My culture-deprived, aspirational mother dragged me once a month from our northern suburb - where the word art never came up - to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hated it.

There's always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not. The least effective moral instruction in fiction is that which is consciously inserted. Partly because it won't reflect the storyteller's true beliefs, it will only reflect what he BELIEVES he believes, or what he thinks he should believe or what he's been persuaded of. But when you write without deliberately expressing moral teachings, the morals that show up are the ones you actually live by. The beliefs that you don't even think to question, that you don't even notice-- those will show up. And that tells much more truth about what you believe than your deliberate moral machinations.

Orson Scott Card

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.

Richard P. Feynman

Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.

John Boyd Orr

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.

Thomas Jefferson

I have to say that in this particular cow that we're dealing with, those parts of the cow were removed, and so we don't think there's any risk or very negligible risk to human health with this particular incident.

Ann Veneman

This is unbearable ... God. These books she'll never read. Her Life's Library.

John Green

God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall.

Julian of Norwich

And if I didn't know better, I'd say they were doing God's work. Let them fear us. That's the thing -- let them fear us.

Christopher Hitchens

Thus, in accordance with the spirit of the Historical School, knowledge of the principles of the human world falls within that world itself, and the human sciences form an independent system.

Wilhelm Dilthey

What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt held in cohesion by unresting cells. Which work they know not why, which never halt, myself unwitting where their Master dwells?

John Edward Masefield

Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.

Frederick Douglass

"Who are the true philosophers you have in mind?" he asked. "Sightseers of the truth" I answered. "That must be right, but what exactly does it mean?" he asked.

Plato