If religion had a good purpose, then man would have created something great. But we're man: we mess up everything. We mess up nature. We mess up God. We take what is given to us and make it into what we think it should be.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

George Bernard Shaw

What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.

Viktor E. Frankl

None of us can choose where we shall love...

Susan Kay

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.

Thomas Alva Edison

Leaders have to act more quickly today. The pressure comes much faster.

Andy Grove

To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

Helen Rowland

The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion.

Raymond Chandler

Show me any top entertainer or top business executive, and I'll show you a guy who has mapped out his life from the very start.

Bobby Darin

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,Life is but an empty dream!For the soul is dead that slumbers,and things are not what they seem.Life is real! Life is earnest!And the grave is not its goal;Dust thou art; to dust returnest,Was not spoken of the soul.Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,is our destined end or way;But to act, that each tomorrowFind us farther than today.Art is long, and Time is fleeting,And our heats, though stout and brave,Still, like muffled drums, are beatingFuneral marches to the grave.In the world's broad field of battle,In the bivouac of life,Be not like dumb, driven cattle!Be a hero in the strife!Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!Let the dead Past bury its deadAct,- act in the living Present!Heart within, and God o'erhead.Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o'er life's solemn main,a forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.Let us then be up and doing,with a heart for any fate;Still achieving, still pursuing,Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Ps

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism.

Philip Pullman

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Barry Goldwater

There's always a learning curve, where you've got to learn what your subject is all about.

Brad Gilbert