America's downgrade may serve as a wakeup call for its policymakers. It is an unambiguous and loud signal of the country's eroding economic strength and global standing. It renders urgent the need to regain the initiative through better economic policymaking and more coherent governance.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

Will Rogers

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.

Willa Cather

Letting go of your ego opens the door to taking a new and creative course of action.

Suzanne Mayo Frindt

Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

Jared Diamond

Thus meditating you will no longer strive to build yourself up in your prejudices, but, forgetting self, you will remember only that you are seeking the Truth.

James Allen

When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of Orthodoxy, True and False and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.

George Bernard Shaw

Darkness doesn't exist, you can merely measure the amount of light that is present. I think the same of hate, a lack of love rather.

James Dye

Feminism is dated? Yes, for privileged women like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution, forced labor - they have children that they don't want or they cannot feed.

Isabel Allende

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.

Buddha

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Jean Henri Fabre

The violence and obscenity are left unadulterated, as manifestation of the mystery and pain which ever accompanies the act of creation.

Anais Nin

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali.

Salvador Dali