Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. Hope is one of those things that you can't buy, but that will be freely given to you if you ask. Hope is the one thing people cannot live without. Hope is a thing of beauty.

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.

Mahatma Gandhi

All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly not constructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.

Terry Eagleton

I think the government has to reposition environment on top of their national and international priorities.

Brian Mulroney

And soon afterwards this manuscript will appear, my final book... There will be outrage and disgust and people will turn on me at the last, they will hate me, my reputation will for ever be destroyed, my punishment earned, self-inflicted like this gunshot wound, and the world will finally know that I was the greatest feather man of them all.

John Boyne

Why are there five syllables in the word monosyllabic?

Steven Wright

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Adolf Berle

This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. It is beauty, like truth, which brings joy to the heart of man and is that precious fruit which resists the year and tear of time, which unites generations and makes them share things in admiration.

Pope Paul VI

I'm interested in all forms of performance, yet I think it's difficult to be as equally talented in all of them as they call for such different skills. At the moment, I still feel I'm learning and want as much experience and variety as possible.

Felicity Jones

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil in its worst state, an intolerable one.

Thomas Paine

Those have a short Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.

Benjamin Franklin

The daily act of writing remains as demanding and maddening as it was before, and the pleasure you get from writing - rare but profound - remains at the true heart of the enterprise. On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.

Jeffrey Eugenides