Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

Denis Diderot

The more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else.

D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

One day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles, and seized one in each hand. Then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas! it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as was the third one.

Charles Darwin

I cannot give the formula for success, but I can give you the formula of failure -- which is try to please everybody.

Herbert B. Swope

Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef,' I feel, is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant, we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way.

Padma Lakshmi

About half my designs are controlled fantasy, 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.

Manolo Blahnik

Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise.

Henry A. Wallace

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.

Abraham Lincoln

Beware the fury of a patient man.

John Dryden

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There's intense national feeling in America that could be called patriotism.

Michael Ignatieff

The thing about my music is, there really is no point.

Neil Young