About astrology and palmistry: They are good because they make people feel vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

I don't go by the rule book I lead from the heart, not the head.

Princess of Wales Diana

That heavenly music! what is it I hear? The notes of the harpers ring sweet in mine ear. And, see, soft unfolding those portals of gold, The King all arrayed in his beauty behold!

William Augustus Muhlenberg

Many thousands of youth have been deprived of the benefit of education thereby, their morals ruined, and talents irretrievably lost to society, for want of cultivation: while two parties have been idly contending who should bestow it.

Joseph Lancaster

Obviously the facts are never just coming at you but are incorporated by an imagination that is formed by your previous experience. Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

Philip Roth

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

Salman Rushdie

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear.

Alan Coren

A man of strength and wisdom, John Paul became an inspiration to generations of both Catholics and non-Catholics throughout the world by encouraging freedom, promoting peace and respecting all faiths.

Greg Walden

I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs . . . I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe.But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . .What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless . . . The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Ros

Let love be your greatest aim

Bible

Search for the truth. I tell you things and I always ask you to verify what I say. I told you yesterday that there was an attack and a retreat at Saddam's airport.

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him.The consumers patronize those shops in which they can buy what they want at the cheapest price. Their buying and their abstention from buying decides who should own and run the plants and the farms. They make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. They are merciless bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. For them nothing counts other than their own satisfaction. They do not care a whit for past merit and vested interests. If something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors. In their capacity as buyers and consumers they are hard-hearted and callous, without consideration for other people.http://www.mises.org/humanaction.asp

Ludwig von Mises, Human Action,

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.

John Irving, Interview in Writer