Ponder me this...2021

"The desire to reach the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise and most possible."

Maya Angelou, quoted in Williston, N.D., Herald

"Those who lead the country into the abyss / Call ruling too difficult / For ordinary men."

Bertolt Brecht, quoted in The Nation

"You only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place."

Maya Angelou, quoted in BrainPickings.org

"Patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quoted in Forbes

"The past is a foreign country: They do things differently there."

L..P. Hartley, quoted in The New York Times

"I've never had a lot of money, but I've always had enough to pay the bills."

 Ruthie Schuster, upon reaching 100 years of age while still working,

"It is disease that makes health so sweet."

Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, quoted in Vogue

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

Aldous Huxley, quoted in the Lock Haven, Pa., Express

Voltaire once said,

"I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

and he also said,

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

"Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it."

Jonathan Swift, quoted in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., quoted in CNN.com

"Never trust the teller, trust the tale."

D.H Lawrence, quoted in the Los Angeles Review of Books

"Freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute."

Philosopher Hannah Arendt, quoted in the New York Times

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

Albert Einstein, quoted in Discover

"By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."

Pianist Charles Wadsworth, quoted in Country Living

"On this earth there are pestilences and there are victims - and as far as possible, one must refuse to be on the side of pestilence."

Albert Camus, quoted in USA Today

"The future depends entirely on what each of us does on every day; a movement is only people moving."

Gloria Steinem, quoted in Parade

"It just shows the role that journalists play. Without facts, you can't have truth. Without truth, you can't have trust. How can you have democracy without that? This is the fabric that holds us together: shared reality."

Maria Ressa, TIME Person of the Year-on winning the Nobel Peace Prize

"Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it."

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard Almanac

Upon being asked, "Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?" Benjamin Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

"And it's safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm's way."

Barack Hussein Obama, Author of, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream