Something I've realized lately, to my shock, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we're smart about it.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

Joseph Joubert

When the time is right, you just got to do it.

Jack Simplot

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

Sir Matthew Hale

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

Robert Penn Warren

How the girls could turn to ghosts before your eyes And the very dreams that led to them are keeping them from dying And how the grace with which she walked into your life Will stay with you in your steps, And pace with you a while So long, so long.

Chris Carrabba

And here's the fact: the fact is it doesn't solve the problem. First of all, if you taxed these people at 100 percent, basically next year you said, 'Look, every penny you make next year the government's going to take it from you,' it still doesn't solve the debt.

Marco Rubio

Oh, honey, of course it hurts! Beauty is pain. But you don't want to look like a troll, do you?

Libba Bray

And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!

Charles Dickens

Now he found out a new thing--namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.

Mark Twain

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew.

Albert Einstein

We should keep silent about those in power to speak well of them almost implies flattery to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.

Jean de la Bruyere