It is better to be first with an ugly woman than the hundredth with a beauty.

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

Gwendolyn Brooks

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

Rita Dove

You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world.

John Searle

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

Benjamin Disraeli

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Plato

I think a lot of people have lost respect for the individual, you know, the individual, the person who doesn't conform.

Erykah Badu

Every act of virtue is an ingredient unto reward.

Jeremy Taylor

An actress must never lose her ego -- without it she has no talent.

Norma Shearer

Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heartone of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man.

Edgar Allan Poe

It is the moment of evolutionary truth for the race, and what man does with that moment will be more important than the events of the previous millenium.

Charles Muses

All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness and worship without awareness.

Anthony de Mello