Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions... The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.

Mark Twain

There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work, a fabricated tradition. Over-concentration on any one point is a distortion.

Camille Anna Paglia

Since when was genius found respectable?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When you go to war, both sides lose totally.

Yoko Ono

Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.

Frank Moore Colby, The Colby Ess

Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future.

Frank Herbert

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

James Mcneill Whistler

Sleeping late in the morning is the origin of poverty and short life.

Namboku Mizuno

Temporary success can be achieved in spite of lack of other fundamental qualities, but no advancements can be maintained without hard work.

William Feather

I don't think I have accomplished what I still have to accomplish. There is one thing that I would like to do, and that's to bring security and peace to the Jewish people.

Ariel Sharon

If there was no Cosmic Ordering then it would have been necessary to invent it.

Stephen Richards

To win one Moonman is amazing, to win two is incredible.

Harry Styles