Little Red's Big Ideas

Back to School Quotes

If the ads on television this week are a fair indicator -- there's no denying it, kids... it's almost time to go back to school.  Teachers are busy preparing their classrooms, school administrators are checking and double-checking piles of paperwork and parents are scraping together the necessary funds to build a peer-worthy wardrobe for their little dudes and divas. 

So -- whether your area schools are already in session or getting ready for their incoming students I'm happy to share a list of quotes about education to help you get to the head of the class!  Enjoy and use them to spice up your emails, newsletters, website, presentation, meeting minutes and other presentations.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. ~Victor Hugo

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.  ~Sydney J. Harris

No man who worships education has got the best out of education.... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete.  ~G.K. Chesterton

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.  ~Bill Beattie

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.  ~Albert Einstein

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.  ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.

An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.  ~Author Unknown

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.  ~Attributed to both Andy McIntyre and Derek Bok

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.  ~G.M. Trevelyan

To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks.  ~A.A. Milne

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education.  Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization.  We must make our choice; we cannot have both.  ~Abraham Flexner

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.  ~Edward Everett

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.  ~Ezra Pound

Education should be exercise; it has become massage.  ~Martin H. Fischer

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. ~Robert Maynard Hutchins

Democracy - Part Three of Three

As summer comes to an end we look forward to the last long weekend of the season with the final installment of "democracy" quotes.  The others appeared just before Memorial Day and the first week of July.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

In true democracy every man and women is taught to think for himself or herself.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.

Molly Ivins:

The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

Noam Chomsky:

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

Noam Chomsky:

There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future."

Noam Chomsky:

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

Paulo Freire:

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

Plato:

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Robert Coles:

Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?

Robert M. Hutchins:

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Rosa Luxemburg:

Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.

Stuart Chase:

Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried.

Theodore Parker:

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am."

Thomas Jefferson:

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.

Thomas Jefferson:

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Thomas Jefferson:

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Thomas Jefferson:

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Thomas Jefferson:

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Unknown:

[C]reative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.

Vince Lombardi:

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

Voltaire:

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Walt Whitman:

Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between [people], and their beliefs -- in religion, literature, colleges and schools -- democracy in all public and private life....

Walt Whitman:

The purpose of democracy -- supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance -- is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures,
This entry continued ...

Wendell Phillips:

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

Will Rogers:

Elections are a good deal like marriages. There's no accounting for anyone's taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it's the same with public officials.

William Hastie:

Democracy is not being, it is becoming. It is easily lost, but never finally won.

William J. Bennett:

America's support for human rights and democracy is our noblest export to the world.

Democracy Quotes - Part Two

As we approach Independence Day here is the second of the three part series of quotes on "Democracy."  (The first part ran just before Memorial Day and the third will run run just before Labor Day.  Enjoy and keep waving the red, white and blue.

George Orwell:

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

George Washington:

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

Gore Vidal:

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

H. L. Mencken:

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

H. L. Mencken:

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

H. L. Mencken:

A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Hermann Goering:

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. quote verified at snopes.com

Howard Winters:

Civilization is the process in which one gradually increases the number of people included in the term 'we' or 'us' and at the same time decreases those labeled 'you' or 'them' until that category has no one left in it.

Hubert H. Humphrey:

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

Irving Kristol:

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

J. William Fulbright:

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

Jane Addams:

We have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or any one class. But we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all [people] and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having.

Jane Auer:

Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.

Jerome Nathanson:

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

Jerome Nathanson:

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.

Jesse Jackson:

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

John Bright:

Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the old constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in Parliamentary elections, shall not be violated.

John Dewey:

The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.

John F. Kennedy:

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 Gardner:

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

John Simon:

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.

Laurence J. Peter:

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

Lillian Hellman:

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.

Lord Acton:

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Lyndon B. Johnson:

We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

Mark Twain:

Citizenship is what makes a republic -- monarchies can get along without it.

Mark Twain:

We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.

Meg Greenfield:

Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.

 

By the People, For the People - Presidents' Day Quotes

Those who work for some form of government are often judged and misjudged by those who work in other forms of government.  Just the word "government" has, sadly come to mean everything from corruption and scandal to inefficiency and crisis.  Here, to help you remember, that government can be more than an institution, are quotes from some of the world's most prolific leaders. 

Aristotle:

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.

Barry Goldwater:

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

Bella Abzug:

If we get a government that reflects more of what this country is really about, we can turn the century -- and the economy -- around.

David E. Lilienthal:

Centralization at the national capital or within a business undertaking always glorifies the importance of pieces of paper. This dims the sense of reality.

Edward R. Murrow:

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.

Edward R. Murrow:

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

Elie Wiesel:

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment

Eugene McCarthy:

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.

George Bernard Shaw:

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

George Jean Nathan:

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

George Matthew Adams:

There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come about through encouragement from someone else. I don't care how great, how famous or successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause.

H. L. Mencken:

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave.

H. L. Mencken:

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

Hubert H. Humphrey:

It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

James Madison:

A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

Jane Auer:

It may be true that the government that governs best governs least. Unfortunately, the same is also true of the government that governs worst.

John Adams:

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

John F. Kennedy:

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 Gardner:

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

John Ruskin:

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

Mark Twain:

The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Noam Chomsky:

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

P. J. O'Rourke:

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

Paul Martin:

For years governments have been promising more than they can deliver, and delivering more than they can afford.

Paul Ricoeur:

To put it in a few words, the true malice of man appears only in the state and in the church, as institutions of gathering together, of recapitulation, of totalization.

Robert Coles:

Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?

Thich Nhat Hanh:

You who are journalists, writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving speech. This is universal thing, taught by all religions.

Thomas Jefferson:

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Thomas Jefferson:

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.

Thomas Jefferson:

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Thomas Jefferson:

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

Thomas Jefferson:

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government.

Changing of the Guard

In honor of our President-Elect -- I'm happy to share these quotes about "hope."  I love Obama's words of wisdom.  What's your thought on the subject?

Barack Obama:

We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman:

However, one cannot put a quart in a pint cup.

Christopher Reeve:

Once you choose hope, anything's possible.

Dale Carnegie:

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

Don Quixote:

Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.

Dorothy Thompson:

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.

Dorothy Thompson:

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

Elie Wiesel:

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

Elizabeth Gilbert:

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.

Elizabeth Gilbert:

To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that, that fulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful "magic skills" that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition.

Erik H. Erikson:

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

Friedrich Nietzsche:

Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.

George Bernard Shaw:

He who has never hoped can never despair.

Caesar and Cleopatra

Henri J. M. Nouwen:

All the great spiritual leaders in history were people of hope. Abraham, Moses, Ruth, Mary, Jesus, Rumi, Gandhi, and Dorothy Day all lived with a promise in their hearts that guided them toward the future without the need to know exactly what it would look like. Let's live with hope.

Henry Ward Beecher:

Repentance is another name for aspiration.

Jane Wagner:

A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?

Kalidasa:

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Lin Yutang:

Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.

Louisa May Alcott:

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow them.

Margaret Fuller:

I accept the universe!

(Ralph Waldo Emerson's reported response: "By God, she'd better!")

Marion Zimmer Bradley:

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

Martin Luther King, jr.:

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

The Trumpet of Conscience

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Molly Ivins:

I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.

Patricia Hampl:

The future is here, now, and the past is full of actual deeds, real history. Utopias hardly have the meat on their bones to sustain a people in grave times.

Pearl S. Buck:

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

Pearl S. Buck:

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.

Pearl S. Buck:

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.

Reinhold Niebuhr:

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

Rita Mae Brown:

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

Robert Fulghum:

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Robert G. Ingersoll:

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.

Samuel Johnson:

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure but from hope to hope.

Thomas Jefferson:

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.

1816

Thomas Merton:

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

Unknown:

Rosa sat so Martin could walk, Martin walked so Barack could run, Barack ran so we all can fly.

Will Durant:

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

William Penn:

Never give out while there is hope; but hope not beyond reason, for that shows more desire than judgment.

Winston Churchill:

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Summer Quotes

This week marks the official first day of summer.  Heat up your outgoing voice mail, email signature, web pages and "out-of-office" email messages with these inspirational words. 

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.  My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music.  It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.  ~Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit


Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.  ~Russel Baker


A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.  ~James Dent


If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance.  ~ Bern Williams


Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
~Francis Thompson


To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.
~Emily Dickinson


What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.  ~Gertrude Jekyll


In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way
I have to go to bed by day.
~Robert Louis Stevenson


In June, as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day.  No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.  ~Aldo Leopold


I question not if thrushes sing,
If roses load the air;
Beyond my heart I need not reach
When all is summer there.
~John Vance Cheney


Oh, the summer night
Has a smile of light
And she sits on a sapphire throne.
~Barry Cornwall


In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ~Albert Camus


There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart.  ~Celia Thaxter


The summer night is like a perfection of thought.  ~Wallace Stevens


In summer, the song sings itself.  ~William Carlos Williams


Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.  ~Sam Keen


Summer has set in with its usual severity.  ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge


People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.  ~Anton Chekhov


A life without love is like a year without summer.  ~Swedish Proverb


Press close, bare-bosomed Night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing Night!
Night of south winds!  Night of the large, few stars!
Still, nodding Night!  Mad, naked, Summer Night!
~Walt Whitman


Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation.  If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.  ~Erma Bombeck


The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. ~Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Mark Twain


Do what we can, summer will have its flies.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Heat, ma'am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.  ~Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.  ~John Lubbock


No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.
~James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848


Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.  ~Henry James


Love is to the heart what the summer is to the farmer's year - it brings to harvest all the loveliest flowers of the soul.  ~Author Unknown


Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.  A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.  ~Ada Louise Huxtable


This was one of those perfect

New England

days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.  ~Sarah Orne Jewett

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

Exercise Quotes

Quotes are a super-easy way to add dimenstion to promotional pieces.  Quotations like these, are a great way to add personality to everything from brochures and meeting agendas to web pages and email signatures.   This list focuses on fitness and exercise.   

Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.  ~Edward Stanley

If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all.  ~Joey Adams

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being, while movement and methodical physical exercise save it and preserve it.  ~Plato

Fitness - if it came in a bottle, everybody would have a great body.  ~Cher

There is a necessity for a regulating discipline of exercise that, whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.  ~Thomas de Quincey

The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, side-stepping responsibility, and pushing their luck!  ~Author Unknown

Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states.  ~Carol Welch

A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time - pills or stairs.  ~Joan Welsh

The word aerobics came about when the gym instructors got together and said, "If we're going to charge $10 an hour, we can't call it jumping up and down."  ~Rita Rudner

I have to exercise in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing.  ~Marsha Doble

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.  ~A.A. Milne

I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.  ~Chauncey Depew, also sometimes attributed in slightly different wording to Mark Twain

I really don't think I need buns of steel.  I'd be happy with buns of cinnamon.  ~Ellen DeGeneres

Commit to be fit.  ~Author Unknown

It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.  ~Marcus Tullius Cicero

Aerobics:  a series of strenuous exercises which help convert fats, sugars, and starches into aches, pains, and cramps.  ~Author Unknown

Any workout which does not involve a certain minimum of danger or responsibility does not improve the body - it just wears it out.  ~Norman Mailer

An hour of basketball feels like 15 minutes.  An hour on a treadmill feels like a weekend in traffic school.  ~David Walters

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught,
The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
~John Dryden

People say that losing weight is no walk in the park.  When I hear that I think, yeah, that's the problem.  ~Chris Adams

If your dog is fat, you're not getting enough exercise.  ~Author Unknown

I am pushing sixty.  That is enough exercise for me.  ~Mark Twain

What's your favorite quote?  Share it below, please...

Health Quotes

Is your voicemail message drawing yawns from callers?  Why not add a short quotation to your message.  Always let people know how they can bypass the message in the future, change your quote frequently and get feedback from callers once you connect.  I regularly post quotes related to parks, recreation and community at this section of my blog.  So check back often or, better yet, subscribe -- it's free and you'll get instant notification when I add new material. 

The greatest wealth is health.  ~Virgil

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.  ~World Health Organization, 1948

The power of love to change bodies is legendary, built into folklore, common sense, and everyday experience.  Love moves the flesh, it pushes matter around.... Throughout history, "tender loving care" has uniformly been recognized as a valuable element in healing.  ~Larry Dossey

In order to change we must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.  ~Author Unknown

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling.
~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.  ~Cicero

Water, air, and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopoeia.  ~Napoleon I

From the bitterness of disease man learns the sweetness of health.  ~Catalan Proverb

If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.  ~Elbert Hubbard

Spring is in the Air

Oh, I know it's a been a long, cold, snowy, rainy winter.  But, Spring is just around the corner.  Use these quotes to take the chill out of the last days of winter and to warm up your promotional copy.

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.  ~Proverb

Springtime is the land awakening.  The March winds are the morning yawn.  ~Quoted by Lewis Grizzard in Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You

Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"  ~Robin Williams

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.  ~Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go.  ~Christopher Morley, John Mistletoe

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold:  when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.  ~Charles Dickens

It's spring fever.  That is what the name of it is.  And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!  ~Mark Twain

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden.  ~Ruth Stout

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men.  ~Chinese Proverb


The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze.
~Julian Grenfell


In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.  ~Mark Twain

I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become, I will always plant a large garden in the spring.  Who can resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from participating in nature's rebirth?  ~Edward Giobbi

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
~Robert Frost

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.  ~George Santayana

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.  The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.  ~Henry Van Dyke

If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.  ~Audra Foveo

For lots more quotes about anything imaginable check out Quote Garden AND COMMENT below to tell me your very favorite thing about Spring.

Lucky You!

Oh, the luck of the Irish is everywhere at this time of year.  So, share a bit of good fortune with your customers and staff by adding some of these lucky quotes to your marketing materials throughout the month. 

The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.  ~Wilson Mizner

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit.  ~R.E. Shay

Luck is the by-product of busting your fanny.  ~Don Sutton

Everything in life is luck.  ~Donald Trump

Name the greatest of all inventors.  Accident.  ~Mark Twain

Luck never gives; it only lends.  ~Swedish Proverb

Luck:  when your burst of energy doesn't run afoul of someone else's.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Go and wake up your luck.  Persian Saying

Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves.  ~Larry King

Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.  ~Langston Coleman

It's hard to detect good luck - it looks so much like something you've earned.  ~Frank A. Clark

Luck never made a man wise.  ~Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

Luck is when opportunity knocks and you answer.  ~Author Unknown

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.  ~Thomas Jefferson

Luck has a peculiar habit of favoring those who don't depend on it.  ~Author Unknown

Shallow men believe in luck.  Strong men believe in cause and effect.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?  ~Jean Cocteau

The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.  ~Harry Golden

Feeling lucky?  Tell me about it by COMMENTING below.