Quotes Flashcards
Knowledge through dialogue
One learns the essence of knowledge through dialogue. from the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita.
“Vade vade jayate tattvabodhah”
ವಡೆ ವಡೆ ಜಾಯ್ತೆ ತತ್ತ್ವಬೋಧಹ್
Constitution guarantees fundamental rights
Barnette vs WV Board of Education, 1943. Jehovah’s witnesses refused to repeat the Pledge of Allegiance, alleging it was idolatry. Opinion written by Justice Robert H. Jackson.
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”
Occam’s razor
William of Occam, English Fransiscan friar and philosopher. d 1347.
Pluralitas non est ponenda, sine necessitate (Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.)
C.S. Lewis on God building a palace
From “Mere Christianity”
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.
Galileo on using our reason
Galileo Galilei
Died 1642
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Constant learning
Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British author)
Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.
Believe in the gospel
St. Augustine of Hippo d. 430
If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.
The fleeting nature of time and the inevitability of change
Ovid, from Metamorpheses
Roman poet, died ~18AD
Nothing in all the world remains unchanged. All things are in a state of flux, all shapes receive a changing nature. Time itself glides on with constant motion, ever as a flowing river. Neither river nor the fleeting hour can stop its constant course. But, as each wave drives on a wave, as each is pressed by that which follows, and must press on that before it, so the moments fly, and others follow, so they are renewed. The moment which moved on before is past, and that which was not, now exists in time, and every moment comes, goes, and is replaced.
David O. McKay on motherhood
“Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life. The mother’s image is the first that stamps itself on the unwritten page of the young child’s mind. It is her caress that first awakens a sense of security, her kiss, the first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first assurance that there is love in the world.”
Neal A. Maxwell on the Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon is like a vast mansion, with gardens, towers, courtyards, and wings. My tour of it has never been completed. Some rooms I have yet to enter, and there are more felicitous fireplaces waiting to warm me. Even the rooms I have glimpsed contain further furnishings and rich detail yet to be savored. There are panels inlaid with incredible insights, and design and décor dating from Eden. There are even sumptuous banquet tables painstakingly prepared by predecessors which await all of us.
Yet we as church members sometimes behave like hurried tourists scarcely venturing beyond the entry hall. May we come to feel, as a whole people, beckoned beyond the entry hall. May we go inside far enough to hear clearly the whispered truths from those who have slumbered – which whisperings will awaken in us individually a life of discipleship as never before.
Neal A. Maxwell on learning from the imperfections of others.
[Sometimes we forget] the fact that the Church is “for the perfecting of the saints” (Eph. 4:12); it is not a well-provisioned rest home for the already perfected.
Likewise, unremembered by some is the reality that in the kingdom we are each other’s clinical material; the Lord allows us to practice on each other, even in our imperfections. And each of us knows what it is like to be worked on by a “student” rather than a senior surgeon. Each of us, however unintentionally, has also inflicted some pain.
Besides, if the choice is between reforming other Church members or ourselves, is there really any question about where we should begin?
[https://tinyurl.com/9bw7ek6n]
Ambrose Bierce defines Christian
Ambrose Bierce
d. ~1914
“Christian, n.: one who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.”
Tradition definition
Gustav Mahler
Composer and opera director
Died 1911
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
A person’s worth even if they have done something bad
Helen Prejean
Catholic nun and anti-death penalty activist who has witnessed many executions
I’ve learned a crucial, really important life lesson: that everybody’s worth more than the worst thing they’ve ever done in their life, and that everybody can be more.
Failure and growth
Buzz Aldrin
Apollo astronaut and moon-walker
Failure is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that you are alive and growing.
Steve Jobs leadership principle
Steve Jobs
My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.
Differences
are minimal with an eternal perspective
Mister Rogers (d. 2003)
Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal.
Live and Learn
Mahatma Gandhi
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
d. 1865
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Declaration of Independence
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Preamble to the Constitution
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
September 17, 1787
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Wabi-sabi
Wabi, which roughly means ‘the elegant beauty of humble simplicity’, and sabi, which means ‘the passing of time and subsequent deterioration’, were combined to form a sense unique to Japan and pivotal to Japanese culture.
Rather than seeing dents or uneven shapes as mistakes, they are viewed as a creation of nature – much as moss would grow on an uneven wall or a tree would curve in the wind. The dents and scratches we all bear are reminders of experience, and to erase them would be to ignore the complexities and realities of life.
