America has run the world for at least the past 50 years, and when you're at the top that long, you forget what it's like in the valley. There are 5+ billion people out there now who are willing to study harder, work harder for less money and be more industrious than we are. And we're linked to them by technology. With telecommunications, you can have your bookkeeping done in Madra, India, for less than it costs here. Today technology can replace whole new industries, so you have to stay flexible. To survive today, you have to be able to walk on quicksand and dance with electrons.

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

Jon Meacham

I am proud of where I came from, and I am proud of what I've been able to achieve through hard work and perseverance. And I guarantee you that anyone who tries to say otherwise hasn't walked a day in my shoes.

Wendy Davis

It's like spicy food - sometimes you have to tone it down so more people can enjoy it.

Kenneth Edmonds

Genius worship is the inevitable sign of an uncreative age.

Clive Bell

Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building

Oscar Wilde

It's far too much to say that effective hoping is the only - or even the biggest - part of what it takes to succeed. If 14% of business productivity can be attributed to hope, that means 86% is dependent on raw talent, fickle business cycles, the quality of the product you're selling, and often pure, dumb luck.

Jeffrey Kluger

I love going to Africa and stuff. I love going anywhere, really, but I've been to Africa a bunch of times and it's just a beautiful place that needs help, obviously, but helping people that are really thankful is really easy to do. And the people out there always seem so thankful.

Kris Allen

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

Winston Churchill

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

Herman Melville

I've had a lot of success over the years racing in New York, but the main point is that I feel the marathon is a different event, a lot more my event.

Paula Radcliffe

Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.

Gregory David Roberts

Natural history is not about producing fables.

David Attenborough