The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving

I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate.

James Boswell

I think it's important to travel around in order to get a notion of what's going on, to find out what people are think about. I enjoy talking on campuses most because people are more informed and discussion is generally livelier.

Harrison Salisbury

Whilst the last members were signing the Constitution, Doctor Franklin, looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art, a rising, from a setting, sun. I have, said he, often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising, and not a setting sun.

Benjamin Franklin

I get half a million just to show up at parties. My life is, like, really, really fun.

Paris Hilton

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.

Max Beerbohm

For those who immerse themselves in what the fairy tale has to communicate, it becomes a deep, quiet pool which at first seems to reflect only our own image; but behind it we soon discover the inner turmoils of our soul - its depth, and ways to gain peace within ourselves and with the world, which is the reward of our struggles.

Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of En

The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert (speak out) upon all political institutions, is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact to their existence, that without it we must fall at once into depression or anarchy. To say that he who holds unpopular opinions must hold them at the peril of his life, and that, if he expresses them in public, he has only himself to blame if they who disagree with him should rise and put him to death, is to strike at all rights, all liberties, all protection of the laws, and to justify and extenuate all crimes.

William Cullen Bryant, defending

The consistent anarchist should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat. Some sort of council communism is the natural form of revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive understanding that democracy is largely a sham when the industrial system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of owners, managers, and technocrats, a vanguard party, or a State bureaucracy.

Noam Chomsky

...the story of a man who saw three fellows laying bricks at a new building:He approached the first and asked, What are you doing?Clearly irritated, the first man responded, What the heck do you think I'm doing? I'm laying these darn bricks!He then walked over to the second bricklayer and asked the same question.The second fellow responded, Oh, I'm making a living.He approached the third bricklayer with the same question, What are you doing?The third looked up, smiled and said, I'm building a cathedral.At the end of the day, who feels better about how he's spent his last eight hours?

Joan Borysenko

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.

Robert Louis Stevenson

There are people who own cars and are getting free cell phones. A car helps one find a job, too. Where do you draw the line?

Timothy Griffin

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult