It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.

Arthur J. Goldberg

I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.

James Thurber

A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by.Spare some change? mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his baseball cap.I have nothing to give you, said the stranger. Then he added, What's that you are sitting on?Nothing, replied the beggar, Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.Ever look inside? asked the stranger.What's the point? There's nothing in there.Have a look inside, insisted the stranger.The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw the box was filled with gold.

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now:

I realize myself that hate wastes a lot of time and energy and I would rather re-direct any energy that I have to good and positive use.

Julian Cope

Faith is not a notion, but a real strong essential hunger, an attracting or magnetic desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a seed of the divine nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its like.

William Law

Ankh-Morpork is a godless city--''I thought it had more than three hundred places of worship?' said Maladict.Strappi stared at him in rage that was incoherent until he managed to touch bottom again. 'Ankh-Morpork is a city', he recovered.

Terry Pratchett

It's a reality that in this business there's an expectation of being thin. But having a baby is a reality too, and it's more important for me to make milk than to fit into those tiny pants. So that's just going to have to wait.

Emily Procter

Home is where the people who live there need me to come home to them, and worry about me when I'm gone. There's no such place on this earth, no matter how far I drive.

Orson Scott Card

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This

George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 17

There are always risks in freedom. The only risk in bondage is breaking free.

Gita Bellin

Childhood means simplicity. Look at the world with the child's eye - it is very beautiful.

Kailash Satyarthi