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1. "A man said to the universe: 'Sir I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'the fact has not created in me sense of obligation.'" ~ Stephen Crane
2. "Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man." ~ Daniel Boone
3. "Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
~ William Cullen Bryant
4. "The present assault on capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich—a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness." ~ Stephen Johnson Field, Associate Justice, SCOTUS, Concurring in Pollock v. Farmers Loan and Trust Co., 157 U. S. 429, 607 (1895)
5. "It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it." ~ William James Durant
6. "Let us get of these indoor narrow modern days, whose twelve hours somehow have become shortened, into the sunlight and the pure wind. A something that the ancients thought divine can be found and felt there still." ~ Richard Jefferies
7. "Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world." ~ Albert Camus
8. "Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." ~ Margaret Mitchell
9. "In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism." ~ Spiro Agnew
10. "Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom." ~ Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
11. "Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone." ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
12. "Bad ideas sometimes begin with a good impulse. The “loss of the sense of sin” arises, I believe, from a misguided notion of tolerance. Democracies thrive because of a neighborly forbearance of differences of opinion. Tolerance does not, however, require us to abandon our convictions or deny the existence of moral standards. Tolerance does not demand that we call “good” what is evil or “evil” what is good. Nor does forgiveness of an action mean that we approve the action; in fact, we can only forgive something that is a genuine offense." ~ Cardinal Donald Wuerl
13. "Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing.... So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor." ~ St. Augustine of Hippo
14. "Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think." ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
15. "Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep. I can express with very limited adequacy the passionate devotion to this land that possesses millions of our people, born, like myself, under other skies, for the privilege that that this county has bestowed in allowing them to partake of its fellowship." ~ Felix Frankfurter
16. "I feel that there has to be a purpose to what we do. If there was no hope at all, we should just sleep or drink and wait for death. But we don’t want to do that. And why? I think something tells us that we should struggle. We don’t really know why we should struggle, but we do, because we think it’s better than sitting down and waiting for calamity." - Chinua Achebe
17. "The United States has broken the second rule of war. That is: don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland in Asia. Rule One is, don't march on Moscow. I developed those two rules myself." ~ Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery
18. "In the discovery of secret things, and in the investigation of hidden causes, stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators." ~ Sir William Schwenck Gilbert
19. "Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it." ~ James A. Garfield
20. "At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society." ~ Robert F. Kennedy
21. "En général, l’art du gouvernement consiste à prendre le plus d’argent qu’on peut à une grande partie des citoyens, pour le donner à une autre partie." = "In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other." ~ Voltaire
22. "These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by the scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman." ~ Abigail Smith Adams
23. "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties." ~ John Milton, in Areopagitica, published 23 Nov 1644
"I am resolved to vest the Congress with no more Power than that is absolutely necessary, and to use a familiar Expression, to keep the Staff in our own Hands; for I am confident if surrendered into the Hands of others a most pernicious use will be made of it." ~ Edward Rutledge, letter to John Jay, 29 Jun 1776
24. "The legislative and judicial branches of the Government present prominent examples of distinguished civil attainments and matured experience, and it shall be my endeavor to call to my assistance in the Executive Departments individuals whose talents, integrity, and purity of character will furnish ample guaranties for the faithful and honorable performance of the trusts to be committed to their charge. With such aids and an honest purpose to do whatever is right, I hope to execute diligently, impartially, and for the best interests of the country the manifold duties devolved upon me. In the discharge of these duties my guide will be the Constitution, which I this day swear to "preserve, protect, and defend."" - Zachary Taylor, Inaugural Address, Monday, March 5, 1849
25. "It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father." ~ Pope John XXIII
26. "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong'. Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night." ~ Charles M. Schulz
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