"There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do, what his acts correspond to, his sentiments, his ideas, or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the register of Light… History is an immense liturgical text where the iotas and the dots are worth no less than the entire verses or chapters, but the importance of one and the other is indeterminable and profoundly hidden."

(translated by Jorge Luis Borges)

"Shame at our own dependence on the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on--when she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently--then she has made a great sacrifice for you. The working poor are the major philanthropists of our society."

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

Translated as:

• The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.
• The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
• The more things change, the more they stay the same.
• The more that things change, the more they stay the same.
• It changes superficially; but, underneath, its essence is always the same.

"We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age."

"Nobody has time. Nobody in the history of mankind has ever had time. The people who want to make time, make the time. The others binge-watch 'House of Cards' on Netflix. They find ways to get to Facebook. They find reasons and methods to waste the time. This message isn't for those who make excuses. It's for those who are diligent and need that extra push to be super-diligent."

"I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say."

"Once you start saying, ‘God made this country great,’ then you can justify anything under the sun, including blowing people’s sweetbreads right through their earholes."

"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

"The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching."

"Remember, they call it a spiritual practice, not a spiritual perfect."

"Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another’s seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, “The monk is our teacher.” But when you yourselves know: “These things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,” enter on and abide in them."

[known as the Kalama Sutta or the Buddha’s “charter of free inquiry”]

"However, a clear distinction should be made between what is not found by science and what is found to be nonexistent by science. What science finds to be nonexistent we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter."

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed."

"If God is the ground of being, as I believe God is, then the only way you and I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that we can be -- in the infinite variety of our humanity. Whether we are male or female, gay or straight, transgender or bisexual, white or black or yellow or brown, left-handed or right-handed, brilliant or not quite so brilliant. No matter what the human difference is, you have something to offer in your own being. Nobody else can offer what you have to offer. And, the only way you can worship God is by daring to be all that you can be and not be bound by the fears of yesterday."

"Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people."

"Art is the fossil record of the artist."

"Self-control is just empathy with your future self."

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. That is my belief."

"Fixed ideas are like a cramp in your foot: the best remedy is to stomp on them."

"The majority of the people are not so afraid of holding a wrong opinion, as they are of holding an opinion alone."