One and all, religions have their original prophets, their sacred books, their traditions of ages gone. One and all require us to accept without question what other people long dead have said or written; to obey without question the commands of those behind us.... No matter what the belief, if it had modestly said, This is our best thought, go on, think farther! then we could have smoothly outgrown our early errors and long since have developed a religion such as would have kept pace with an advancing world. But we were made to believe and not allowed to think. We were told to obey, rather than to experiment and investigate.

There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel there is only one home to the life of a tortoise there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?

Wole Soyinka

But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.

Ray Stannard Baker

When has faith ever been about feelings?

Camy Tang

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

Martha Beck

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.

Will Durant

She is such a good friend that she would throw all her acquaintances into the water for the pleasure of fishing them out again.

CharlesMaurice de Talleyrand

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

Henry George

Anyone who is popular is bound to be disliked.

Yogi Berra

The law of nations is naturally founded on this principle, that different nations ought in time of peace to do one another all the good they can, and in time of war as little injury as possible, without prejudicing their real interests.

Charles de Secondat

I've never quite understood why people marry marriage is just an invented structure.

Julie Christie

We say keep your change, we'll keep our God, our guns, our constitution.

Sarah Palin

It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.

Jane Austen