The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape.

The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

Pope John Paul II

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all..

Leo Rosten

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Victor Hugo

The words he said, too, must be human enough to bleed.

Cameron Conaway

Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.

Erica Jong

I don't believe in God but I'm very interested in her.

Arthur C. Clarke

The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world -- to the profound longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity for the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as from the same source arise the most senseless enthusiasms.

Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

I am sure my fellow-scientists will agree with me if I say that whatever we were able to achieve in our later years had its origin in the experiences of our youth and in the hopes and wishes which were formed before and during our time as students.

Felix Bloch

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

Napoleon Hill

One word from Chairman Mao is worth ten thousand from others. His every statement is truth. We must carry out those we that understand as well as those we don't.

Lin Biao

What I don't like are pompous, pretentious movies.

Peter Jackson

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting - for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day.

Dag Hammarskjold