I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.

The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

'Tis best to be silent in a bad cause.

Ovid

It is bad policy to regulate everything... where things may better regulate themselves and can be better promoted by private exertions but it is no less bad policy to let those things alone which can only be promoted by interfering social power.

Friedrich List

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The young have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things—and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning.... All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything; they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.

Aristotle

It is only when we let go of knowing what we think we know that new knowing can enter our lives.

Maria Parkinson

The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers... 'It is escapism, true,' he said, aloud. 'But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge toward freedom, the drive to escape?

Neil Gaiman

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.

Scott McNealy

Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.

Andy Mulcahy

The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising.

Kit Williams

Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

Neil Gaiman

...I see myself at crossroads in my life, mapless, lacking bits of knowledge - then, the Moon breaks through, lights up the path before me...

John Geddes