Compiled by Tom F. Shadid, Ph.D.
Every part of the body is the mind expressing itself through that part. (Deb Shapiro)
We discover from day to day how the healing we do for ourselves is a healing for all. (Stephen Levine)
I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love. (Laurie Anderson)
What does it tell us about the meaning of life when we can now say that for the first time in the known history of biology, we are witnessing the evolution of human beings with a concern not only for the suffering and dying of their own kind, but also for the suffering and dying of all living things? (Paul D. MacLean)
Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.” (The Gospel of Thomas 7)
Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is. (Albert Camus)
The assumption that there will be enough reflective adults to maintain a free society is not to be taken for granted. (Stanley I. Greenspan)
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. (Oscar Wilde)
Little do the people comprehend the great—that is, the creating. But they have a mind for all showmen and actors of great things. (“Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” Friedrich Nietzsche)
Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people. (Reinhold Niebuhr)
You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. (Anne Lamott)
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. (Albert Einstein)
The man who loves only his own children loves only himself. (The Tanya, Epistle Nine)
Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner of his own sick brother? (Alcoholics Anonymous)
If our natures were different our duties would be different. (Thomas Aquinas)
Morality emerges for all of us from social interaction punctuated by moments of personal reflection. (William J. Doherty)
The answer is like that of the wise man who, when asked whether it was far to the town, answered, “Walk!” (Leo Tolstoy)
It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching. (Francis of Assisi)
Give what you have to somebody, it may be better than you think. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other? (George Eliot)
The unexamined life is not livable for a human being. (Socrates)
For a Buddhist to be attached to any doctrine, even a Buddhist one, is to betray the Buddha. (Thich Nhat Hanh)
At this Peter took him by the arm and began to rebuke him: “Heaven forbid!” he said. “No, Lord, this shall never happen to you.” Then Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Away with you, Satan; you are a stumbling-block to me. You think as men think, not as God thinks.” (Matthew 16: 22-23)
Security/Is mortals’ chiefest enemy. (Hecate in “Macbeth,” William Shakespeare)
Even fear must not make me forget the other person. (Alexander & Margarete Mitscherlich)
For the first time in history, basing international politics on moral and ethical norms that are common to all humankind, as well as humanizing interstate relations, has become a vital requirement. (Mikhail Gorbachev)
We must be the change we want to see in the world. (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi)
What kind of life would make me want to be conscious every day? (Jewel Kilcher)
Whatever gift each of you may have received, use it in service to one another. (I Peter 4:10a)
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. (“The Prophet,” Kahlil Gibran)
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. (Martin Luther King Jr.)
I’ve got better things to do than survive. (“Swan Dive,” Ani DiFranco)
We shall die before we kill.… Negotiate with everyone. We do not have enemies. (Josué Vargas, et al.)
Service is the rent we each pay for living. It is not something to do in your spare time; it is the very purpose of life. (Marian Wright Edelman)
Faith receives, love gives. (The Gospel of Philip 62)
As long as space remains/As long as sentient beings remain/Until then, may I too remain/And dispel the miseries of the world. (Shantideva)
We are the ones we have been waiting for! (Lisa Sullivan)
And the hour of our moral death has turned into our spiritual birthday (William James)