.
Without good politics, the policies won’t be implemented.”  {blog 8/2018}

psychiatrist Dr. Theodore Isaac Rubin
• • “Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”  {blog 4/2016}

pianist Arthur Rubinstein [1887-1982]
“If you love life, she will love you in return.”  {blog 2/2019}

comedian Rita Rudner
“All my life, my parents said, 'Never take candy from strangers'. And then they dressed me up [on Hallowe'en]
and said, 'Now go beg for it'.”  {blog 10/2015}

Olympic athlete Wilma Rudolph [1940-94]
“I ran and ran and ran every day, and I acquired this sense of determination, this sense of spirit
that I would never, never give up, no matter what else happened.”  {blog 2/2016}

Howard J. Ruff
“It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”  {blog 4/2014}

shaman & author don Miguel Ruiz of Mexico
“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive and express
what we really are.”   {blog 2/2011}

Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz [1941-2011]
“A healthy pessimism may be better than a suicidal optimism.”  {blog 2/2012}

poet Muriel Rukeyser [1913-80]
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”  {blog 12/2012}

Persian poet & mystic Rumi [1207-73]
{real name Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi}
• • “Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.”   {blog 9/2013}
• • “If light is in your heart you will find your way home.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “. . . rush out in the rain to be soaked with the sky.”  {blog 7/2015}
• • “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “Out beyond right and wrong, there is a field. I will meet you there.”  {blog 2/2016}
• • “Let yourself be drawn by the strange pull of what you love. It will not lead you astray.”   {blog 2/2016}
• • “How can fear disturb me when love has dissolved me?”  {blog 5/2017}
• • “Be like a tree, let the dead leaves drop.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.”  {blog 10/2017}
• • “Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”  {blog 5/2018}
• • “Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”  {blog 7/2018}
• • “Your task is not to seek for love! But to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”  {blog 12/2018 & 11/2022}
• • “Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.”  {blog 6/2019}
• • “You are not a drop in the ocean but the entire ocean in a drop.”  {blog 2/2021}

traitor Donald H. Rumsfeld [1932-2021]
U.S. Defense Secretary, 2001-2006
• • “I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past – I think the past
was not predictable when it started.” – DoD press briefing 3 April 2003  {Issue #40}
• • “There are known knowns. These are things [that] we know we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that
we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things [that] we don't know we don't know.”
– DoD press briefing 2003  {Issue #41}
• • “Weakness is provocative.”  {blog 12/2018}

Running Hawk of the Lakota Nation {Native American}
“Religion is for people who are afraid of hell, spirituality is for people who have already been there.”  {blog 12/2023}

sportswriter & author Damon Runyon [1880-1946]
• • “It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong
– but that is the way to bet.”  {blog 3/2010}
{ “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong,
neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill;
but time and chance happen to them all.” – Judeo-Christian Bible, Ecclesiastes 9:11 }

Russ Rymer
“The Bush administration feels no compunction to honor the truth or seek it;
it conceives truth as a tactic, valuable only insofar as it is useful against one's enemies.”
– editorial in May-June 2005 Mother Jones Magazine  {Issue #53}

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