The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

Aung San Suu Kyi

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

Oscar Wilde

What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.

Peter Singer

The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.

Mike Royko

The beauty and completeness of a wild apple tree living its own life in the woods is heartily acknowledged by all those who have been so happy as to form its acquaintance. The fine wild piquancy of its fruit is unrivaled, but in the great question of quantity as human food wild apples are found wanting. Man, therefore, takes the tree from the woods, manures and prunes and grafts,plans and guesses, adds a little of this and that, selects and rejects, until apples of every conceivable size and softness are produced, like nut galls in response to the irritating punctures of insects. Orchard apples are to me the most eloquent words that culture had ever spoken, but they reflect no imperfection upon Nature's spicy crab.

John Muir, Steep Trails, page 15

Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.

Jim Henson

I was born by Caesarean section, but you really can't tell...except that when I leave my house, I always go out the window...

Steven Wright

Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are each so atomically numberous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms-up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare. A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.

Bill Bryson

Suddenly I've got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art.

Sylvester Stallone

Dick Van Dyke was my first idol. He's an amazing physical comedian, like a classic clown, but also very smart and not afraid to show vulnerability.

Douglas Wood

A journalist is basically a chronicler, not an interpreter of events. Where else in society do you have the license to eavesdrop on so many different conversations as you have in journalism? Where else can you delve into the life of our times?

Bill Moyers, Channel Maker, Febr

You don't have to be rich and famous. You just have to be an ordinary person, doing extraordinary things. I'd like more people to know that it's there. Women's achievements still aren't recognised enough in many areas.

Joan Armatrading