The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I sometimes think that the saving grace of America lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are possessed of two great qualities- a sense of humor and a sense of proportion.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

To him who feels himself preordained to contemplation and not to belief, all believers are too noisy and obtrusive; he guards against them.

Friedrich Nietzsche

There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.

Herman Melville

One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the or or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.

Christopher Hitchens

leave him free, and the mere sense of liberty would content him, joined to the knowledge that his presence was dear to those whom he loved best.

Louisa May Alcott

I just hope that our fans are people who are inspired by music, and just use our music as a background or inspiration for whatever it is they do.

Maynard James Keenan

First of all, my persuasion is what really breeds violence is political differences. But because religion serves as the soul of community, it gets drawn into the fracas and turns up the heat.

Huston Smith

You must not lie about trilobites, nor yet about time.

Richard Fortey

It is no secret that the fruits of language study are in no sort of relation to the labour spent on teaching and learning them.

Edward Sapir

And under the existing circumstances, I understand there are situations where people indeed need care and need services, but I believe in America that the majority of those people are getting those services under situations and circumstances that are afforded to them by their health care providers and their state government.

Jan Brewer

I was very studious, too much. I would never go out at weekends. I was very serious. You should have seen me in class - I was blushing and sweating every time the teacher asked me something.

Eva Green