In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances -- from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison

Do not free the camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

G. K. Chesterton

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

English Proverb

You know, it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things, it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles, telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope, someday, we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.

Diablo Cody

In view of China's growing military strength and intentions, the best way to safeguard Asia's permanent peace and prosperity is to have all Asian countries join forces with other democratic countries in the world to form a global community of democracies.

Jim Costa

You keep shooting. You hope it goes in, and you smile.

Teemu Selanne

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?

George Bernard Shaw

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars.

Henry Van Dyke

Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies.

Steve Martin

Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.

Leo Tolstoy