It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.

Christopher Hitchens

To not be self-conscious of your appearance is huge, and something that I desperately hope to carry into film at some point in my useless life - to not be thinking, 'My ear looks weird from this angle, why is the camera over there?'

Anna Kendrick

When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

Abraham Lincoln

As long as Nazi violence was unleashed only, or mainly, against the Jews, the rest of the world looked on passively and even treaties and agreements were made with the patently criminal government of the Third Reich.... The doors of Palestine were closed to Jewish immigrants, and no country could be found that would admit those forsaken people. They were left to perish like their brothers and sisters in the occupied countries. We shall never forget the heroic efforts of the small countries, of the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Swiss nations, and of individuals in the occupied part of Europe who did all in their power to protect Jewish lives.

Albert Einstein

Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them.

Mark Twain

The only way into truth is through one's own annihilation through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation.

Simone Weil

Ever since I was young I loved making things and being part of the design process.

Maria Sharapova

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem - and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Doing the right thing for someone else occasionally means doing something that feels wrong to you.

Jodi Picoult

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Mahatma Gandhi

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

G. K. Chesterton

If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.

Mark Twain