Last year, Congress gave the Department of Defense the authority to design a new civilian personnel system for its employees as part of the defense authorization bill.

If you don't believe in yourself, then who will believe in you? The next man's way of getting there might not necessarily work for me, so I have to create my own ways of getting there.

Martin Lawrence

I cook a little bit. I make a Hungarian dish called chicken paprikash that's out of this world. I'll give a heads-up to all of your readers that it doesn't have to be between Thai and Mexican every night. Toss some Hungarian in every once in a while. You will not be sorry. Good, solid peasant food.

Adam Carolla

Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.

Lord Chesterfield

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

James A. Michener

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

Friedrich Von Schlegel

There's nothing weak about beauty, child. The only weakness in it is if you think it means anything important.

Charlie Fletcher

Whether we knew many who died on September 11 or personally knew none, we all lost something on that day. Innocence. Security. A trust that our homeland would always be safe.

Bob Taft

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.

Quintilian

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I have such a rich fantasy life, I can't help it. I do make up a lot of romantic stories in my head.

Mindy Kaling

At times I've got a really big ego. But I'll tell you the best thing about me. I'm some guy's dad I'm some little gal's dad. When I die, if they say I was Annie's husband and Zachary John and Anna Kate's father, boy, that's enough for me to be remembered by. That's more than enough.

John Denver

Essentialists hope that when students leave school, they will possess not only basic skills and an extensive body of knowledge, but also disciplined, practical minds, capable of applying schoolhouse lessons in the real world.

William C. Bagley