Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.
—Cesare Pavese (Italian Novelist, Poet)
But although denying that we have a special position in the natural world might seem becomingly modest in the eye of eternity, it might also be used as an excuse for evading our responsibilities. The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all living creatures with whom we share the earth.
—David Attenborough (English Naturalist, Broadcaster)
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
—Steve Ballmer (American Businessperson, Philantropist)
The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride; the threshold high enough to turn deceit aside; the door-band strong enough from robbers to defend: this door will open at a touch to welcome every friend.
—Henry van Dyke Jr. (American Author, Educator, Clergyman)
People are like stained glass windows—the true beauty can be seen only when there is light from within. The darker the night, the brighter the windows.
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (American Psychiatrist)
Birth is not the beginning of life—only of an individual awareness. Change into another state is not death—only the ending of this awareness.
—Hermes Trismegistus (Greek-Egyptian Author)
Marriage is about the most expensive way for the average man to get his laundry done.
—Burt Reynolds (American Actor)
Without cancer, I never would have won a single Tour de France. Cancer taught me a plan for more purposeful living, and that in turn taught me how to train and to win more purposefully. It taught me that pain has a reason, and that sometimes the experience of losing things—whether health or a car or an old sense of self—has its own value in the scheme of life. Pain and loss are great enhancers.
—Lance Armstrong (American Racing Cyclist )
No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well.
—Margaret Thatcher (British Head of State)
I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. … Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned.
—Nicolaus Copernicus (Polish Astronomer)