Veggie Planet Quotes

Below are quotes that have appeared on our Veggie Planet chalkboard. We hope you find them to be educational, thought provoking, and/or enjoyable...

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more war. - Abbie Hoffman

We're in a giant car heading toward a brick wall and everyone's arguing about where they want to sit. - David Suzuki

First rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. - Molly Ivins

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. - Alfred Adler

The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions. - James Rusell Lowell

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E. B. White

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. - Plato

Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk at about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap. - Barbara Jordan

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all. - Anna Quindlen

Let us not look backwards in anger or forwards in fear but around us in awareness. - James Thurber

Only a rat can win a rat race. - Michael Franti

The essence of the problem is about consumption, recognizing that a society that consumes one third of the world’s resources is unsustainable. This level of consumption requires constant intervention into other people’s lands. That’s what’s going on. - Winona LaDuke

Oompa Loompa Doompadee Dah, if you're not greedy you will go far.
You will live in happiness too, like the Oompa Loompa Doompadee Do. - Oompa Loompa Song (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple/By the relief office I saw my people/As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if/This Land was made for you and me. - Woody Guthrie

Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experience of other people. - Jane Addams

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. - Bertrand Russell

To repeat what others have said requires education; to challenge it requires brains. - Mary Pettibone Poole

We learn from history that we never learn anything from history. - Hegel

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right. - H.L. Mencken

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. - Helen Keller

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. - Martin Luther King Jr.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. - Bertrand Russell

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. - Mahatma Gandhi

I know not what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. - Albert Einstein

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. - Samuel Butler

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. - Oscar Wilde

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago, had they happened to be within reach of predatory human hands. - Havelock Ellis

One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence. - Charles A. Beard

We are presently taught in schools to endure boredom and to take orders - because that's what capitalism needs from most of us. - Michael Albert

The truth is so often the reverse of what has been told us by our culture that we cannot turn our heads far enough around to see it. - Howard Zinn

It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. - David Brin

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. - Dwight Eisenhower

Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money. - Chief Seattle

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful. - Albert Schweitzer

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear. - Alan Coren

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: "Whose?" - Don Marquis

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act - George Orwell

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. - Mark Twain

You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses. - Ziggy

The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. - Unknown

When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them. - Lily Tomlin

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the rich supposes the indigence of the many. - Adam Smith

We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are. - Adelle Davis

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. - Robert Louis Stevenson

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. - Jack London

[C]orporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign… until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. - Abraham Lincoln, 1864

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. - Plato, 347 B.C.

The most serious threat to democracy is the notion that it has already been achieved. - Unknown

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies. - Groucho Marx

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Isaac Asimov

CNN said that after the war, there is a plan to divide Iraq into three parts… regular, premium and unleaded. - Jay Leno

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. - Dom Helda Camara

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! - Benjamin Franklin

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. - Albert Einstein

Don't you know that if people could bottle the air, they would? Don't you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? - Robert Ingersoll

If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. That's your choice. - Noam Chomsky

I have two enemies in all the world,/ Two twins, inseparably pooled: / The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full. - Marina Tsvetaeva

In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness… From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him out a quarter of a million miles and say "Look at that, you son of a bitch." - Edgar Mitchell (Astronaut)

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes. - Douglas MacArthur

The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government… [F]or the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. - Bertrand Russell