What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

George Santayana

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.

Thomas Jefferson

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

Ernest Hemingway

All we ask is to be let alone.

Jefferson Davis

I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.

Bram Cohen

The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises.

Irwin Shaw

Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do -- to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.

Stephen King

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.

Jeff Bridges

They gave me powers of thought and memory far beyond anything natural evolution would have given me, but that doesn't give them the right to decide the meaning of my life as if I were some dream. I decide the meaning. If my life is a dream then it's my dream, I'm the dreamer.

Orson Scott Card

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror: For now he lives in fame, though not in life.

William Shakespeare

But I like going to church. If you've been brought up in the Church of England, it feels like visiting an elderly relative. And I think it's important that part of the kids' education is knowing about the Bible.

Jack Dee

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Thomas Jefferson