To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

I think that my past stands me in good stead in that it does have a certain strength for musicians.

John Sebastian

Life itself is a matter of salesmanship.

Thomas J. Watson, Men

In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better.

George Balanchine

Power is not alluring to pure minds

Thomas Jefferson

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Baruch Spinoza

Most Americans want health insurance.

Jacob Lew

What editors are obliged to appear to say that want from women is actually what their want from women.

Naomi Wolf

I shall be an autocrat, that's my trade and the good Lord will forgive me, that's his.

Catherine the Great

In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.

Adrienne Rich

After the dazzling orgies in form and color of the eighteenth century, art was put on a diet, and allowed nothing but the straight line. This sort of progress ended in ugliness. Art reduced to a skeleton, was the result. This was the advantage of this kind of wisdom and abstinence; the style was so sober that it became lean.

Victor Hugo

Nothing will shake a man-or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

C.S. Lewis

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

Benjamin Franklin