One of the annoying things about believing in free will
by P. J. O'Rourke

One of the annoying things about believing in free will
and individual responsibility is the difficulty
of finding somebody to blame your problems on.
And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable
how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.
- P. J. O'Rourke

Related topics: Cynical Life Human-Nature Psychology Wisdom Free-Will

The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.
- Anais Nin

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows
will lead to difficulty.
- Lao Tzu

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.
No one can eliminate prejudices -
just recognize them.
- Edward R. Murrow

One does not discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide

No one was ever named "Hero" for following the crowd.
Heroes set their own course.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

Love one another but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.
- Khalil Gibran

One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.
- Helen Keller

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis"
is composed of two characters.
One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
- John F. Kennedy

This day I will marry my friend,
the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.
- Anonymous

If you wait for opportunities to occur,
you will be one of the crowd.
- Edward de Bono

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
- Joseph Campbell

The essence of all religions is one.
Only their approaches are different.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

One can not reflect in streaming water.
Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.
- Lao Tzu

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
- Mother Teresa

I am one with the Earth,
with the Water, with the Fire,
with the Air that I breathe,
with all Living Things,
and we are all one with Spirit.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing it at someone else;
you are the one who gets burned.
- The Buddha

In one drop of water are found all the secrets of all the oceans.
- Khalil Gibran

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."
- Hans Christian Andersen

Drop the sword - for there is but one flesh to wound,
and it is the one flesh of all humankind.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis

Try a new perspective on diversity.
Across the country and around the world,
we are all one.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Individually, we are one drop.
Together, we are an ocean.
- Ryunosuke Satoro

Love is the total absence of fear.
Love asks no questions.
Its natural state is one of extension and expansion,
not comparison and measurement.
- Gerald Jampolsky

To acquire knowledge, one must study;
but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
- Marilyn vos Savant

To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children,
to leave the world a better place,
to know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
this is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The function of prayer is not to influence God,
but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
- Soren Kierkegaard

People love chopping wood.
In this activity one immediately sees results.
- Albert Einstein

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth
- not going all the way and not starting.
- The Buddha

"Pride" is such a double-edged sword -
Self-Worth on one edge and Ego on the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

An optimist is one who makes the best
of what he gets the worst of.
- Anonymous

The best relationship is one in which
your love for each other
exceeds your need for each other.
- Anonymous

It is well to remember that the
entire population of the universe,
with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
- Andrew J. Holmes

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself,
but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
- George Orwell

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting
on his past actions and their motives -
of approving of some and disapproving of others.
- Charles Darwin

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants,
and to serve them one's self?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money has never made man happy, nor will it,
there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness.
The more of it one has the more one wants.
- Benjamin Franklin

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool.
Writers, alas, have to be fools in public,
while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.
- Erica Jong

No one can give you better advice than yourself.
- Cicero

One whispered yes becomes the wind song over an ocean of no's.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

When ordinary life shackles me,
I escape, one way or another. No more walls.
- Anais Nin

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.
The most certain way to succeed
is always to try just one more time.
- Thomas A. Edison

Whatever you are, be a good one.
- Abraham Lincoln

There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein

Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

One bold inspiration choreographs a dance with promise.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Truth is certainly a branch of morality
and a very important one to society.
- Thomas Jefferson

Take a chance! All life is a chance.
The man who goes farthest is generally
the one who is willing to do and dare.
- Dale Carnegie

When one door closes, another opens.
But often we look so long, so regretfully,
upon the closed door,
that we fail to see the one that is opened for us.
- Helen Keller

What one has to do usually can be done.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

One unlikelihood entertained leads a parade of innovation.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying
about things which are beyond the power of our will.
- Epictetus

Society is a masked ball,
where every one hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson

We will either find a way or make one.
- Hannibal

Joy increases and suffering decreases
as one masters the distinction between events
and one's feelings about those events.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Where love reigns, there is no will to power;
and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.
The one is but the shadow of the other.
- Carl Jung

There is no passion to be found playing small -
in settling for a life that is less
than the one you are capable of living.
- Nelson Mandela

An instructed and intelligent people
are always more decent and orderly
than an ignorant and stupid one.
- Adam Smith

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success is to be measured not so much
by the position that one has reached in life
as by the obstacles which he has overcome.
- Booker T. Washington

Decide questions without regard for tradition -
one way or the other.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is one thing to say that something should be done,
but quite a different matter to do it.
- Aesop

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie