I think it was this curiosity about the natural world which awoke my early interest in science.

Writing for me is a kind of compulsion, so I don't think anyone could havemade me do it, or prevented me from doing it.

J.K. Rowling

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Emily Dickinson

My philosophy is that the most important aspect of any religion should be human kindness. And to try to ease the suffering of others. To try to bring light and love into the lives of mankind.

Steven Seagal

I take great comfort in having people around who can walk in my office and tell me what's on their mind. Part of my job is -- they say, what's your job? My job is decision-maker. I make a lot of decisions. Obviously, some of which you've seen, and a lot of them you don't. And they're big ones and little ones. But you make a lot of decisions. And if you don't -- if you're uncertain about all the facts surrounding a decision, you've got to rely upon people. And you've then got to create an environment in which people are willing to come in and say, here's what's on my mind.It's important at the presidential level. It's important in business. You've got to have people comfortable about saying, Here's what I think you ought to do, Mr. CEO. You've got to listen and have a -- I've always believed in a flat organizational chart. I think the worst thing that can happen for decision-makers is to get a filtered point of view.

George W. Bush, Importance of Sm

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

Plato

There are three things I have loved but never understood. Art, music and women.

Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle

Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature.

Dennis Prager

Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs.

Jonathan Kozol

I wasn't always a writer. When I went to college and majored in fine arts, I was a painter. Then I was a stay-at-home mom.

Janet Evanovich

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon).

Harold Rosenberg

An encouraged person will eventually get his drive from encouragement; he becomes more dependent. A person that never really receives encouragement learns to move out of spite; he becomes more independent.

Criss Jami

I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.

Oscar Wilde