Life is too important to be taken seriously.

The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the authors assault upon them is to be successful,a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression. The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

John Maynard Keynes

I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an Emperor or a King my republican feelings and principles forbid it the simplicity of our system of government forbids it.

Andrew Jackson

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.

Epicurus

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.

Roger Penrose

I am interested only in the relations of a people to the rearing of the individual man, and among the Greeks the conditions were unusually favourable for the development of the individual; not by any means owing to the goodness of the people, but because of the struggles of their evil instincts.With the help of favourable measures great individuals might be reared who would be both different from and higher than those who heretofore have owed their existence to mere chance. Here we may still be hopeful: in the rearing of exceptional men.

Friedrich Nietzsche, We Philolog

In New York, everyone's desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they're more laid back about things like that.

David Bailey

You're not a star until they can spell your name in Karachi.

Humphrey Bogart

To die for an idea it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

H. L. Mencken

If then the power of speech is as great as any that can be named,

John Henry Newman, Idea of a Uni

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

Lascelles Abercrombie

How one handles success or failure is determined by their early childhood.

Harold Ramis

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

William Makepeace Thackeray