“Now what is more foolish than refusing to learn, simply because one has not been learning for a long time? … You should keep learning as long as you are ignorant—even to the end of your life…”

— Seneca, Epistle LXXVI: On Learning Wisdom in Old Age

“…only religion has continued to transmit the same teachings largely unaltered, in many cases, for millennia. Only religion claims to have golden rules that can withstand scientific scrutiny. Certainly, there are some arguments in religion’s favor. Religious teachings provide continuity amid change and a sense of history. They have survived past challenges and stood the test of time. Furthermore, the human mind and its awareness of spiritual values have remained constant.”

—Yamakage Motohisa, The Essence of Shinto: Japan’s Spiritual Heart

“For even the greatest of deeds, if not haply preserved in written words and handed down to remembrance, become extinguished in the obscurity of silence.”

— Anna Comnena, The Alexiad

“The Western mentality that treats human knowledge and language as absolutes is, from Shinto’s perspective, a form of human arrogance.”

—Yamakage Motohisa, The Essence of Shinto: Japan’s Spiritual Heart

“Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.”

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Wow—I could spend quite a bit of time expanding on this quote, plumbing its depths. But let me just chalk it up to…more words for our times.

“The purpose of the Art of Peace is to fashion sincere human beings; a sincere human being is one who has unified body and spirit, one who is free of hesitation and doubt, and one who understand the power of words.”

—Ueshiba Morihei, founder of the Aikido martial art

“For as Plato says [in Republic, 361A], ‘it is the height of dishonesty to seem to be honest when one is not'”

—Plutarch, Moralia – How to Tell a Flatterer From a Friend