Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

Ernest Hemingway

The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

Oscar Wilde

This force, which is the best thing in you, your highest self, will never respond to any ordinary half-hearted call, or any milk-and-water endeavor, It can only be reached by your supremest call, your supremest effort. It will respond only to the call that is backed up by the whole of you, not part of you; you must be all there in what you are trying to do. You must bring every particle of your energy, unanswerable resolution, your best efforts, your persistent industry to your task or the best will not come out of you. You must back up your ambition by your whole nature, by unbounded enthusiasm and a determination to win which knows no failure... Only a masterly call, a masterly will, a supreme effort, intense and persistent application, can unlock the door to your inner treasure and release your highest powers.

Orison Swett Marden

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things. It is the continuous revolution of the marketplace. It is the understanding that allows to recognize shortcomings and seek solutions.

Ronald Reagan

My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see.

Paul Getty

It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.

Arthur C. Clarke

What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth.

Sun Ra

All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's.

Jeff Bezos

If you must commit suicide... always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of.

George Borrow

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.

Sri Swami Sivananda

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Albert Camus

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture.

Jon Meacham