"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
~~ Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]

"The Constitution ... rested upon the equality of races. This was an error. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
~~ the Confederacy's Vice President, Alexander Stephens [1812-83] - in his "Cornerstone Speech" on 21 March 1861

"He had delusions of adequacy." ~~ playwright & critic Walter Kerr [1913-96]

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." ~~ Irvin S. Cobb [1896-1944]

"Rich people don't create jobs. Jobs create rich people." ~~ blogger Ferguson Foont

“What Galileo and Newton were to the Seventeenth Century, Darwin was to the Nineteenth."
~~ Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] - in "A History of Western Philosophy" [1945]

t-shirt: CAUTION / OVERSIZED / LOAD

"I believe in steel swords, gold coins, and man's wits ... And I believe [that] there once were dragons. I've seen their skulls, after all."
~~ sci-fi author George R.R. Martin

"We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible."
~~ Vince Lombardi [1913-70]

"You have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it."
~~ Flannery O'Connor [1925-64]

"Failure is not an option. It's a lifestyle."
~~ cartoonist Stephan Pastis - (in the "Pearls Before Swine" daily strip, 6/2021)

"Just be sure that [that] you can look at yourself in the mirror every day and be proud of what you've done, whether you're successful or not."
~~ Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis [1919-2010]

"Republicans don't believe in science."
~~ Deb Haaland of New Mexico, on Twitter in October 2020

"And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul."
~~ pioneer eco-activist John Muir [1838-1914]

"Every day is more dangerous." ~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"I am human, and I think that nothing human is alien to me."
~~ Roman playwright Terence [185?-159? BCE]

"Today, then, as I have suitably freed my mind from all cares, and have secured for myself an assured leisure in peaceful solitude, I shall at last apply myself earnestly and freely to the general overthrow of all my former opinions."
~~ René Descartes [1596-1650]

"Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself."
~~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz [1646-1716]

"The threat of another global financial crisis, like the one that hit in 2008, is very, very low; the risk that we keep our eyes on the most now is cyber risk."
~~ Jerome H. Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, on 11 April 2021

"There will be more Derek Chauvins, because his conviction alters nothing (about the American system of policing)."
~~ Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine

"There is no off position on the genius switch."
~~ David Letterman

"I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly."
~~ comedian Steven Wright

t-shirt: Party Size !

"So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy."
~~ A.C.L.U. co-founder Roger Nash Baldwin [1884-1981]

"Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally. It comes from what you do consistently."
~~ motivational speaker Marie Forleo

"We cannot be 'for' or 'against' [artificial intelligence technology], insofar as it is already here and not likely to disappear any time soon."
~~ French anthropologist Régis Meyran

"Fate has its own objectives." ~~ writer Emilie Coulter

"Arrange whatever pieces come your way."
~~ British author Virginia Woolf [1882-1941] - in "A Writer's Diary" [1953]

"Of all the paths [that] you take in life, make sure [that] a few of them are dirt."
~~ pioneer eco-activist John Muir [1838-1914]

"Success is not a jewel that you can purchase and keep for your entire life. On the contrary, the brightest star can fall down at any time and fade away into dust."
~~ Anna May Wong [1905-61]

"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand."
~~ Putt's Law (from Archibald Putt, 1981)

"The greatest cinematic experience is the human face and it seems to me that silent films can teach us to read it anew."
~~ German filmmaker Wim Wenders

"The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment."
~~ Tennessee Williams [1911-83]

"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."
~~ Rod Serling [1924-75]

"As you read this, the fascists of America (under the false label Conservative or Republican) are working very hard to destroy the teetering freedoms that provide the facade that the United States is a free country."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Socialism is the best medicine." ~~ Dr. Susan Rosenthal

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."
~~ Thomas Paine [1737-1809] - in "The Crisis" pamphlets, 1776-83

"The American Civil War was just the point in time when the South was forced to learn what the North had figured out a century or so before. Namely, that's it's cheaper to lease people than to own them."
~~ David White of Tennessee, on Facebook 6/2021

"In Moscow Mitch's world, anything to the left of hunting the poor for sport is 'full bore socialism."
~~ Dwight Gray, on Facebook 6/2021

"We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever."
~~ scientist & TV host Carl Sagan [1934-96]

"I wish [Christopher Hitchens] would have written a book entitled "Where did Noah get two kangaroos?"
~~ Mark Younger

"If God is unable to Prevent Evil, then he is not all-powerful.
If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?"
~~ Epicurus [341?–270? B.C.E.]

"If God created the world, his primary concern was certainly not to make its understanding easy for us."
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary."
~~ Robert Louis Stevenson [1850-94]

"Accusations of unpatriotism drenched in scorn are a means of stopping debates, not of starting them."
~~ U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright [1905-95]

"Hollywood is the place ... where you can get stabbed in the back while climbiung a ladder."
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962]

"Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen."
~~ British statesman George Savile [1633-95]

"The social contract between humans and dogs might be the best bit of business we have ever done."
~~ Irish journalist Paul Howard

"In proportion as the structure of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."
~~ George Washington [1732-99], - in his 'Farewell Address', 1796

"The longer I live, the more convinced am I that [that] this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum."
~~ British writer George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"Republican derangement over the vaccines is killing hundreds of Americans every day &ndash Americans who could easily still be alive."
~~ Teresa Hanafin, reporter at The Boston Globe, 7/2021

"Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind rather than on outward circumstances."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]

"I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art."
~~ Nobel-laureate author Toni Morrison [1931-2019] - in a 2015 essay for The Nation Magazine [est. 1865]

"The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be."
~~ playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]

"You're terrific as far as I am concerned."
~~ writer E.B. White [1899-1985]

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}