Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man--yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

Marcus Aurelius

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him.

Mark Twain

The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed...But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't. Either way, we're for it.

C.S. Lewis

Thou askest me to take things seriously? After what thou didst last night? When thou needest to kill a man and instead did what you did? You were supposed to kill one, not make one! When we have just seen the sky full of airplanes of a quantity to kill us back to our grandfathers and forward to all unborn grandsons including all cats, goats and bedbugs. Airplanes making a noise to curdle the milk in your mother's breasts as they pass over darkening the sky and roaring like lions and you ask me to take things seriously. I take them too seriously already.

Ernest Hemingway

Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm.

Earl Nightingale

Most people are really cool and I really don't mind talking to them and answering their questions.

Jimmy Carl Black

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;They are the books, the arts, the academes,That show, contain and nourish all the world.

William Shakespeare

William James used to preach the will-to-believe. For my part, I should wish to preach the will-to-doubt. None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error.

Bertrand Russell

The paradox of education is precisely this that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

James Baldwin

Liberals tend to put the onus of your success on society and conservatives on you and your family.

Dennis Prager

Sleep is good, death is better but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.

Heinrich Heine

One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure.

William Feather