But you have to understand, American democracy is not like the system you have. We're not an ocean liner that sails across the ocean from point A to point B at 30 knots. That's not American democracy. American democracy is kind of like a life raft that bobs around the ocean all the time. Your feet are always wet. Winds are always blowing. You're cold. You're wet. You're uncomfortable -- but you never sink.

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,but when the darkness sets in,their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

Elisabeth KublerRoss

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Ambrose Bierce

Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it.

Ovid

[Growing up] is a process that never ends. It isn't a point you attain so you can say, Hooray, I'm grown up. Some people never grow up. And nobody ever finishes growing. Or shouldn't. If you stop you might as well quit. What I have to tell you is that it never gets any easier. It goes right on being rough forever. But nothing that's easy is worth anything. You ought to have learned that by now. What happens as you keep on growing is that all of a sudden you realize that it's more exciting and beautiful than scary and awful.

Madeleine L'Engle

Reaction - a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.

Victor Hugo

Individualism, as a definition of holding to personal ideals, is classed as obstinacy and anti-social. Inevitably we run point blank into the evils of compromise. When compromise enters our moral fiber, it spreads like a cancerous growth. We think we plan adequate safeguards around areas in which we contemplate yielding our standards, but once we lower the fence and break our strong will to do right, come what may, we expose ourselves to forces that spread beyond control. Compromise always starts on some rather insignificant principle. The dangers of yielding seem negligible and we usually risk those things first where observation and detection by others is difficult. We thus seek to avoid censure and discipline. In a short time we find ourselves trading our principles for false values and doing it in the black market of human relationships. . . .

Ralph W. Hardy

Health care costs are eating the Defense Department alive.

Robert M. Gates

What you are will show in what you do.

Thomas Alva Edison

Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.

Paulo Coelho

There are charms made only for distance admiration.

Samuel Johnson

Prediction is not just one of the things your brain does. It is the primary function of the neo-cortex, and the foundation of intelligence.

Jeff Hawkins

while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

Vladimir Nabokov