Jesus of Nazareth could have chosen simply to express Himself in moral precepts; but like a great poet He chose the form of the parable, wonderful short stories that entertained and clothed the moral precept in an eternal form. It is not sufficient to catch man's mind, you must also catch the imaginative faculties of his mind.

If the security forces continue to be dominated as they are now by political groups or sects, then the people won't trust in them - and the result will be civil war or fragmentation of the country.

Adnan Pachachi

I need music. It's like my heartbeat, so to speak. It keeps me going no matter what's going on - bad games, press, whatever!

LeBron James

Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. Their families came and took them away. Eighty years later, by a bizarre coincidence, they lay in the same hospital, on their deathbeds, next to each other. One of them looked at the other and said, so. What did you think?

Steven Wright

There is now less flogging in our great schools than formerly, but then less is learned there; so that what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.

Samuel Johnson

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.

John Barrymore

Bill Gates is a very rich man today... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.

Dave Barry

I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt.

Elia Kazan

When everything you see appears in dark, gloomy shades, and seems baleful, and you want to tell others only bad and unpleasant things, do not trust your perceptions. Treat yourself as though you were drunk. Take no steps and actions until this state has disappeared.

Leo Tolstoy

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to themThe source of the famous Golden Rule. Many famous lines were variations on this theme.

Bible, Matthew 7:12 (KJV)

The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.

Dorothy Day

If, then, knowledge be power, how much more power to we gain through the agency of faith, and what elevation must it give to human character.

Matthew Simpson

That war [Bosnian war] in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought - destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position - leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that - like Chomsky - looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.

Christopher Hitchens