If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, said Jefferson, it expects what never was and never will be.

Optimism doesn't wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.

Norman Cousins

Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves -- to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.

Stewart B. Johnson

Some people are that - more than a parent, more than a role model, more than anything less than a religion.

Margaret Cho

It's amazing what you can get on open source now if you actually use the right search engines to find the material.

Gus O'Donnell

Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.

William Shenstone

It's easy to look at people and make a quick judgments about them, their present and their past, but you'd be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight. and more often then not, it's lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of their soul.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only.

Blaise Pascal

Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more or their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination not to live without it.

Morton Hunt

Before my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure. The outcome is by no means certain.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

There was a small wooden gazebo built out over the water; Isabelle was sitting in it, staring out across the lake. She looked like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting at the top of her tower for someone to ride up and rescue her. Not that traditional princess behavior was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.

Cassandra Clare

The growth of modern constitutional government compels for its successful practice the exercise of reason and considerate judgment by the individual citizens who constitute the electorate.

Elihu Root

There are kids who get on a BMX bike when they're eight years old and they go, 'Whoa, this is incredible,' and grow up to do extreme sports. It's the same for me with acting.

Joaquin Phoenix