A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
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If life's journey be endless where is its goal? The answer is, it is everywhere. We are in a palace which has no end, but which we have reached. By exploring it and extending our relationship with it we are ever making it more and more our own. The i
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I answer the heroic question 'Death, where is thy sting' with 'It is here in my heart and mind and memories.'
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A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
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Answer That you are here---that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
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'Guess now who holds thee?'—'Death,' I said. But, there, The silver answer rang, . . . 'Not Death, but Love.'
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Every answer asks a more beautiful question
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When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark; 'Good luck Mr. Gorsky.'
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Mr. Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the Good luck Mr. Gorsky statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled.
Just last year, (on 5 July 1995 in Tampa Bay, FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26-year-old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hits a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbors bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. And Mrs. Gorsky.
As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. 'Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!'
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In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter.
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Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
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If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
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Its a Story they tell in the border country, where Massachusetts joins Vermont and New Hampshire. Yes, Danl Websters deador, at least, they buried him. But every time theres a thunderstorm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, Danl WebsterDanl Webster! the groundll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake. And after a while youll hear a deep voice saying, Neighbor, how stands the Union? Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed, one and indivisible, or hes liable to rear right out of the ground. At least, thats what I was told when I was a youngster.
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Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point it, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
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We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!...of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless...of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here...that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.' That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.
What will your verse be?
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My roommate says, I'm going to take a shower and shave, does anyone need to use the bathroom? It's like some weird quiz where he reveals the answer first.
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It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found to be generally true that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon --so long as there is no answer to it-- gives claws to the weak.
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There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.
Politics
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SIR,--Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant; and the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled me not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as a history of my own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating very little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principle diet.
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Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper until you get the right answer.
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Do not speak harshly to any one; those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful: blows for blows will touch thee.
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I urged that kings were dangerous. He said, then have cats. He was sure that a royal family of cats would answer every purpose. They would be as useful as any other royal family, they would know as much, they would have the same virtues and the same treacheries, the same disposition to get up shindies with other royal cats, they would be laughably vain and absurd and never know it, they would be wholly inexpensive, finally, they would have as sound a divine right as any other royal house...The worship of royalty being founded in unreason, these graceful and harmless cats would easily become as sacred as any other royalties, and indeed more so, because it would presently be noticed that they hanged nobody, beheaded nobody, imprisoned nobody, inflicted no cruelties or injustices of any sort, and so must be worthy of a deeper love and reverence than the customary human king, and would certainly get it.
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Children look for grown-ups to show them how to live; When we try to fool them, they see through us like a sieve. We recognize the problem now; that's wonderful to see; The answer may well plague us 'til new values come to be. Volunteers are wonderful and will help to meet the need, But we must change the literature on which our children feed. We must teach and model absolutes of love, and justice, too; Prove to them that what we say, is just what we will do. There is one book, and it alone, will help attain success. It is the book, our fathers brought, to tame this wilderness. They used the Bible as their guide, the written Word of God; And found the wisdom written there, the greatest on this sod. Whether it was in the home, in public, or in school, The bible was the blueprint that became their greatest tool. Let's trash the recent literature before it is too late; Teach again, the basic values, that made our nation great. Surely it is evident, without a single doubt, That truth and right mus be invoked to help our children out. So, let's scour all the nation, and get folks to volunteer That believe the principles our precious kids should hear. If they are dependable, and use the proper tact, Volunteers can help to get our children back on track.
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In the midst of excitement, grief, joy, and solitude, I remind myself every moment that the sole mission of my life is to find the ultimate questioner - that unimaginable who has put me in this madness to answer an unanswerable question.
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I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart. In storms and at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide around my fathomless arms, I am unable to understand the forms of my vanity or I am hard with my Polish rudder in my hand and the sun sinking. To you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage of my will. The terrible channels where the wind drives me against the brown lips of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet I trust the sanity of my vessel; and if it sinks, it may well be in answer to the reasoning of the eternal voices, the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
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Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals.
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Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else. What is the other text, the original? I have no answer. I suppose it is the source, the deep sea where ideas swim, and one catches them in nets of words and swings them shining into the boat... where in this metaphor they die and get canned and eaten in sandwiches.
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Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.
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What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July I answer A day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustices and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
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There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.
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The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? and my answer must at once be, It is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behaviour of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
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