To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required, not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

La sua vita era ancora troppo breve, per sapere che non c'è cosa più imminente dell'impossibile, e che quanto dobbiamo sempre prevedere è l'imprevisto.

Victor Hugo

A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.

Leo Tolstoy

There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.

Charles Horton Cooley

That war [Bosnian war] in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstiutution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent - or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought - destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position - leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that - like Chomsky - looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.

Christopher Hitchens

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

Paulo Coelho

If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. Theyll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.

Dwight D Eisenhower

The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Harold MacMillan

I'm from Naples. I was born in a poor neighborhood and I always, in my heart, felt like it would be amazing to be able to adopt a child from Naples. I could give someone the opportunity I had. I would love to give back in that way and pay it forward.

Giuliana Rancic

Treat your superior as a father, your equal as a brother, and your inferior as a son.

Proverb

Luck relies on chance, labor on character.

Richard Cobden

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

Napoleon Hill

The writer is all alone.

V. S. Naipaul