Sound bites to live by

Sound bites to live by.

I read a lot of different stuff and as I read sometimes I stop and record something that really strikes my fancy. Perhaps you might find in these quotes or summarizations something useful for exciting your imagination or curiosity.


Echoing the words of Nietzsche, I say to you: "Become what thou art!"

"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


Quote: "All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one's own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead."
"Coming to Terms with Vietnam," by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.


Cognitive needs - knowledge, meaning, etc.
Aesthetic needs - appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.
Self-Actualization needs - realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.
Transcendence needs - helping others to achieve self actualization.

Overview of Maslow's Self-Actualizing Individual

Maslow believed that "What humans can be, they must be."


Breen depicts an America whose basic values and instincts were rapidly crystallizing: its brashness, its optimistic faith in the future (hence, the desire for credit), its acquisitive culture, its tendency to see material items (china bowls in 1770, flat-screen TVs now) as badges of success and status. Today's consumption binge, which erodes savings, expresses the same impulses. Perhaps absurdly so."We can understand a prejudice only after having got rid of it, [in our self]."

Popper informs us that "it is only in attempts to explain his work to somebody who has not done it that he can acquire the discipline of clear and reasoned communication which too is part of scientific method."

If I cannot develop the self-discipline inherent in the ability to communicate I cannot hope to deal with prejudice in myself and in others.