This week, the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years. People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China's relationship with the outside world.

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

Herbert Read

But this will not do, God will certainly punish you for stealing and for being unfaithful.

Jupiter Hammon

You don't need really expensive clothes to look cute.

Christy Romano

Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Plato

We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.

Germaine De Stael

When a scientist is ahead of his times, it is often through misunderstanding of current, rather than intuition of future truth. In science there is never any error so gross that it won't one day, from some perspective, appear prophetic.

Jean Rostand

The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.

Swami Vivekananda

A man calumniated is doubly injured -- first by him who utters the calumny, and then by him who believes it.

Herodotus

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise.

Alexander Meiklejohn

The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives -- the death of genuine feeling, the death of inspired response, the awareness that makes it possible to feel the pain or the glory of other men in yourself.

Norman Cousins

Only the words of love kept alive are worthy of not being wasted

Arlo Guthrie

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon

Mark Twain