I shall not change my course because those who assume to be better than I desire it.

I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

John D. Rockefeller

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

Jackie Robinson

If someone does not consider those around them to be valuable and hold only themselves in high regard, they too have a very bad self-esteem.

Stephen Richards

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the fIrst stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.quoted by Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale in his talk entitled: The Stoic Warrior's Triad: Tranquility, Fearlessness, and Freedom.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Arc

But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned,' whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned -- the man who knew it, or the man who did not?

Oliver Sacks

People never ask people doing serious music, 'Do you ever think about doing funny music?'

Al Yankovic

If the Almighty himself played the violin, the credits would still read 'Rubinstein, God, and Piatigorsky', in that order.note: Whenever Heifetz played in trios with Arthur Rubinstein (piano) and Gregor Piatigorsky (cello), Rubinstein always got top billing.

Jascha Heifetz, "Los Angeles Tim

Today enormous effort goes into convincing the American public that we're just consumers of media manipulation and sound-bites and spin doctors. That we care only about ourselves, money, and stuff. That acting out of passion and conviction doesn't make a difference. But all history shows that it does.

Bernadine Dorn

I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me.

Clare Boothe Luce

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

Franklin Pierce

He who cures a disease may be the skillfullest, but he that prevents it is the safest physician.

Thomas Fuller

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

Karl Marx