The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things is of rather low quality on the whole and less even in quantity than it looks to those who have not tried it.

People think I have courage. The courage in my family are my wife Pam, my three daughters, here, Nicole, Jamie, LeeAnn, my mom, who's right here too.

Jim Valvano

Your boss loves your ideas ... it's you he doesn't care about.

Steven Charles

There is a kind of elevation which does not depend on fortune it is a certain air which distinguishes us, and seems to destine us for great things it is a price which we imperceptibly set upon ourselves.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

In the electoral campaign, President Bush named as the most important person in his life Jesus. Now he has a unique chance to prove that he meant it seriously: for him, as for all Americans today, Love thy neighbor! means Love the Muslims! OR IT MEANS NOTHING AT ALL.

Slavoj Zizek

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

Henry David Thoreau

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Abraham Lincoln

The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.

Russell Baker

Science, at bottom, is really anti-intellectual. It always distrusts pure reason, and demands the production of objective fact.

H. L. Mencken

When I was young my Father used to tell me that the two most worthwhile pursuits in life were the pursuit of truth and of beauty and I believe that Alfred Nobel must have felt much the same when he gave these prizes for literature and the sciences.

Frederick Sanger

Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.

David Augsburger

It's impossible. You try to have any kind of relationship with your family, with a man, or with a friend, and you have to be on the phone and the Internet the entire time.

Keira Knightley

I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.

Jeannette Rankin