Elinor Hurst > Elinor's Quotes

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
― John Donne, Meditation XVII - Meditation 17

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“How good a society does human nature permit? How good a human nature does society permit?”
― Abraham Maslow

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites one family.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
The earth is sacred and men and animals are but one part of it.
Treat the earth with respect so that it lasts for centuries to come and is a place of wonder and beauty for our children.”
― Extract from Chief Seattle.

“The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but "Can they suffer?”
― Jeremy Bentham (An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Philosophical Classics), The Principles of Morals and Legislation

“Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“The best way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downward, as poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“Equality of opportunity is not enough. Unless we create an environment where everyone is guaranteed some minimum capabilities through some guarantee of minimum income, education, and healthcare, we cannot say that we have fair competition. When some people have to run a 100 metre race with sandbags on their legs, the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair. Equality of opportunity is absolutely necessary but not sufficient in building a genuinely fair and efficient society.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. ”
― Michael Moore

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“Capitalism lures us onward like the mechanical hare before the greyhounds,
insisting that the economy is infinite and sharing therefore irrelevant. Just enough greyhounds catch a
real hare now and then to keep the others running till they drop. In the past it was only the poor who
lost this game; now it is the planet.”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress

“The islanders, they write: carried out for us the experiment of permitting unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources, destruction of the environment and boundless confidence in their religion to take care of the future. The result was an ecological disaster leading to a population crash…. Do we have to repeat the experiment on [a] grand scale?… Is the human personality always the same as that of the person who felled the last tree?”
― Ronald Wright, A Short History Of Progress

“While the invisible hand looks after the private sector, the invisible foot kicks the public sector to pieces.”
― Herman E. Daly

“Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,
Offer no angles to the wind.
They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes
Less than themselves.”
― A.S.J. Tessimond, Collected Poems: with Translations from Jacques Prévert

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
― Omar Khayyám

“A handsome grey Persian put two paws on Inspector Hardcastle's knees, looked at him in an ecstasy of pleasure and dug his claws in hard with a kneading action as though the inspector was a pincushion. Goaded beyond endurance, Inspector Hardcastle rose to his feet.”
― Agatha Christie