Bach, Richard. One

Commerce is idea and choice expressed. Look about you this moment: everything you see and touch was once invisible idea until someone chose to bring it into being.

The truth doesn't burn. The truth waits for anyone who wishes to find it. Only these pages will burn.

Time is your name for the motion of consciousness. Every possible event that can happen in space and time happens now, at once, simultaneous. There is no past, there is no future, only now …

It's like arithmetic. As soon as you know the system, you know that every problem in numbers is already answered. The principle of arithmetic already knows the cube root of six, but it may take us what we call time, a few seconds, to find out what the answer has always been.

Bach, Richard. THE BRIDGE ACROSS FOREVER: A LOVE STORY

A soulmate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our trust selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. Our soulmate is someone who shares our deepest longings, our sense of direction. When we're two balloons, and together our direction is up, chances are we've found the right person. Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

Bagehot

To illustrate a principle, you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.

Baker, Russell.

Eternal boyhood is the dream of a depressing percentage of American males, and the locker room is the temple where they worship arrested development.

Baldwin, James.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

Barrie, J.M.

We are all failures--at least, all the best of us are.

Barry, Dave.

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.

Basho, Matsuo (17th century Japanese poet).

Seek not to follow in the footsteps of men of old;
Seek what they sought.

Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever, George Harrison

Living is easy with eyes closed,
misunderstanding all you see

Baby You're a Rich Man


How does it feel to be
one of the beautiful people,
Now that you know who you are?
What do you want to be?
And have you travelled very far?
      Far as the eye can see.
How does it feel to be
one of the beautiful people?
How often have you been there?
      often enough to know
What did you see when you were there?
      Nothing that doesn't show.

Bentham, Jeremy. The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)

"…the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?"

Berlinski, David.

But ultimately, things are as they are for no better reason than they are what they are.

Bettelheim, Bruno.

... we want our children to believe that, inherently, all men are good. But children know that they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would prefer not to be.

The Bible, Exodus 20: 4-5

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or likeness of any thing that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.

Bits & Pieces.

After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, it makes you wonder about history.

Blake, William.

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

• Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
• The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
• The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
• As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
• Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
• Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.

Blake, William. "The Garden of Love"

I went to the Garden of Love
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
where I used to play on the green.


And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to this Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.


And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be,
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds
and binding with briars my joys and desires.


Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me;
'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight
And threefold in soft Beulah's night
And twofold always. May God keep
From single vision & Newton's sleep.

Bogart, Humphrey.

Do everything. One thing may turn out right.

The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.

Bourne, Randolph.

He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the wild elephant goes.

Boyd, Doug. Rolling Thunder

• ...one cannot be helped until he seeks help, cannot be taught until he tries to learn, cannot be answered unless he asks.

You can't go to another people's land and try to kick everyone there off the land when they have nowhere to go, and kill most of them in the process, and then say that the ones who are left are supposed to join your club. That's wrong. We don't like their club and we won't join it. If it were a good club they wouldn't expect us to, and they'd leave our club alone. And they would leave other peoples in other countries alone. Every one has his own club. If it's a bad club, it's no one else's business. The people will learn in their own way. No good system tries to spread itself. It's good to help people, but it's wrong to spread systems. It's wrong to spread beliefs. It doesn't matter whether it's Christianity or what it is, or whether it's supposed to be the best belief in the world - and there is no such thing - it should be told only to those who ask. It's wrong to spread any idealogy by intimidation, and that means Christianity, communism, capitalism, democracy or anything else.
Rolling Thunder, speaking about Europeans' treatment of American Indians.

Bradbury, Ray

The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire history.

Brandeis, Judge Louis D.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Brin, David. Earth

Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.

..... The Uplift War

Perhaps we are the first to talk and think and build and aspire, but we may not be the last. Others may follow us in this adventure.

Some day we may be judged by just how well we served, when alone we were Earth's caretakers.

Brooke, Rupert

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

Brookhiser, Richard

Once politics is founded on need, the sense of common purpose splinters as the needs of each constituency push toward infinity.

Broun, Heywood Hale

Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will turn vegetarian.

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

Brunner, John. The Shockwave Rider.

If there is a person on the planet who has the answer, if there's even the shadow of a chance he does, the the only sane thing to do is go sit on his doorstep until he has time to talk to you.

What a wise man can do, that can't be done by someone who's merely clever, is make a right judgement in an unprecedented situation. A wise man would never be overloaded by the plug-in life-style. He'd never need to go get mended in a mental hospital. He'd adjust to shifts of fashion, the coming-and-going of fad-type phrases, the untrasonic-blender confusion of twenty-first-century society, as a dolphin rides the bow wave of a ship, out ahead but always making in the right direction. And having a hell of a good time with it.

Bryan, William Jennings

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.

Buckley, William F, Jr.

... the technological revolution has given us the resources to invade privacy. What does that mean? It means that we should not permit the invasion of privacy. Not that we should jettison technology capable of invading privacy.

I would sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory, than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.

Bunan

Die while you're alive
and be absolutely dead.
Then do whatever you want:
it's all good.

Burke, Edmund

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

Burroughs, William S..

You can't oppose something intellectually that is overwhelming you emotionally. The chain of command, or the chain of action, comes up from the viscera to the back brain and then finally to the front brain. But the front brain cannot reverse this and give orders to the back brain and the viscera; it just doesn't work, "Pull yourself together!" they say. Well, you can't. The more you try to pull yourself together the further apart you get. You have to learn to let the thing pass through.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

Burtt, E.A. The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddah

A village headman spoke thus to the Lord:
"Is a Tathagatha compassionate towards all living, breathing creatures?"
Yes, headman," answered the Lord.
"But does the Lord teach Dharma in full to some, but not likewise to others?"
"Now, what do you think, headman? Suppose a farmer had three fields, one excellent, one mediocre,
and one poor with bad soil. When he wanted to sow the seed, which field would he sow first?
He would sow the excellent one, then the mediocre one. When he had done that, he might or might
not sow the poor one with the bad soil. And Why? Because it might do if only for cattle-fodder."

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