Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

David Hume

Where I am today... I still have my ups and downs, but I take it one day at a time and I just hope that I can be the best that I can possibly be, not only for myself, but also young people that are out there today that need someone to look up to.

Demi Lovato

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

Jonathan Swift

Blessed are they who heal us of self-despising. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious.

William Hale White

We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing - it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn't stand it, and wouldn't she please shut him up.The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this - 'Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad.' It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy's noise was not a trouble to me any more.

Mark Twain

Well, I'm using a cane, so what? So what if they shot me sitting in a wheelchair? That's life!

Dick Clark

The trouble with America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.

Louis Kronenberger

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

Daniel J. Boorstin

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person

Albert Camus

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Kahlil Gibran

Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

Louise Bogan

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

Allen Ginsberg