How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Those of you who are convinced that you missed your calling, open all doors keep the entrance way clear. This way you will not miss that next call.
If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be m...
Old Ways May Not Give You Up An elderly man in a Lobi village once renounced the spirits in favor of Islam by discarding the very beliefs in spirits and mystical inanimate objects that have held our societies together for more three centuries. He thr...
The English language is the tongue now current in England and her colonies throughout the world and also throughout the greater part of the United States of America. It sprang from the German tongue spoken by the Teutons, who came over to Britain aft...
When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the ...
You know the difference between right and wrong,' he repeated finally. 'Man, why did you need Initiation—by the Golden Dawn, or by anybody else? You are a genius, a sage, a giant among men. You have solved the problem which philosophers have been d...
Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well, Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, A...
Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's i...
The primitive tribes permitted far less individual freedom than does modern society. Ancient wars were committed with far less moral justification than modern ones. A technology that produces debris can find, and is finding, ways of disposing of it w...
Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek...
He who cannot suffer discomfort, will not be called for important things.
When a mother calls her child bastard, you can take her word for it.
deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the skeptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with sc...
The decisions we make lead us to complex behavioral sets, and what we decide to do can be consciously and unconsciously motivated. The human being, however, is a small-group decision-making animal, a small pack animal, with a will to life, who engage...
This afternoon I sat at my window and alternately wrote at my new serial and watched a couple of dear, amusing, youngish maple-trees at the foot of the garden. They whispered secrets to each other all the afternoon. They would bend together and talk ...
Bluestar blinked. "There are cats who would argue that there should never have been a fifth Clan in the forest at all. Why are there four oaks at Fourtrees, if not to stand for the four Clans?" Firestar gazed up at the massive oak trees, then back at...
Many of the gay Christians I was in conversation with were not demanding wholesale movement to a fully affirming and inclusive stance. There were those who were uncertain of such a stance even for themselves. What they did desire was space, a safe sp...
Austen knew nothing of our modern quest for equality. People are not numbers, and so they are never “equal.” Some folk are higher placed than others, have more money, were more fortunate in their parents, or are brighter. These gifts do not come ...
Letter to Rose from Strigoi Dimitri. Delivered to Rose after her return from Russia and her quest to Kill Dimitir, which she thought she completed. "You forgot another lesson: Never turn your back until you know your enemy is dead. Looks like we'll h...
