Les Getchell | quotes

Discovery

Know thyself.
Oracle of Delphi

The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;
Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
Drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism, 1711

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool; shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child; teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep; wake him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise; follow him.
Sufi proverb

Always do right. This will gratify some and astonish the rest.
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Nothing in excess.
Oracle of Delphi

PUBLIC POLICY
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
François-Marie Aroue (Voltaire), Essay on Tolerance

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Archibald Stuart, 1791

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

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi

Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
John Dalberg-Acton

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
Thomas Edison, 1931

writing
1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
George Orwell, 1946

Diet
It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.
Albert Einstein, letter to Vegetarian Watch-Tower, December 27, 1930

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.
Leo Tolstoy, On Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence, 1886

I, for my part, wonder what sort of feeling, mind or reason that man was possessed who was first to pollute his mouth with gore, and allow his lips to touch the flesh of a murdered being; who spread his table with the mangled form of dead bodies, and claimed as daily food and dainty dishes what but know were beings endowed with with movement, with perception and with voice.
Mestrius Plutarchus (Plutarch), Moralia (Moral Essays)

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
Albert Einstein

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.
Leonardo da Vinci

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
Henry David Thoreau

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand, at some stage, that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.
Mahatma Gandhi

To become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana.
Buddha

Source: Wikipedia

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