Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

Garrison Keillor, We Are Still M

...observe the difference between your attitude to illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious illusion with all your might. If it becomes discredited - and indeed the threat to it is great enough - then your world collapses. There is nothing left for you but to despair of everything, of civilization and the future of mankind. From that bondage I am, we are, free. Since we are prepared to renounce a good part of our infantile wishes, we can bear it if a few of our expectations turn out to be illusions.

Sigmund Freud

We have now traced the history of women from Paradise to the nineteenth century and have heard nothing through the long roll of the ages but the clank of their fetters.

Lady Jane Wilde

Every morning I woke in dread, waiting for the day nurse to go on her rounds and announce from the list of names in her hand whether or not I was for shock treatment, the new and fashionable means of quieting people and of making them realize that orders are to be obeyed and floors are to be polished without anyone protesting and faces are to be made to be fixed into smiles and weeping is a crime.

Janet Frame

Actually, the streets are quite safe today, it's the people on them who aren't.

Source Unknown

I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.

Georgia O'Keeffe

In the morning a man walks with his whole body in the evening, only with his legs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.

Henry Ward Beecher

I have 23 top players and they are all ready to put on the jersey and work on the pitch and that makes you happy and then you have peace of mind.

Diego Maradona

Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.

Phil Collins

That's the thing about interviews, at some point you're going to change your mind. But it's there forever and you can't escape it.

Martha Plimpton