There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

Quality in a classical Greek sense is how to live with grace and intelligence, with bravery and mercy.

Theodore White

I love good creditable acquaintance; I love to be the worst of the company.

Jonathan Swift

All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.

Sir Walter Raleigh

You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much.

Source Unknown

The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.

Albert Einstein

Let us suppose, then, that we are dreaming, and that all these particulars--namely, the opening of the eyes, the motion of the head, the forth- putting of the hands--are merely illusions; and even that we really possess neither an entire body nor hands such as we see. Nevertheless it must be admitted at least that the objects which appear to us in sleep are, as it were, painted representations which could not have been formed unless in the likeness of realities; and, therefore, that those general objects, at all events, namely, eyes, a head, hands, and an entire body, are not simply imaginary, but really existent. For, in truth, painters themselves, even when they study to represent sirens and satyrs by forms the most fantastic and extraordinary, cannot bestow upon them natures absolutely new, but can only make a certain medley of the members of different animals; or if they chance to imagine something so novel that nothing at all similar has ever been seen before, and such as is, therefore, purely fictitious and absolutely false, it is at least certain that the colors of which this is composed are real. And on the same principle, although these general objects, viz. a body, eyes, a head, hands, and the like, be imaginary, we are nevertheless absolutely necessitated to admit the reality at least of some other objects still more simple and universal than these, of which, just as of certain real colors, all those images of things, whether true and real, or false and fantastic, that are found in our consciousness (cogitatio), are formed.

Rene Descartes, Meditation I

When you're not concerned with succeeding, you can work with complete freedom.

Larry David

A life without books is a thirsty life, and one without poetry is...like a life without pictures.

Stephen King

Live life to the fullest, and focus on the positive.

Matt Cameron

I influence people, hopefully on the positive side.

Isaac Hayes

A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.

Jane Austen

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

Pope John Paul II