When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, Not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however.

They make a wilderness and call it peace.

Tacitus

If everyone played their part, no one else would have to suffer, because He had suffered for all those who'd had the courage to fight for their dreams.

Paulo Coelho

Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.

Thomas Szasz

Nothing can come of nothing.

William Shakespeare

If we wish to create a lasting peace we must begin with the children.

Mahatma Gandhi

My life has been an open book, for better or for worse.

Blake Shelton

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her Americas heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.

John Quincy Adams

Today in America, we are trying to prepare students for a high tech world of constant change, but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the early 20th Century that has not seen substantial change in 30 years.

Janet Napolitano

I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.

B. F. Skinner

Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God's guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them.

Qur'an

The desire to die was my one and only concern to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

Emile M. Cioran

This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning