These folks said it better than I could ...

“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.” - Mark Twain

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

“We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.” – Thomas Edison

“Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.” - Gandhi

"Every human being is the author of his own disease." - Siddhartha Gautama

“I believe we ought to retain all our liberties. We can’t afford to throw them away. They didn’t come to us in the night.” – Mark Twain

“Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” - M. L. King

“Secrecy and a free democratic government don’t mix.” – Harry Truman

“Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.” - Buckminster Fuller

“It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” - Henry Thoreau

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.” - Winston Churchill

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” - M. L. King

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider a capacity for it terrifying.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“Christianity is a good philosophy if you live it, but it’s controlled by white people who preach it but don’t practice it. They just organize it and use it any which way they want to.” - Muhammad Ali

“Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid.” – Mark Twain

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." - Mohandas Gandhi

“The blessings of liberty have too often stood for privilege, materialism and a life of ease.” - JFK

“I think there is an immense shortage of Christian charity amongst so-called Christians.” – Harry Truman

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” - M. L. King

"Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others." - Siddhartha Gautama

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” - Einstein

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” - Albert Einstein

“If Christ should appear on Earth, he would be denounced as a mistaken, misguided man, insane and crazed.” - Henry Thoreau

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” - Winston Churchill

“Laughing or crying is what a human being does when there’s nothing else he can do.” - Kurt Vonnegut

"Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else." - Siddhartha Gautama

“It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that a man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to laugh – or cry.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.” - Malcolm X

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” - George Bernard Shaw

“Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.” - H. L. Mencken

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." - Siddhartha Gautama

“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh – anything but work.” - Abraham Lincoln

“People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“No man can be a pure specialist without being, in a strict sense, an idiot.” - George Bernard Shaw

"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion" – L. Ron Hubbard 1946

“Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone then in bad company.” – George Washington

“Our ability to delude ourselves may be an important survival tool.” - Lily Tomlin

“I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” - Harry Truman

"Better then a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace." - Siddhartha Gautama

“What is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are not tolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.” - RFK

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.” - Buckminster Fuller

“Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.” - FDR

“An artist must know how to convince others of the truth of his lies.” – Pablo Picasso

“I’ve heard people say that the trouble with the world is that we haven’t enough great leaders. I think we haven’t enough great followers. I have stood side by side with great thinkers – surgeons, engineers, economists; men who deserve a great following – and have heard the crowd cheer me instead… I’m proud of my profession. I like to play baseball. I like fans, too… But I think they yelled too loudly and yelled for the wrong man.” - Babe Ruth

“A revolution is coming – a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough – but a revolution is coming whether we like it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability” - RFK

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” - Albert Einstein

“We know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.” – Pablo Picasso

“The C students run the world.” - Harry Truman

“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.” - Kurt Vonnegut

“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.” - Pablo Picasso

“You need a certain number of breaks in baseball… and every other calling.” – Babe Ruth

“Never go out to meet trouble. If you will just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it for you.” - Calvin Coolidge

“You know what makes leadership? It is the ability to get men to do what they don’t want to do, and like it.” – Harry Truman

“Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed.” - Abraham Lincoln

“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” - George Bernard Shaw

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." - Siddhartha Gautama

“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill-will.” - M. L. King

“No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.” - Lily Tomlin

“Men don’t change. The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” - Harry Truman

“Arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instrument of tyranny." - Alexander Hamilton

“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” - M. L. King |

“It is only after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection that the real voice of the people can be known.” – George Washington

From Reuters: “The Catholic Church says promoting condoms to fight the spread of AIDS fosters what it sees as immoral and hedonistic lifestyles and behavior that will only contribute to its spread.”

“There’s nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.” - Alfred Hitchcock

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing”
“ I wish to hell I’d never said the damn thing… I meant the effort... I meant having a goal…I sure as hell don’t mean for people to crush human values and morality.” - Vince Lombardi

"Shall I tell you what it is to know? To say you know when you know, and to say you do not when you do not, that is knowledge." - Confucius

Too much fear is a serious problem. More than 25 million Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and phobias ranging from ablutophobia (fear of bathing) to zoophobia (fear of animals). Research is underway to understand how fear functions in mammals' brains and could lead to a less fearful human world. According to the American Psychiatric Association,

"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. . . . People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people." - Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon, as his proposed response to the great depression. (It didn't work. Instead, social programs and war spending are credited with lifting the US out of the great depression.)

In "The Grand Inquisitor" portion of "Crime and Punishment", Dostoyevsky writes about an imaginary encounter between the head of the Spanish Inquisition and Christ himself. The inquisitor maintains people are much happier without free will and that they prefer the safe comforts of "Miracle, Mystery, and Authority."

"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
--Albert Einstein

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." - Siddhartha Gautama

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." - Siddhartha Gautama

“Don’t try to take on a new personality; it doesn’t work.” - Richard Nixon

“Conformity is the jailor of freedom and the enemy of growth.” - JFK

"We are what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut

"I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, not from our words, that our religion must be judged." - Thomas Jefferson

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Siddhartha Gautama
[ ... 1It is interesting how this contrasts with the teaching of the bible ... ]
"Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding." - Proverbs 3:5

"It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways." - Siddhartha Gautama

“The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.” – Harry Truman

“The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking, and thus we are being driven unarmed towards a catastrophe.” - Albert Einstein

“Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.” - William E. Gladstone

"Your work is to discover your world, and then with all your heart give yourself to it." - Siddhartha Gautama

"The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy." - Florence Shinn

"If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril." - Confucius

“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.” - Abraham Lincoln

“God to me …is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper.” - Buckminster Fuller

"Fear is the mother of all gods. Nature does all thing spontaneously by herself, without their meddling." Lucretius 99-55 BCE

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." - Seneca 4-65 CE

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." - JFK

"I'm a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts." - Abraham Lincoln

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, all foes to true understanding. Likewise tolerance, or broad, wholesome charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in our little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. - Mark Twain

"Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." Justice Joseph Story, James Madison's Supreme Court nominee

"Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember." - Oscar Levant

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

"The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea." - Jean-Luc Godard

"People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights." Indira Gandhi

"Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan

"Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance." - Will Durant

"The ignorant man always adores what he cannot understand." - Cesare Lombroso

"Education is not preparation for life. Education is life itself." - John Dewey

"Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." - Charles Darwin

"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee

"Truth never damages a cause that is just." - Mahatma Gandhi

"We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles." - Jimmy Carter

"I would have made a good pope." - Richard Nixon

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy

"Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming." - Myrna Loy

"Belief gets in the way of learning." - Robert Heinlein

"To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice." - Ambrose Bierce

"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience." - Adam Smith

"The test of democracy is freedom of criticism." - David Ben-Gurion

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards. If you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book." - Ronald Reagan (His book: "Reagan, In His Own Hand" available at bookstores.)

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." - Edward R. Murrow

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." - David Hume

"There is a condition worse then blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there." - L. Ron Hubbard

"Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Science says the first word on everything and the last word on nothing." - Victor Hugo

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell

"As soon as man doesn't take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins." - Albert Schweitzer

"It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science." - Charles Darwin

"Of all the plagues with which mankind are cursed, Ecclesiastic tyranny’s the worst." - Daniel Defoe (1660-1731).

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." - Benjamin Franklin

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters" - Benjamin Franklin

"There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and more frequently fall than that of defrauding the government. " - Benjamin Franklin

“You never see anything very great which is not, at the same time, horrible in some respect. The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.” - Pablo Picasso

"In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true." - Siddhartha Gautama

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear-kept us in a continual stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of a grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real." - General Douglas MacArthur to the stockholders of Sperry Rand, 1957

"...the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation." - David Foster Wallace

“Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.” - Ambrose Bierce

“The best mind-altering drug is truth.” – Lily Tomlin

“I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.” - Albert Einstein

“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.” - Robert Lynd

“War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.” - M. L. King

"A country without a memory is a country of madmen." - Gorge Santayana

"You'll never convince a believer of anything for their beliefs are not based in facts nor evidence, but in a deep seated need to believe." - Carl Sagan

"The conversion of all questions of truth to questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false." - Theodore Adorno

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts." - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

"Being called a racist does not make you a bona fide conservative" - conservative blogger Michelle Malkin

"Those people who insist that Hitler was a socialist show their ignorance about Nazi Germany. During the first half of the 20th Century, socialism had many meanings. When Hitler talked about Nazi socialism, he was describing the average German's supposed social responsibilities to the State. Real socialists- social progressives- were usually sent to the concentration camps." - Author Jonathan Maxwell, Murderous Intellectuals: Nazis and the German Elite

“Beware of the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry, [who] infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How will I know? For this I have done. And I am Julius Caesar.” - Julius Caesar

" My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.” - John Dominic Crossan

“If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” -Adlai Stevenson US Ambassador to the United Nations

"Cuando el viento cambia necesito que a su vez la vela."Or "When the wind changes, you need to turn the sail into it."

"It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science." [Darwin]

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." [Voltaire]

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]

"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]

"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]

"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell]

th a Stephen Grellet excerpt in mind: "We shall pass this way on Earth but once, if there is any kindness we can show, or good act we can do, let us do it now, for we will never pass this way again.

All of us have hopes of being poet, artist, philosopher, discoverer, scientist; of possessing the attributes of all of them simultaneously. Few are permitted to achieve any one of them in daily life. But in travel we attain them all. Then we have our day of glory, when all our dreams come true, when we can be anything we like, as long as we like, and, when we are tired of it, pull up stakes and move on. Travel - the solitude of the mountains, the emptiness of the desert, the delicacy of the minaret; external change, limitless contrast, unending variety. ~ Edward Fulton, One Man Caravan

The right-wing of America is trying to dismantle our democracy and establish America as an oligarcy instead. The demise of our democracy has been planned for several decades. The billionaires' takeover of Fox News and The Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch, Twitter by Elon Musk, the Washington Post by Jeff Bezos, and 185 broadcast stations across the country by Julian Sinclair Smith, was the first step. Next was to attack education and the very foundation of truth in America.

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” - Carl Sagan

Journalist Charles Pierce not long ago wrote an essay on “Idiot America,” followed by a book of that name, in which he argued that “the rise of Idiot America today represents — for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power — the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they’re talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.

The right-wing learned their strategy from the masters:

"By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise." - Adolf Hitler

“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” - Hermann Goering, at his war crimes trial

Attacks on our education institutions look like this:

"The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That's how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper." - Rush Limbaugh Nov 24, 2009

“That’s part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives man opportunity.” - Lester Maddox, ex-Governor of Georgia

“Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy” - Hermann Goering

“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing” - Karl Rove

“Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for its own destruction.” - Adolph Hitler

''The Federal Department of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level.''—Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharon Angle, July 12, 2010

'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." - Karl Rove

“How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.” - Adolph Hitler