The philosopher seeks to hear within himself the echoes of the world symphony and to re-project them in the form of concepts.

I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of goodwill. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own.

Aristotle, (attributed)

You never know if you're a writer. You can't trust it. If you woke up and said, 'I'm a writer,' it would be gone. You wouldn't see anything for miles - even the dust would be running away.

Ali Smith

Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost, before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.

Conrad Black

Being a President is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep on riding or he is swallowed.

Harry S Truman

Heaven takes care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Vittorio Alfieri

The power of good is shown not by triumphantly conquering evil, but by continuing to resist evil while facing certain defeat.

Edith Hamilton

Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.

John Green

When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.

Don Marquis

Every error in human conduct must arise from ignorance in ourselves, either perpetual or temporary; and happen either because we do not know what is best and fittest, or because our knowledge is at the time of action not present to the mind

Samuel Johnson