The Creative Act

“Against the ruin of the world there is only one defense. The Creative Act”

“for if any one thing is certain in this world it is that art is there to help us live, and for no other reason. It was always so. Art is there to tell us where we are , and it is there to tell  us who we are. It gives pleasure, coincidentally, but primarily it is there to tell the truth.” John Russell

“The wind never lets up. It howls at us across the ice, blowing from nowhere to nowhere” J. M. Coetzee

“All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.” J.M. Coetzee

“A fool in love is laughed at but in the end always forgiven.” J.M. Coetzee

“What I shrink from, I believe, is the shame of dying as stupid and befuddled as I am.” J. M. Coetzee

“When it comes to atoms, language can only be used as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.” Niels Bohr

“Two hundred years from now, history will record: America, a nation that flourished from 1900 to 1942, conceived many odd inventions for getting somewhere, but could think of nothing to do when they got there.” Will Rogers

“Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about.” (Rumi)

“Our rootlessness–our refusal to accept the discipline of living as responsive and responsible members of neighborhoods, communities, landscapes, and ecosystems–is perhaps our most serious and widespread disease.” John Daniel
“Because we all live downstream”

“Whenever I see an adult on a bicycle it gives me hope for the future”

“You can bomb the world to pieces but can’t bomb it into peace”

“Art has two constants, two unending preoccupations: it is alway meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.” Pasternak

“Cherish each other. Travel in Beauty. Our lives depend on it.” Barry Lopez

“Quand on a pas d’imagination, mourir c’est peu de chose, quand on en a, mourir c’est trop.” Celine

“Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.” Cactus Ed Abbey

“Purposeful words are rare, therefore coveted.” Collen Ross

“What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What’s wrong with that? On the contrary, it’s a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can’t! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch…And at the very moment you make a botch of it that you’re yourself.” Picasso

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869 – 1959)

If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.
Woody Allen (1935 – )

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882)

You can’t say that civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.
Will Rogers (1879 – 1935), New York Times, Dec. 23, 1929

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.
H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)

The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.
Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903)

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Will Durant (1885 – 1981)

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1794)

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire (1694 – 1778)

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
Lao-tzu (604 BC – 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu

What luck for rulers that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677)

If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
Jay Leno (1950 – )

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004)

Solzhenitsyn writes: “And yet surely we have not experienced the trials of the 20th century in vain. Let us hope: we have, after all, been tempered by these trials, and our hard-won firmness will in some fashion be passed on to the following generations.”

“I guess basically one wants to feel that one’s life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage.” Henry Spira lifelong activist.

Why be an activist?
“You can look at it from this point of view: What greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?” Henry Spira.

“I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“Life was a damned muddle…a football game with everyone off-side and the referee gotten rid of—everyone claiming the referee would have been on his side” F. Scott Fitzgerald.