I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

Bible

The love of fame is almost another name for the love of excellence; or it is the ambition to attain the highest excellence, sanctioned by the highest authority, that of time.

William Hazlitt

Difficulties increase the nearer we get to the goal.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

E. O. Wilson

Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend.

Edward O. Wilson

No one should be left to suffer alone.

Daisaku Ikeda

If there are more and more environmental refugees, they are going to end up on your doorstep too.

Nina Fedoroff

Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealous will instantly inspire the inclination to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive...

Noah Webster

A man's interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

George Bernard Shaw

And in Life's noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts the result of my dreams.

David Herbert Lawrence

A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of clothes.

Thomas Carlyle