Quotes
A collection of the most thought-provoking and inspiring quotes that encourage growth or serve as a useful reminder.
The following content is from the “Random Quotes” section of the What on EARTH?! newsletter:
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” – Albert Einstein or George Finlay Simmons…it’s unclear who said it…and beside the point.
“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” – Robert Swan
“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on Earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this Earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.” – Paul Hawken
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurmon“
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do, say, and think.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
– Carl Sagan
“When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness.” – Eckhart Tolle
“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” – Proverb of the N’gambai people of West Africa
“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.” Albert Einstein
“You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.” – Tony Robbins
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake.” – Elbert Hubbard
“The power to win this fight isn’t in someone else’s hands. It’s in ours.” – Eric Garcetti
“The sustainable revolution will have the magnitude of the industrial revolution, but the speed of the digital revolution.” – Al Gore
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein
“Our favorite holding period is forever.” – Warren Buffett
“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.” – John F. Kennedy
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