Reflected thoughts about life and death, and in between

1. “To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing." - Rabbi Harold Kushner

2. How will a nation commit suicide? When leaders have no vision of the future.

3. "You don't become happy by pursuing happiness. You become happy by living a life that means something." Rabbi Harold Kushner

4. Happiness is likened to a butterfly, when you want to catch it, it goes away from you. But when you simply just stay put and become who you are then it settles on your hand.

5. It is not dying that people are afraid of, it is not having lived at all.

6. I am constant, but not flawless.

7. Religion is not suppose to answer all the questions we pose about life, rather, it should give us the courage to answer them.

8. Sometimes our defining moment may be a burden in an unpredictable future.

9. It has been said that one of the "dangerous" books in the Bible is the book of Ecclesiastes. Read it and find out.

10. For some, the Philippines is a memory to return to. For those Filipino veterans who fought for recognition in America, died of old age and disease, the Philippines is a repository of their ashes.

11. Sometimes life isn't the party we hoped for, but since we're here, we should dance. Anonymous.

12. Death is more universal than life. Everybody dies but not everybody lives.

13. There are many dead in our society.They were given life but refused to live it.

14. Some of our institutions were built by our leaders based on their experience and perceived disappointments about human affairs.

15. Religion is not suppose to answer all the questions we pose about life, rather, it should give us the courage to answer them.

16. For some lying is a strategy to survive.

17. If we can't get what we like, let us enjoy what we have.

18. For some, truth is something not to look for, truth is something that has to be created.

19. The danger in running for the highest public office falls automatically into the trap that he is better than his opponents, worst he is better than other people.

14. Though people may vote for this particular candidate, the voters may end up bitter and frustrated to this leader whom they have voted into office.

15. Voters can seek protection from their leaders by knowing in public the candidate's program of government, of course we have no guarantee that a leader will stick to his program. It can change, just like the weather.

16. Ferdinand Marcos was able to cow millions of Filipinos when he declared martial law, save for those people who took to the mountains, organized resistance cells, defied curfew hours, grew long hairs and beard. Still, fomenting fear is a convenient t...ool available to political leaders. They can use it at will weakening our institutions that tries to promote a regime of certainties.

17. Our institutions are always built on a daily basis so that predictability of life's events are presumed to carry on.

18. Voting is a human right, as much as a job is.

19. If we canot love the person whom we see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see. - Mother Theresa

20. I will not say I failed 1,000 times, I will say that I discovered 1,000 ways that can cause failure. - Thomas Edison

21. If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain. - Adolf Hitler

22. If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they had never tried a new thing in their life. - Albert Einstein

23. In a day, when you don't come across any problems, you can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong way. - Swami Vivekananda

24. The persistence of life is something we cannot deny.