Words Of Wisdom For The End Of A Chaotic Year

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Anu Garg, born 58 years ago in Meerut, India, is someone who is fascinated by languages — the codes we use to communicate with each other. He is the founder of Wordsmith.org, and the producer of A Word A Day, which brings readers into close contact with the origins and history of words in the English language. His writing is infused with fascinating insights, which he shares for free with hundreds of thousands of readers in more than 170 countries.

I am a big fan of Anu Garg, because like him, I am a writer who makes his living through the use of written and spoken language. But he does something that is even more valuable than his daily dissertations on the origins and usage of words. Every day, he includes a quote that helps enlighten us about the human condition and how we got to where we are today.

For the past several years, I have been collecting those quotes in a Google Doc. As I was adding today’s quote to that compendium, I thought it might be worthwhile to share it with our readers as an alternative to the ubiquitous collection of New Year’s resolutions that have become a staple of most online and print news outlets.

If you take a moment to review the list, there is an excellent chance some of those words — frozen in time — will inspire you to do great things in the days and years to come.

Carl Sagan

• 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.
• For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner … on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
• Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

Religion

• The best theology is probably no theology; just love one another. — Charles Schultz
• Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions. — Samuel Butler
• Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he’s potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God. — Benjamin Spock
• What has occurred over the course of the last few centuries is a growing (but by no means universal or certain) recognition that science gets the job done, while religion makes excuses. Sometimes they are very pretty excuses that capture the imagination of the public, but ultimately, when you want to win a war or heal a dying child or get rich from a discovery or explore Antarctica, you turn to science and reason, or you fail. — PZ Myers, biology professor
• I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. — Gandhi
• It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning. — Bill Watterson
• Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions. — Samuel Butler
• Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not. — Dr. Seuss
• Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us. — John Irving
• When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. — Robert M. Pirsig

Violence

• Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• No society that feeds its children on tales of successful violence can expect them not to believe that violence in the end is rewarded. — Margaret Mead
• Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. — Thomas Edison
• If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing. — John Brunner
• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
• How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry — between, say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is “accepted” as a “trade-off.” — Wendell Berry
• The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it. — General George Marshall
• The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. — Rod Serling
• Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat. — Jean-Paul Sartre
• So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable. — Aldous Huxley
• If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon. — George Aiken
• Once and for all, the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Neither side is glorious. On either side they’re just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing — not to lie under the earth but to walk upon it without crutches. — Peter Weiss
• Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. — Chelsea Manning
• Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he’s potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God. — Benjamin Spock
• Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. — T.S. Eliot

Democracy

• The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people. — Helen Keller
• Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. — Haile Selassie
• If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other. — Ulysses S. Grant
• This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in. — Theodore Roosevelt
• Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. — Henry Adams
• There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents. The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy. — Thomas Jefferson
• I asked a man in prison once how he happened to be there and he said he had stolen a pair of shoes. I told him if he had stolen a railroad he would be a United States Senator. — Mother Jones
• As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practice or neglect to practice the primary duties of justice and humanity. — Henry Seward
• Civilization is the encouragement of differences. — Mohandas Gandhi
• The love of one’s country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? — Pablo Casals
• The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. — Lord Acton
• Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. — Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. — George Jean Nathan
• I believe at our best America is a beacon for the globe. And we lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. — Joe Biden
• We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. — Edward R. Murrow
• We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. — John F. Kennedy
• Those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning… Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. — Lyndon Johnson
• We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witch hunts, beginning to call anybody they don’t like a Communist. — E.B. White
• In a democracy, debate is the breath of life. This is to me what Lincoln meant by government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ Dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning tremendous complex and difficult questions. But while this responsibility is a taxing one to a free people, it is their great strength as well. From millions of individual free minds come new ideas, new adjustments to emerging problems, and tremendous vigor, vitality and progress. While complete success will always elude us, still it is a quest which is vital to self-government and to our way of life as free men. — Dwight Eisenhower
• Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people? — Eleanor Roosevelt
• A king can stand people’s fighting, but he can’t last long if people start thinking. — Will Rogers
• A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity. — Jimmy Carter

The Environment

• The age difference between myself and the oldest House members is 60 years. For better or worse, young people will live in the world Congress leaves behind. That’s why I focus on our future — addressing climate change and runaway income. — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• 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
• It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. — W. Edwards Deming
• Civilization exists by geological consent — subject to change without notice. — Will Durant
• The greatest market failure the world has seen’ is climate change. — Nicholas Stern
• Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. — Albert Schweitzer
• Nuclear energy is like having a house with no toilets. — Anonymous

Humanity

• We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders. — Maya Angelou
• H. sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. — Joyce Carol Oates
• Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. — Herman Melville
• The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist! — Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The tragedy in the lives of most of us is that we go through life walking down a high-walled lane with people of our own kind, the same economic situation, the same national background and education and religious outlook. And beyond those walls, all humanity lies, unknown and unseen, and untouched by our restricted and impoverished lives. — Florence Luscomb
• There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. — Booker T. Washington

Education

• The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. — Jean Piaget
• We offer great rewards to a man who can tame a tiger, admire those who can train horses, monkeys, and elephants, and praise to the skies the author of some modest work. Yet we neglect women who have spent years and years nourishing and educating children. — Francois Poulain
• Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. — Douglas Adams
• There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age. Sophia Loren
• People share a common nature but are trained in gender roles. — Lillie Devereux Blake

Money & Power

• It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair
• The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth. — Rutherford B. Hayes
• The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing. Leigh Hunt
• Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. — John Steinbeck
• Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. — Andrew Carnegie
•  It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy. — George Lorimer
• We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. — Anatole France
• When you are used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. — Anonymous
• A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. — Lewis H. Lapham
• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. — Abraham Lincoln
• Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. — Harry S. Truman
• There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few. — Lawrence Lessig
• When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frédéric Bastiat
• The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Margaret Chase Smith

On June 1, 1950, as America was descending into the McCarthy madness, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine had these words of hope, which now mock the current senator from Maine, Susan Collins:

“I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear. As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist. They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country.

“As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques — techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”

Words To Live By

I leave you today with these words from Mohandas Ghandi: “When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”

Words are the foundation of our humanity. They are more powerful than armies, can overcome ignorance, and lead us to a brighter tomorrow. I re-read the quotes I have culled from Word A Day on a regular basis and always find something there that gives me hope for a better world. Perhaps you will too.

Thank you for being part of the CleanTechnica community — the most vibrant, smart, funny, and dedicated group of people I have ever had the privilege to be associated with. Happy New Year to you all.