The most essential factor is persistence -- the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.

Education remains one of the black community's most enduring values. It is sustained by the belief that freedom and education go hand in hand, that learning and training are essential to economic quality and independence.

Marian Wright Edleman, Black Ame

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.

Samuel Butler

In Western Civilization, our elders are books.

Gary Snyder

The omnipotence of evil has never resulted in anything but fruitless efforts. Our thoughts always escape from whoever tries to smother them.

Victor Hugo

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

Barbara Tuchman

Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.

Thomas Sowell

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

What the American public wants in the theater is a tragedy with a happy ending.

William Dean Howells

My first film as an actor was 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' a glorious experience that spoiled me for future films.

Eric Stoltz

Another distinguished critic has agreed with Gide--that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her niece of being illogical. For some time she could not be brought to understand what logic was, and when she grasped its true nature she was not so much angry as contemptuous. 'Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!' she exclaimed. 'How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?' Her nieces, educated young women, thought that she was pass

E. M. Forster, Aspects of the No

I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.

John Green