You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?

When I was growing up, I thought I'd be a lot happier if I was famous and successful and if I had money.

Russell Brand

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

George C. Marshall

And initially, a lot of companies avoid trying to make a really radical new kind of title for a new system, because that would involve learning a new machine and learning how to make the new title at the same time.

Trip Hawkins

The failure of Christianity in the areas west from Sicily was even greater, and was increased by the spread of Arab outlooks and influence to that area, and especially to Spain.

Carroll Quigley

Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.

William S. Burroughs

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Do the duty which lies nearest to you, the second duty will then become clearer.

Thomas Carlyle

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.

Marilyn Ferguson

But virtue, as it never will be moved,Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,Will sate itself in a celestial bedAnd prey on garbage.

William Shakespeare

Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.

Philip Pullman

Love and lordship hate companions

Benjamin Franklin

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

Jose Saramago