A guilty conscience needs no accuser.
—Philippine Proverb
Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
—Georges Gurdjieff (Armenian Spiritual Leader)
In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving—instead of actually getting up and leaving.
—Erica Jong (American Novelist, Poet)
To play it safe is not to play.
—Robert Altman (American Film Director)
Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there’s a criticism to be made today, it’s that the press isn’t doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information.
—Walter Cronkite (American Television Journalist)
The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Statesman)
If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Philosopher, Writer)
Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.
—Muriel Spark (Scottish Novelist, Poet)
We know only four boring people. The rest of our friends we find very interesting. However, most of the friends we find interesting find us boring: the most interesting find us the most boring. The few who are somewhere in the middle, with whom there is reciprocal interest, we distrust: at any moment, we feel, they may become too interesting for us, or we too interesting for them.
—Lydia Davis (American Author)
No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy.
—Lyman Beecher (American Presbyterian Clergyman)
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.
—Gerard de Nerval (French Poet, Writer)
When wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who are the sufferers.
—Ulysses S. Grant (American Head of State)
Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.
—Erik Erikson (German-born American Psychoanalyst)
Attention is our first duty whenever we want to know what is our second duty. There is no such cause of confusion and worry about what we ought to do, and how to do it, as our unwillingness to hear what God would tell us on that very point.
—Henry Clay Trumbull (American Clergyman)