The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

Plato

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.

Mark Twain

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

Charles Baudelaire

Disaster was an avalanche, gathering speed with such acceleration that you worried more about getting out of its path, not finding the pebble at its center.

Jodi Picoult

I got to get the right people in the right job. Because a lot of costs can be taken out in the context of your administration without the legislature.For example, using technology to do more with less. Using technology to fight fraud. Reorganizing and streamlining can be done within the context of the administration.

Meg Whitman

We grew up in a very creative environment and were exposed to the arts at a very young age, so it's not a surprise that all of us are in some form of the arts.

Spike Lee

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific.'

Igor Stravinsky, "London Magazin

We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

William Shakespeare

Most cooks try to learn by making dishes. Doesn't mean you can cook. It means you can make that dish. When you can cook is when you can go to a farmers market, buy a bunch of stuff, then go home and make something without looking at a recipe. Now you're cooking.

Tom Colicchio

I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns.

Shia LaBeouf

If I didn't try to eavesdrop on every bus ride I take or look for the humor when I go for a walk, I would just be depressed all the time.

Lynda Barry

I was considered by my peers to be a good comedian. So that's all I ever strived to do was get some recognition from my peers.

Ron White