When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.

And humility in politics means accepting that one party doesn't have all the answers recognising that working in partnership is progress not treachery.

Vince Cable

Do not choose for your friends and familiar acquaintance those that are of an estate or quality too much above yours...You will hereby accustom yourselves to live after their rate in clothes, in habit, and in expenses, whereby you will learn a fashion and rank of life above your degree and estate, which will in the end be your undoing.

Sir Matthew Hale, from "A Leter

I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age. I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and... I had a desire to create always. And I always had a desire to show my work.

P. J. Harvey

It is indolence... Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.

Jane Austen

Most of our spending is done to forward our efforts to look like others.

Leo Tolstoy

You're always going to have extremists in every religion.

King Abdullah II

He's nice enough not to want to be associated with a nasty remark but not nice enough not to make it. Lacking the courage of one's nastiness does not make one nice.

Michael Kinsley

Scandal is what one half of the world takes pleasure inventing, and the other half in believing.

Paul Chatfield

Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there's an education level that plays into the mix and so if it's inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.

Ray Dalio

All people hope Islam helps everything in life. Islam will make jobs. Islam will make freedom. Islam will make everything.

Ahmed Ali

Imagination is as vital to any advance in science as learning and precision are essential for starting points.

Percival Lowell

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

Henry David Thoreau