Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
Quote of the Quarter
Archived from my main page each calendar quarter:
| 3rd Quarter 2012 |
"The central reality of our era is extinction. Nothing is more important. Mass extinction is our legacy as a species so far. No other moral challenge is so great as controlling our destructive power over nature." - Dave Foreman in his book, Rewilding North America (A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century), p.60 |
| 2nd Quarter 2012 |
"All manual labor can be a form of meditation, a process of centering, which leaves us with a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment that can never come from sitting behind a desk. Or standing in front of a camera. Go out in your back yard and dig a hole six feet deep. I guarantee you will feel better for it. If that's too overwhelming, try washing the dishes, dusting the yard . . . and as you do these manual tasks, put all your self into them. Concentrate on getting the dishes clean, the piano dust-free, the lawn free of leaves, and do the best job you're capable of. When you're finished, sit down and enjoy the fuits of your labors. IT will rid you of untold anxieties, tension, restlessness." - Dirk Benedict in his book, Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy, pp. 155-156 |
| 1st Quarter 2012 |
"Groupthink was a survival tactic when sieges and plagues threatened the futures of clans and cultures. Now it's an evolutionary remnant that we are free to discard." - Anneli Rufus in her book, Party of One, p. 1 |
| 4th Quarter 2011 |
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot (1713- 1784) |
| 3rd Quarter 2011 |
"When you start your own company and become your own boss, you think, 'Life is good.' When you actually start making money and growing your business, you think, 'Life is great.' But when you're sitting in seat 1D of an airborne plane that's completely silent because the engines have been shut down, and you hear the pilot say, 'Brace for impact,' none of it really matters." - CEO Ric Elias, of Red Ventures, as quoted during his 2011 Ted talk. |
| 2nd Quarter 2011 |
"We have to change our way of thinking. And if we can't change our way of thinking, we won't survive. It's that simple. I've changed my thinking and millions and millions of other people are changing their thinking, and frankly, if you've never changed your mind about something, I say, you know, pinch yourself, you may be dead." - Reverend Richard Cizik at the conclusion of the film, Countdown to ZERØ |
| 1st Quarter 2011 |
"You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad." - William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways: A Journey into America) |
| 4th Quarter 2010 |
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." - Helen Keller |
| 3rd Quarter 2010 |
"It is a mistake to rationalize that excessive consumption contributes to the well-being of others by giving them employment." - John Heider in his book, The Tao of Leadership, p. 133 |
| 2nd Quarter 2010 |
Then the white humans came like some fatal disease - Robert Hoyt, Red River Built dams, brought in cows, and they cut down the trees The salmon eggs died from the washed away land Smothered by the mud and the sand
How did the Red River come by its name |
| 1st Quarter 2010 |
"...it has to be admitted that war is an outrageously successful activity. History demonstrates this over and over again. In a world dominated by material possessions - whether of goods, land, or natural resources - a population of people may win for themselves enormous advantage through military victory over another group; the benefits gained must, of course, outweigh the costs of combat (time, resources, and lives). A materially based world undoubtedly provides a favorable environment in which warfare can flourish. And it has flourished more and more with the steady rise in the complexity of social structure." - Paleoanthropologist Richard E. Leaky and Science Editor Roger Lewin in their book, People of the Lake (Mankind & Its Beginnings), pp. 217-218 |
| 4th Quarter 2009 |
"As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs." - Henry David Thoreau in Walden, the Economy chapter, p. 44 |
| 3rd Quarter 2009 |
"Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear, the stuff he pulled. It always makes us laugh. Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are just too bright... and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice... but still, the place you live is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend." - Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding (Morgan Freeman) talking about Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) in the 1994 movie Shawshank Redemption |
| 2nd Quarter 2009 |
"What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities,...?" - Nora Ephron in her book, I Feel Bad About My Neck (Moving On) |
| 1st Quarter 2009 |
"You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes." - Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) describeing the effects of the two pills to Neo (Keanu Reeves) in the 1999 movie The Matrix |
| 4th Quarter 2008 |
"Ignorance and incuriosity are two very soft pillows." - French proverb |
| 3rd Quarter 2008 |
"Your soul doesn't need cleansing because it isn't dirty and anyone who tells you different is telling you for their benefit and not for yours. Because the purpose of religion is the employment and the empowerment of clergy. That's it's only purpose. You don't matter, you've never mattered." - Pat Condell from one of his many YouTube videos... |
| 2nd Quarter 2008 |
We, who can still hear the jaguar scream, We dream of a day when all things wild will again be free. We long for a time when every species will be loved and honored equally. It is a dream we may never see fulfilled. But in answer to our own wild hearts, It is a dream we will fight for until the day we die. - From the back cover of the May-June 2001 Earth First! Journal |
| 1st Quarter 2008 |
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." "That's it. That is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy..."
- In Defense of Food author Michael Pollan in an 01-01-2008 interview with Steve Inskeep on NPR's Morning Edition |
| 4th Quarter 2007 |
"It is an honor to be a visitor in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, as it is an honor and a privilege to be alive, hovever briefly, on this marvelous planet
we call ~ Earth ~ "
- Edward Abbey (I first discovered this quote, posted in handwritten form, on the stone wall at Phantom Ranch in August '92 - Roger) |
| 3rd Quarter 2007 |
"Even though Homo sapiens is destined for extinction, just like other species in history, we have an ethical imperative to protect Nature's diversity, not destroy it."
- Richard E. Leaky in his book, The Sixth Extinction, p. 221 |
| 2nd Quarter 2007 |
"General [George] Crook, commander of the Department of the Platte, was at least a century ahead of his time in the integrity with which he dealt with aboriginal people, and deserved having his name writ in land if for no other reason than his reply when someone asked him if the campaigns of the Indian wars were difficult work. He said, 'Yes, they are hard. But the hardest thing is to go out and fight against those who you know are in the right.'"
- John McPhee in his book, Rising from the Plains, p. 20 |
| 1st Quarter 2007 |
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
- Thomas Henry Huxley |
| 4th Quarter 2006 |
"The diet that best supports health and healing for humans is a pure vegetable diet centered around starch foods with the addition of fresh fruits and vegetables" - John A. McDougall, M.D. & Mary A. McDougall from their book, The McDougall Plan, p. 17 |
| 3rd Quarter 2006 |
"Thirty thousand years ago, when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. The rest of the time, they could play, or sleep, or do whatever they wanted. And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water, beautiful trees and sunsets. Think about it. Twenty hours a week. Thirty thousand years ago."
- from page 285 of Micahael Crichton's Jurassic Park |
| 2nd Quarter 2006 |
"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking." - Carl Sagan from his book, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, p. 258 |
| 1st Quarter 2006 | "It's time to get real. Government is not a business and we're not customers - we're citizens." |
| 4th Quarter 2005 |
"Alpinism is the art of suffering."
- Voytek Kurtyka |
| 3rd Quarter 2005 |
"Happiness is being with Nature, seeing Nature and discoursing with her."
- Olenin, writing a letter to no one in particular, in Leo Tolstoy's The Cossacks |
| 2nd Quarter 2005 |
"When we want anything from the rich, we'll take it!"
- Edward Abbey, speaking at the United Methodist church, 1820 Broadway, Denver, Colorado Tuesday 29 March 1988 |
| 1st Quarter 2005 |
"If a pickpocket meets a Holy Man, he will see only his pockets."
- Hari Dass Baba |
| 4th Quarter 2004 |
"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?"
- Jean Jacques Rousseau |
| 3rd Quarter 2004 |
"Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads."
- Henry David Thoreau Walden, The Conclusion |
| 2nd Quarter 2004 |
"... they must also find others who feel the same and form circles of friends who give one
another confidence and support in living in a way that the majority find ridiculous, naive, stupid and
simplistic. But in order to do that, one must already have enough self-confidence to follow
one's intuition - a quality very much lacking in broad sections of the populace. Most people follow the trends and advertisements and become philosophical and ethical cripples." - Mountaineer Arne Ness, in Deep Ecology |
| 1st Quarter 2004 |
"I want us to stop living in a world where it's not cool to care. I want to live in a world where we honor each other, that we care about this world."
- Julia Butterfly Hill, on Spiritual Activation. |
| 4th Quarter 2003 |
"This president has treated the truth in a manner his predecessor treated an intern."
- David Corn, in the introduction to his book, |
| 3rd Quarter 2003 |
"The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open."
- Günther Grass, Novelist and Nobel Prize winner |
| 2nd Quarter 2003 |
"Listen to this; we have discovered several things - primarily that to live with intelligence is the most important
thing. To live a way of life which is supremely intelligent demands an extraordinary
alertness of mind and body, and we've
destroyed the alertness of the body by unnatural ways of living. We are also destroying the mind, the brain, through conflict, through constant repression, constant explosion and violence."
- J. Krishnamurti |
| 1st Quarter 2003 |
"The good news is that never have so many candidates been elected to
Congress claiming to care deeply about the air, the water, and the land. The
bad news is that an unprecedented number of them didn?t mean it."
- Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope on NPR, November 6, 2002 |
| 4th Quarter 2002 |
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fevered pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar"
- Attributed to Julius Caesar but revealed to be a wishful fabrication... (Still, I love the sound of it!) |
| 3rd Quarter 2002 |
"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time,
that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. . . ."
- Thomas Jefferson, Third President and author of the Declaration of Independence |
| 2nd Quarter 2002 |
"Every being in the universe knows right from wrong."
- Prot, in the movie K-PAX |
| 1st Quarter 2002 |
"I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
- Woody Allen |
| 4th Quarter 2001 |
"I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments." - Oscar Wilde |
| 3rd Quarter 2001 |
"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac |
| 2nd Quarter 2001 |
"Now, I'm a minister, but if I have to remove the Bible,
remove the cross from the wall, remove the Ten Commandments
to get that government money, I'll do it." - The Reverend Larry Fryer ( New York Times - March 24, 2001) |
| 1st Quarter 2001 |
"Someday our grandchildren will very likely look back at the
individual, selfish control of the wealth of the world by a small
elite the same way we view slavery today."
- Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson/Spiritual Politics |
| 4th Quarter 2000 |
"Yes," he said softly after a long pause. "One of us here has to change, and fast. One of us here has to learn again that death is the hunter, and that it is always to one's left. One of us here has to ask death's advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them."
- don Jaun to Carlos Castaneda in Journey to Ixtlan |
| 3rd Quarter 2000 |
"...And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere." - Folk Singer Dar Williams |
| Spring 2000 |
"Free speech not only lives, it rocks."
- Oprah Winfrey after defending herself in court against the Texas Cattlemen |
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