Quotations on the Many Views of Life
Leaders, Scientists and Doctors

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted in Context, 5/1/95, Martin E. Marty

As a physician who has been deeply privileged to share the most profound moments of people’s lives, including their final moments, let me tell you a secret. People facing death don’t think about what degrees they have earned, what positions they have held, or how much wealth they have accumulated. At the end, what really matters is who you loved and who loved you. That circle of love is everything and is a good measure of a past life. It is the gift of greatest worth.
Bernadine Healy, Commencement Address, Vassar College, 1994

We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.
Jimmy Carter, Speech, 1976

It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.
Alfred Adler, in Alfred Adler, Phyllis Bottome

Struggle is the essence of life. The problem is to draw a line between struggle, which is stimulating, and conflict, which is often lethal. Of the United Nations, which embodies the international effort to draw this line, Dag Hammarskjold said that “the constant struggle to close the gap between aspiration and performance now ...makes the difference between civilization and chaos.” If we tire of this effort, it will be at our extreme peril.
Brian Urquhart, A Life in Peace and War

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Sir Isaac Newton

Being alive is being aware, being able to be touched and moved and changed, being able to respond rather than to react.
Rachel Naomi Remen, in Healing the Mind, Bill Moyers

Life’s piano can only produce melodies of brotherhood (and sisterhood) when it is recognized that the black keys are as basic, necessary and beautiful as the white keys.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here?

We must learn to live together as brothers (and sisters) or perish as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Speech, 1964

Compulsions narrow life down until there is no living--existence perhaps, but not living.
Marion Woodman, Addiction to Perfection

Without the body we are no-bodies, and we mean no more than a number to a mass civilization that ignores human values....We do not belong to life, for we belong to a world of machines, a dead world. And no words can change this situation, no amount of money can alter our condition. We can get back into life only by getting in touch with our bodies. When we do that, we will find
that there is faith in life and that the body of (human beings) is the body of God and something to believe in.
Alexander Lowen, Depression and the Body

God is our creator. God made us in His image and likeness. Therefore we are creators....The joy of creativeness should be ours.
Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness