"There is today -- in a time when old beliefs are whithering -- a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are, and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity."

--Carl Sagan

"Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people... This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it."

--Chief Seattle

"After all these years of struggle, it's coming into the wholeness of life, the wholeness of yourself again. And you realize that you had nothing to learn -- that you had it all from the very beginning. Once you make good in one thing, all else will follow."

--Mine Okubo, Japanese American artist

Learning...

"I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."

-- Kahil Gibran

Love...

"I have decided to stick to love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

and Life...

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life."

-- J. Krishnamurti

Hope...

"As long as we have some definite idea about or some hope for the future, we cannot really be serious with the moment that exists right now."

-- Suzuki Roshi

and Happiness...

"Be happy. It's one way of being wise."

-- Colette

Sunlight...

"I judge as the sunlight judges, falling upon a helpless thing."

-- Walt Whitman

and Stars...

"You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkeness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it."

-- Annie Dillard

Problems...

"Where would the gardener be if there were no more weeds."

-- Chuang Tzu

People...

"Compassion automatically invites you to relate with people because you no longer regard people as a drain on your energy."

-- Chogyam Trungpa

Power...

"When we think we're separate, we lose power. Whenever I say "my," I have lost my power. Power is not my power; it is not enlarging oneself as a separate individual. It is only gainable as part of a larger whole. Then you communicate with the rest of yourself--which may be a tree. You, reciprocally, are moved by the universe. Whenever you shut down connectedness, you get depressed. Psychic awareness breaks in as a gift. It's fearful to know we're connected to everything in the universe, because then we're responsible."

-- Glenda Taylor, We Are the Web

...and Peace.

"When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the Earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people."

-- Frank Borman, Apollo 8