Scalded cats fear even cold water.

Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature.

Jacob Bronowski

English literature is a kind of training in social ethics. English trains you to handle a body of information in a way that is conducive to action.

Marilyn Butler

I think taste is a social concept and not an artistic one. I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

John Updike

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The recovery of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievements must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.

James Baldwin

Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.

Mark Twain

My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.

Oscar Wilde

Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?

Virginia Woolf

War is fear cloaked in courage.

William Westmoreland

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

John Updike

And as I grew older, I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, well, no, we won't accept you, because we haven't a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called 'deaf' musician. And I just couldn't quite accept that.

Evelyn Glennie

Discontent is the seed of ethics

Friedrich Nietzsche