I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they're the first to be rescued off sinking ships.

Gilda Radner

The local is a shabby thing. There's nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.

Jean Baudrillard

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.

Oscar Wilde

One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.

Simon Newcomb

You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.

Henry Ford

One might as well try to ride two horses moving in different directions, as to try to maintain in equal force two opposing or contradictory sets of desires.

Robert Collier

Mayors could never get away with the kind of nonsense that goes on in Washington. In our world, you either picked up the trash or you didn't. You either moved an abandoned car or you didn't. You either filled a pothole or you didn't. That's what we do every day. And we know how to get this stuff done.

Michael Nutter

We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution.

Rufus Choate

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.

Ambrose Bierce

My mom still lives in Denver and some of my brothers are still in the area, so I still have strong ties there.

Terrell Davis

There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.

Nelson Mandela

I hope you love birds, too. It is economical. It saves going to Heaven.

Emily Dickinson, Letter in Lette