War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.

For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill.

Marcel Proust

Suppose some one asserts of his lustful appetite that, when the desired object and the opportunity are present, it is quite irresistible. Ask him if a gallows were erected before the house where he finds this opportunity, in order that he should be hanged thereon immediately after the gratification of his lust, whether he could not then control his passion; we need not be long in doubt what he would reply. Ask him, however, if his sovereign ordered him, on the pain of the same immediate execution, to bear false witness against an honourable man, whom the prince might wish to destroy under a plausible pretext, would he consider it possible in that case to overcome his love of life, however great it may be. He would perhaps not venture to affirm whether he would do so or not, but he would unhesitatingly admit that it is possible to do so. He judges, therefore, that he can do a certain thing because he is conscious that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free--a fact which but for the moral law he would never have known.

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure

I think... I would rather recollect a life misspent on fragile things than spent avoiding moral debt

Neil Gaiman

I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future, that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring.

Julien Benda

I don't know nothing about no marriages or nothing. I ain't even never been to a wedding.

Mike Epps

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are

C.S. Lewis

I think people are sexy when they have a sense of humor, when they are smart, when they have some sense of style, when they are kind, when they express their own opinions, when they are creative, when they have character.

Suzanne Vega

I mean, I am fully aware of my influence and my responsibility to society in general representing the gay community. But in the same time, I don't represent the entire gay community because it's a vast, vast community, as one can imagine.

K. D. Lang

Eagerly, musician,Sweep your string,So we may sing,Elated, optative,Our several voicesInterblending,Playfully contending,Not interferingBut co-inhering,For all withinThe cincture of the soundIs holy ground,Where all are Brothers,None faceless Others. Let mortals bewareOf words, forWith words we lie,Can say peaceWhen we mean war,Foul thought speak fairAnd promise falsely,But song is true:Let music for peaceBe the paradigm,For peace means to changeAt the right time,As the World-Clock,Goes Tick and Tock. So may the storyOf our human cityPresently moveLike music, whenBegotten notesNew notes beget,Making the flowingOf time a growing,Till what it could be,At last it is,Where even sadnessIs a form of gladness,Where Fate is Freedom,Grace and Surprise.

W. H. Auden

Respect... is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.

Annie Gottlieb

Some people with blogs are never going to get famous, and they've been doing it for, like, over a year. I feel bad for them.

Jessica Cutler

The link between peace and stability on the one hand, and social and economic growth on the other, is dialectic. Peace, poverty, and backwardness cannot mix in one region.

King Hussein I