Ideas are the factors that lift civilization. They create revolutions. There is more dynamite in an idea than in many bombs.

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong

Thomas Jefferson

If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.

Barack Obama

I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.'I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.

Christopher Hitchens

Smile from your heart; nothing is more beautiful than a woman who is happy to be herself.

Kubra Sait

All political power is primarily an illusion. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.

Jimmy Breslin

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Web 2.0 ideas have a chirpy, cheerful rhetoric to them, but I think they consistently express a profound pessimism about humans, human nature and the human future.

Jaron Lanier

I have found that I always learn more from my mistakes than from my successes. If you aren't making some mistakes, you aren't taking enough chances.

John Sculley

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.

A.A. (Alan Alexandra) Milne

We have all forgot more than we remember.

Thomas Fuller

But they love each other. Isn't that what love means? That you're supposed to be there for the other person to turn to, no matter what?

Cassandra Clare

A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.

John Calvin