“Doubt everything. Find your own light.”

— Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth

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“Those who govern with virtue are like the North Star, which remains in its place while the myriad stars revolve around it.”

— Confucius 孔丘 551 – 479 BCE
(Kongzi, Kǒng Zǐ)
History's most influential "failure"

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“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”

— Aristotle Ἀριστοτέλης 382 – 322 BCE

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“When the ruler view his ministers as his hands and feet, they regard him as their heart and soul. When he views them as dirt and weeds, they regard him as an enemy and a thief.”

— Mencius 孟子 372 – 289 BCE
(Mengzi)
from Book of Mencius 孟子

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“Those who govern and follow the Tao are like the high branches in a tree; people don’t notice them and wander in freedom like deer in a forest. 3:14”

— Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE
(Zhuangzi)

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“When those above treat those below with dishonesty, those below respond with deceit.”

— Heshang Gong 河上公 202 – 157 BCE
(Ho-shang Kung or "Riverside Sage”)

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“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

— Marcus Aurelius 121 – 219 CE

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“I am unable to wander from place to place as you do but if you could teach me how to meditate while remaining here on my throne in my palace...”

— Lakshmincara ལཀྵྨཱིངྐ་རཱ།། 1 via Keith Dowman
(“The Princess of Crazy wisdom”)
from Masters of Mahamudra

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“I am unable to wander from place to place as you do but if you could teach me how to meditate while remaining here on my throne in my palace...”

— Lilapa སྒེག་པ། 1 via Keith Dowman
(“Master of Play”)
Mahasiddha #2
from Masters of Enchantment

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“The reason sages don’t speak or act is so they can bestow their blessings in secret and … when their work succeeds and people’s lives go well, people… don’t realize it was made possible by those on high.”

— Wu Cheng 吴澄 1249 – 1333 CE via Red Pine
"Mr. Grass Hut"
from Tao-te-chen-ching-chu

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“Although you may have fortresses, they will not save you if you are hated by the people.”

— Machiavelli 1469 – 1527 CE
(Niccolò Machiavelli)
from The Prince

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“If you would be a real seeker after truth, at least once in your life doubt all things.”

— René Descartes 1596 – 1650 CE

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“Every familiarity breeds contempt… the more a person shows, the less he has… Reticence is the seal of capacity… you must pay ransom to each you tell.”

— Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE via Shan Dao, #177

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“The objections and reluctances I met with in soliciting the subscriptions, made me soon feel the impropriety of presenting one’s self as the proposer of any useful project.. I therefore put myself as much as I could out of sight and stated it as a scheme of ‘a number of friends.’”

— Benjamin Franklin 1706 – 1790 CE
from Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

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“That government is best which governs least... The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs”

— Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809 CE
from The Rights of Man, 1792

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“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

— Thomas Jefferson 1743 – 1826 CE
from Notes on the State of Virginia

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“If you treat someone as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE

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“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 – 1834 CE

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“a State which dwarfs its men… will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

— John Stuart Mill 1806 – 1873 CE

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“a king overpowered by self-interest is not worthy of being the protector of the kingdom”

— Jamgon Kongtrul the Great འཇམ་མགོན་ཀོང་སྤྲུལ་བློ་གྲོས་མཐའ་ཡས། 1813 – 1899 CE via Judith Hanson
(Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thayé)
from Torch of Certainty

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“That government is best which governs not at all.”

— Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi
from On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

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“In spite of their fancy words, politicians only barter truth, love, and honor for wool, beet-root sugar, and potato spirit profits.”

— Karl Marx 1818 – 1883 CE via Shan Dao

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“The great enemy of civilization is the notion that society cannot prosper, unless the affairs of life are watched over and protected at nearly every turn by the state and the church.”

— Henry Thomas Buckle 1821 – 1862 CE
from History of Civilization

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“Familiarity breeds contempt and children.”

— Mark Twain 1835 – 1910 CE
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
America’s most famous author

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“Sufis have no set belief or disbelief. Divine light is the only sustenance… and what they see in this light they believe, and what they do not see they do not blindly believe.”

— Inayat Khan 1882 – 1927 CE

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“Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion… that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful… whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler… that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again.”

— Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

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“You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt 1884 – 1962 CE

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“All men are created unequal... Politics is the art of compromise between the classes”

— Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE
from Heroes of History

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“Traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete.”

— Buckminster Fuller 1895 – 1983 CE

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“What you see with your eyes shut is what counts. The wicasa wakan loves the silence, wrapping it around himself like a blanket… he talks to the plants and they answer him.”

— John Fire Lame Deer 1903 – 1976 CE via Richard Erdoes
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

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“Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness.”

— Marshall McLuhan 1911 – 1980 CE

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“Elders serve as conduits between the divine realm and the mundane world.”

— Reb Zalman 1924 – 2014 CE
from From Age-Ing to Sage-Ing

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“We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.”

— Noam Chomsky 1928 CE –

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“‘doing without doing’: uncompetitive, unworried, trustful accomplishment, power that is not force. An example or analogy might be a very good teacher, or the truest voice in a group of singers.”

— Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

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“We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.”

— Pema Chödrön 1936 CE –
(Deirdre Blomfield-Brown)
First American Vajrayana nun

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“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.”

— George Carlin 1937 – 2008 CE
One of the most influential social commentators of his time

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“If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life, in order first… the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world.”

— Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

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— Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche རྫོང་གསར་ འཇམ་དབྱངས་ མཁྱེན་བརྩེ་ རིན་པོ་ཆེ། 1961 CE –
(Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche)
"Activity" incarnation of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo

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