One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

Max Beerbohm

A leader knows what's best to do; a manager knows merely how best to do it.

Ken Adelman

INNOVATION is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form.

Watts Humprey

Anybody who would like to travel as an archaeologist of mores and observe men instead of rocks could find an image of the century of Louis XV in some village in Provence, that of Louis XIV in Poitou, that of even more remote times in the far reaches of Brittany. Most of these cities have fallen from some splendor that historians, more preoccupied with dates than customs, no longer speak of, but whose memory lives on, such as in Brittany, where the national character scarcely accepts the forgetting of what this country is fundamentally about. . . All of these cities have their primitive character.

Honore de Balzac, B

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

Paul De Man

No man ought to lay a cross upon himself, or to adopt tribulation, as is done in popedom; but if a cross or tribulation come upon him, then let him suffer it patiently, and know that it is good and profitable for him.

Martin Luther King Jr.

It's interesting that I had such a close relationship with my grandfather. Because your parents always judge you: they say, 'You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that.' But with your grandparents you have a feeling that you can say anything or you can do anything, and they will support you. That's why you have this kind of connection.

Novak Djokovic

Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.

Victor Hugo

My background is in hardware design. I found hardware work to be a welcome change from thousands of hours of programming and that led to the designs you mentioned.

David Crane

I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the '90s, and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.

Janeane Garofalo

I've been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family.

Jeff Foxworthy

The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.

Chris Cleave