As much as we like to think that we are independent-minded, free-willed, autonomous individuals, the fact remains that some part of us is still susceptible to programming.Programming can happen to anyone. Intelligence, education, common sense, belief, or convictions offer little protection. All it takes is repetition (the slow route) or vulnerability (the fast route) and, eventually, we're hooked. Master programmers - from cult leaders to cigarette companies to government agencies - do both, as often as possible, whether you like it or not.Ironically, the more immune to programming you think you are, the more susceptible you become.

When I went off to the army when I was 17 years old, I believed in America and the rights of freedom. But today I believe my government is lying to the American people and that my president, George Bush, is a criminal.

Jack Herer

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.

John Quincy Adams

As with anything creative, change is inevitable.

Enya

The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity Sc

The race of mankind would perish did they cease to aid each other. We cannot exist without mutual help. All therefore that need aid have a right to ask it from their fellow-men; and no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.

Sir Walter Scott

BOTTOMThere are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladiescannot abide. How answer you that?SNOUTBy'r lakin, a parlous fear.STARVELINGI believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.BOTTOMNot a whit: I have a device to make all well.Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem tosay, we will do no harm with our swords, and thatPyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the morebetter assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am notPyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put themout of fear.QUINCEWell, we will have such a prologue; and it shall bewritten in eight and six.BOTTOMNo, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

William Shakespeare

Had the King of Spain employed the hands of his people, and his Spanish iron so, he had brought to light but little of that treasure that lay so long hid in the dark entrails of America.

John Locke, An Essay Concerning

As regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. For it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. And this is the last vice to be conquered.

Leonardo DaVinci, note book

The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.

Edward Young

I sing both in my shower and in my car, mostly in my car, because I have this weird thing - whenever I'm singing to the radio - my friends kind of hate it - but I pick out the harmonies in my head, and I'm singing the harmonies to the tracks and I'm jamming it out.

Paul McDonald

We must not inquire too curiously into motives... They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

George Eliot, Middlemarch