If you don't have confidence, you'll always find a way not to win

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it

George Bernard Shaw

Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap -- let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; -- let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address,

The real art is not to come up with extraordinary clever words but to make ordinary simple words do extraordinary things. To use the language that we all use and to make amazing things occur.

Graham Swift

We don't know why we are here and the context of our role in the universe, and the thought of an infinite universe. It's something the human mind can't really grasp. It's statistically impossible that there's not life on other planets.

Joel Kinnaman

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.

Cornel West

My dad has always been very proud of me but I think I have exceeded his expectations. When I told him I wanted to be an actor and moved to New York City, I think he assumed I would be playing the guitar on the subway and collecting spare change in my guitar case. The fact that I'm not doing that means that I'm a huge success.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Like the cellar-growing vine is the Christian who lives in the darkness and bondage of fear. But let him go forth, with the liberty of God, into the light of love, and he will be like the plant in the field, healthy, robust, and joyful.

Henry Ward Beecher

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

e. e. (Edward Estlin) cummings

Whenever the lion fish in the fish tank in the captain's ready room died it was always a sad moment.

Patrick Stewart

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Margaret Fuller