Robert Fulghum Quotes

The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, Well, what're you waiting for? Let's DANCE.

I wanted to be a citizen of the world but not in a superficial way.

If you notice phrases, ideas, and anecdotes that closely resemble those that appear elsewhere in my writing, it's not a matter of sloppy editing. I'm repeating myself. I'm reshuffling words in the hope that just once I might say something exactly right. And I'm still wrestling with dilemmas that are not easily resolved or easily dismissed. I run at them again and again because I am not finished with them. Any may never be. Work-in- progress on a life-in-progress is what my writing is about. And some progress in the work is enough to keep it going on.

No. I was an only child.

This is an exercise in power - the power of mind over matter. If you don't mind being inadequate, it doesn't matter.

If we could just figure out how to have more fun at it, maybe more of us would join the ranks of those who seek after justice and mercy.

Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.

Above all, if what you've done is stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid.

You know, without realizing it we fill important places in each other's lives.

If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them by hand in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But, they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them weeds and murder them at every opportunity

Life is. I am. Anything might happen. And I believe I may invest my life with meaning. The uncertainty is a blessing in disguise. If I were absolutely certain about all things, I would spend my life in anxious misery, fearful of losing my way. But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby and wonders shall never, ever cease.

Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day.

It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber.

It's the spirit here that counts. The time may be long, the vehicle may be strange or unexpected. But if the dream is held close to the heart, and imagination is applied to what there is close at hand, everything is still possible.

When my neighbor walks the dogs, he performs a ritual act of sacer simplicitas, to use the church Latin: "sacred simplicity." Walking the dog is in truth a ritual of renewal and revival on an intimate scale - a small rebirth of well-being on a daily basis.

Now Everybody has some secret goals in life ... Sometimes you can get what you want and what you need at the sames time.

I do not want to know what you will hope for. I want to know what you will work for. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to a long, hard hill: 'Them that's going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain't, get out of the way'.

Life is. I am. Anything might happen.

We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box.

And sure, I know if you eat this way you'll die. So? If you don't eat this way you're still going to die. Why not die happy?

Life will examine us continually to see if we have understood and have practiced what we were taught that first year of school.

It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It

It doesn't matter what you say you believe - it only matters what you do.

Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often.

I'm good at doing the laundry. At least that. And it's a religious experience ... Water, earth, fire-polarities of wet and dry, hot and cold, dirty and clean. The great cycles-round and round-beginning and end-Alpha and Omega, amen.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School.

Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.

Public lives are lived out on the job and in the marketplace, where certain rules, conventions, laws, and social customs keep most of us in line. Private lives are lived out in the presence of family, friends, and neighbors who must be considered and respected even though the rules and proscriptions are looser than what's allowed in public. But in our secret lives, inside our own heads, almost anything goes.

I don't think there is a hidden purpose to the universe that you have to puzzle out.

Almost anything can be dealt with if people are of good will and light hearts and strong values.

Do you ever go off with a long grocery list and come home from the store with a bunch of different stuff? And somebody in the family unsacks the groceries and wants to know why you got this and didn't get that and just where is the whatever? And you want to say, 'Well, just be glad I came back, okay?' And the unpacker says, 'Well, next time bring what's on the list.'

There is nothing in your budget for joy. No books, no flowers, no music, not even a cold beer. And there is nothing in your budget to give away to someone else. We don't help people who don't have better values than you do.

I know what I really want for Christmas.
I want my childhood back.
Nobody is going to give me that. I might give at least the memory of it to myself if I try. I know it doesn't make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child, of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now. In you and me. Waiting behind the door of or hearts for something wonderful to happen. A child who is impractical, unrealistic, simpleminded and terribly vulnerable to joy.

Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don't like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here's to the eternal tandem.

To insist on one's place in the scheme of things and to live up to that place.To empower others in their reaching for some place in the scheme of things.To do these things is to make fairy tales come true.

Imagination is better than knowledge.

If someone were to ask me whether I believed in God, or saw God, or had a particular relationship with God, I would reply that I don't separate God from my world in my thinking. I feel that God is everywhere. That's why I never feel separated from God or feel I must seek God, any more than a fish in the ocean feels it must seek water. In a sense, God is the "ocean" in which we live.

You may never have proof of your importance but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn't do without you. The rub is that you don't always know who.

For all my good intentions, there are days when things go wrong or I fall into old habits. When things are not going well, when I'm grumpy or mad, I'll realize that I've not been paying attention to my soul and I've not been following my best routine.

When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my "natural" talent for driving, not knowing that I had already been secretly driving my mother's car around the neighborhood. When I took the test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret.

Whenever life becomes Tinkertoys, the queen may be sacrificed.

Until you have experienced raccoons mating underneath your bedroom at three in the morning, you have missed one of life's sensational moments.

Alice's robes were seasonal. She hadn't exactly planned
it that way, but that's how it evolved. In winter there was a long,
warm, deep purple terry-cloth robe. In spring she changed to a new
blue-and-white cotton kimono. In summer there was a white chenille
bathrobe with a pattern on it, and in the fall she wore a cotton robe her
husband had bought her as a surprise gift. They were useful, practical
garments, but when she thought about it, she realized she wore them as
much for the feelings and memories they evoked as much as their physical
comfort. When I told her I thought her robes had become like temple
garments, she smiled,Yes.

You will continue to read stories of crookedness and corruption - of policemen who lie and steal, doctors who reap where they do not sew, politicians on the take. Don't be misled. They are news because they are the exceptions.

The myth of the impossible dream is more powerful than all the facts of history.

Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don't forget.

To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'

I use Cheer. I like the idea of a happy wash.

Love the battle between chaos and imagination.
Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives.
Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally.
Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there.

Is it always to be a winners-losers world, or can we keep everyone in the game? Do we still have what it takes to find a better way?

About winning and losing: It isn't important, what really counts is how you play the game. About playing the game: PLAY TO WIN!

The winding down of summer puts me in a heavy philosophical mood.

The leaves let go, the seeds let go, and I must let go sometimes, too, and cast my lot with another of nature's imperfect but tenacious survivors.

We even make ourselves up, fusing what we are with what we wish into what we must become. I'm not sure why it must be so, but it is.

If you want an interesting party sometime, combine cocktails and a fresh box of crayons for everyone.

Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn't apply to you. But it does. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it

Ignorance and power and pride are a deadly mixture, you know.

Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.

My secret agenda is to convey my values to my kids.

The examined life is no picnic.

I and you-We are infinate, rich, large, contradictory, living, breathing miracles-free human beings, children of God and the everlasting universe. That's what we do.

Dreams are more powerful than facts.

Play fair. Don't hit people. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?

The heart will turn to a prune if love is always by the numbers. How will you know if someone really loves you if they only meet your expectations and not your needs?

One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

Love is the grand prize and the garbage heap. Love is a spiritual root canal and the only thing that makes life worth living. Love is a little taste of always and a big bite of nothing. And love is everything in between these extremes.

Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do,and something you give away.

I believe in dancing.

All I really need to know ... I learned in kindergarten.

Why is love easy? I don't know. And the raccoons don't say.

These are the things I learned (in Kindergarten):

1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
6. Don't take things that aren't yours.
7. Say you're SORRY when you HURT somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life - learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
15. Goldfish and hamster and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Once you know where the roller coaster is going, are you in for the ride?

Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It's what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn't count it. Nothing counts without it.

It is the chair in honor of all those who, however competently, embrace the impossible. Sit in that chair someday.

The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.

You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago.

And snow - snow is not my enemy, I tell him. Snow is God's way of telling people to slow down and rest and stay in bed for a day. And besides, snow always solves itself. Mixes with the leaves to form more earth, I tell him. Think compost, says I.

Nobody goes "AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" when they sing it. Maybe because it puts the life adventure in such clear and simple terms. The small creature is alive and looks for adventure. Here's the drainpipe
a long tunnel going up toward some light. The spider doesn't even think about it
just goes. Disaster befalls it
rain, flood, powerful foces. And the spider is knocked down and out beyond where it started. Does the spider say, "To hell with that"? No. Sun comes out
clears things up
dries off the spider. And the small creature goes over to the drainpipe and looks up and thinks it really wants to know what is up there.

I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have - I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change somethings in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.

In that moment of educational ennui, a freshman girl says, "I can bring a human brain to school if you want–my father has lots of them." (Talk about a full-scale class alert: "She's going to do WHAT?!")

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.

I get tired of hearing it's a crummy world and that people are no damned good. What kind of talk is that? I know a place in Payette, Idaho, where a cook and a waitress and a manager put everything they've got into laying a chicken-fried steak on you.

My goal now is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there wasn't another dance left in me.

And good neighbors make a huge difference in the quality of life. I agree.

Don't sell yourself short. You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think.

I often say that I don't worry about the meaning of life
I can't handle that big stuff. What concerns me is the meaning in life
day by day, hour by hour, while I'm doing whatever it is that I do. What counts is not what I do, but how I think about myself while I'm doing it.

Manuals have their uses ... but they are not to be confused with living.

Th communique repeated the information. "He went to the body of his wife and wouldn't leave it, although she was dead."
How strange. why didn't he run and save his own hide? What made him go back? is it possible that he loved her? Is it possible that he wanted to hold her in his arms one last time? Is it possible that he needed to cry and grieve? Is it possible that he felt the stupidity of war? Is it possible that he felt the injustice of fate? Is it possible that he thought of children, born or unborn? Is it possible that he didn't care what become of him now?
It's possible. We don't know. Or at least we don't know for certain. But we can guess. His actions answer.
And so h sits alone in a prison. Not a "Russian" or a "Communist" or "solider" or "enemy" or any of these categories. Just-a-man who cared for just-a-woman for just-a-time more than anything else.
Here's to you, Nicolai Pestretsov, wherever you may go and be, for giving powerful meaning to the promises that are the same everywhere; for dignifying that covenant that is the same in any language - "for better or for worse, in good times and bad, in sickness and in health, to love and honor and cherish unto death, so help me God." You kept the faith; kept it bright - kept it shining. Bless you!

We are the only creatures that both laugh and weep. I think it's because we are the only creatures that see the difference between the way things are and the way they might be.

The best feelings in your life come when you start feeling good after you've been feeling just awful

Speed and efficiency do not always increase the quality of life.

Instructions For Wayfarers They will declare: Every journey has been taken. You shall respond: I have not been to see myself. They will insist: Everything has been spoken. You shall reply: I have not had my say. They will tell you: Everything has been done. You shall reply: My way is not complete. You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard. Fear not. You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper. And you shall go through and on ... - Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis, THIRD WISH

Children are sent to school to be civilized, to learn to be part of the social enterprise.

To understand our love they'd have to turn the world upside down

Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., the summer I turned

I believe it is in my nature to dance by virtue of the beat of my heart, the pulse of my blood and the music in my mind.

Think what a better world it would be if we all-the whole world-had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are-when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

Clean up your own mess.