Everyone's heard of Erwin Schrodinger's famous thought experiment. You put a cat in a box with a bottle of poison, which many people would suggest is about as far as you need to go.

It's very hard to write humor.

Mark Strand

Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

Bill Watterson

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

William Hazlitt

On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism'.

Barry Goldwater

Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.

Louisa May Alcott

Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.

Rowan D. Williams

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Samuel Butler

I would not change my native landFor rich Peru with all her gold

Isaac Watts

I'm not busy... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy.

Garrison Keillor

Sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.

George Santayana

If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.

Ernest Shackleton