Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

No, no, no, Hooch told himself silently. Getting even don't amount to nothing in this world. Getting even only gets you behind. The best revenge is to get rich enough to make them all call you sir, that's how you get even with these boys.

Orson Scott Card

Opponents of capital punishment argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting not only on behalf of society, but also on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family.

Dennis Prager

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.

Ambrose Bierce

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage, and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

Carl Clinton Van Doren

In bestowing charity, the main consideration: should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except in case of accident or sudden change. Every one has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not overlook. But the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is necessarily limited by his lack of knowledge of the circumstances connected with each. He is the only true reformer who is as care ful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in almsgiving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue. The rich man is thus almost restricted to following the examples of...others, who know that the best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise: free libraries, parks, and means of recreation, by which men are helped in body and mind; works of art, certain to give pleasure and improve the public taste; and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the general condition of the people; in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows in the forms best calculated to do them lasting good.http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/carnegie.htm

Andrew Carnegie, Wealth also app

But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn't be drafted until we were 20.

Mel Gibson

No one should ever ask themselves that: why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. If we ask that question, it means we want to find out what makes us happy. If what makes us happy is different from what we have now, then we must either change once and for all or stay as we are, feeling even more unhappy.

Paulo Coelho

There is nothing wrong in using people. The success never uses people except to their advantage.

Mark Caine

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Give a beggar a dime and he'll bless you. Give him a dollar and he'll curse you for withholding the rest of your fortune. Poverty is a bag with a hole at the bottom.

Anzia Yezierska

I did a twenty foot print and John Cage is involved in that because he was the only person I knew in New York who had a car and who would be willing to do this.

Robert Rauschenberg

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

Sugar Ray Robinson