The community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.

Agatha Christie, An Autobiograph

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

Tony Parsons

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content.

Samuel Johnson

Politics are beautiful. They enable a community to live collectively with one another. It's not about stabbing each other in the back it's about enabling people to reach their dreams and pursue happiness.

Ben Nicholson

There is a brief moment when all there is in a man's mind and soul and spirit is reflected through his eyes, his hands, his attitude. This is the moment to record.

Yousuf Karsh

Crazy isn't a condition it's a place and it exists somewhere between Love and Oblivion

Stanley Victor Paskavich

I even tried to tell myself to live my best life today.

John Green

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.

Ann Landers

The modern little red riding hood, reared on singing commercials, has no objections to being eaten by the wolf.

Marshall McLuhan

You can be with one of the most beautiful women in the world and still be unhappy.

Rod Stewart

There has never been a just [war], never an honorable one--on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will--warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier--but do not dare say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all--will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Mark Twain

A woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan.

Mary Daly