The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all: it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.

Henry David Thoreau

The second gift is Beauty. May your deeds reflect its depth.

Charlene Costanzo

My training in Science of Mind had begun with my mother. She took me to a different church every Sunday, and she encouraged me to question the minister afterward.

Esther Williams

If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Helen Keller

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

Aldous Huxley

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master.

Duke Ellington

People can undergo a sudden change of thinking and loyalties under threat of death or intense social pressure and isolation from friends and family.

Keith Henson

Ornaments were invented by modesty.

Joseph Joubert

...set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

Neil Gaiman

If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity.

Albert Einstein

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?

T. S. Eliot