When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India.

Mary Chapin Carpenter

Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

John W. Gardner

To conquer without danger is to conquer without glory.

Pierre Corneille

Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.

Lewis Mumford

The animadversions of critics are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply

Samuel Johnson

They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love.

Albert Camus

In dream consciousness we make things happen by wishing them, because we are not only the observer of what we experience but also the creator.

Pir Vilayat Khan

What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.

Leonard Cohen

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

William Hazlitt

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

Henry David Thoreau

I never had to learn English, French and German because I was brought up as all three languages. I had a private French teacher before I even went to school. That helped a lot.

Karl Lagerfeld

Peace as a goal is an ideal which will not be contested by any government or nation, not even the most belligerent.

Aung San Suu Kyi