Ὅτι πᾶν ὑπόληψις.
II, 15
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book II
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
Source: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (2000), p. 267
Context: Anything is possible. You can be told you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight. By fight I mean arm yourself with all the available information, get second opinions, third opinions, and fourth opinions. Understand what has invaded your body, and what the possible cures are. It's another fact of cancer that the more informed and empowered patient has a better chance of long-term survival. What if I had lost? What if I relapsed and the cancer came back? I still believe I would have gained something in the struggle, because in what time I had left I would have been a more complete, compassionate, and intelligent man, and therefore more alive.
1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Buffalo Rising interview (2007)
Context: Life is pretty rough for the nearly 400 million people in India who still live on $2 USD or less a day-they are mostly what this show is about.
In America by comparison, the children of the poor may not have access to the latest Dolce & Gabbana or Armani suit, but they at least predominantly have shelter, even though it may not be a castle but it is a warm place to rest and recuperate. So many of the children I come across in such countries as India live and sleep with their families on the street covered by a tarp or a piece of plastic or cardboard. They cry themselves to sleep at night from hunger.
We are very lucky to be living in the U. S. and not there under similar conditions in a country like India, even if being poor here means living simply. If we as people can remember this much from seeing one of my shows, then we are already well on the way toward progress in my opinion.
Dla mnie jesteś trochę jak Rudolph Valentino, nie wiem, czy pamiętasz takiego bohatera kina. Znakomity kierunek dla ciebie: on był bohaterem kina niemego.
To Idol contestants
As quoted in "The Education of President Obama" by Peter Baker in The New York Times (12 October 2010) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html?src=me&ref=homepage
2010
Source: The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God's Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives
Of Superstition
Essays (1625)
Context: It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion, as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.
"Confessions of a Hypocrite: Utopia in the Age of Ecocide" Kosmos (2016) https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/confessions-of-a-hypocrite-utopia-in-the-age-of-ecocide/
