Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future.

If a theory purports to explain everything, then it is likely not explaining much at all.

Massimo Pigliucci

Morning drew on apace. The air became more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue: the death of night, rather than the birth of day: glimmered faintly in the sky. The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes. The rain came down, thick and fast; and pattered, noisily, among the leafless bushes.

Charles Dickens

Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the onset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have a malady in the less attractive forms.

Charles Dickens

A life which does not go into action is a failure.

Arnold J. Toynbee

A literary movement consists of five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other cordially.

George Moore

I often laugh at Satan, and there is nothing that makes him so angry as when I attack him to his face, and tell him that through God I am more than a match for him

Martin Luther King Jr.

More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.

P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum

I was in a relationship with a girl I loved for three years. Where do you go after three years? Then you've got to start thinking about other things, and I'm too young to think about those things.

Shia LaBeouf

Always remember, Peggy, it's matrimonial suicide to be jealous when you have a really good reason.

Clare Boothe Luce

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.

John Burroughs

Die Welt ist voller Torheit, Dumpfheit, Inkonsequenz und Ungerechtigkeit. Es gehört viel Mut dazu, diesen nicht das Feld zu räumen.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The parent knows instinctively that if they're working and setting an example for their child that means that child is more likely to be in school, more likely to stay out of trouble and more likely to complete their education.

John Engler