Among wellborn spirits courage does not depend on age.
—Pierre Corneille (French Playwright)
The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind’s eye only, fade out in sand.
—Nadine Gordimer (South African Novelist)
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
—Theodore H. White (American Journalist)
The chiefest action for a man of spirit is never to be out of action; the soul was never put into the body to stand still.
—John Webster (English Dramatist)
Rest, rest, shall I have not all eternity to rest.
—Antoine Arnauld (French Theologian)
Without general elections, without freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, without the free battle of opinions, life in every public institution withers away, becomes a caricature of itself, and bureaucracy rises as the only deciding factor.
—Rosa Luxemburg (German Socialist, Revolutionary)
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
—Wilhelm Reich (Austrian Psychoanalyst)
In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.
—Ansel Adams (American Photographer)
Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t.
—George Lucas (American Filmmaker)
Every great scientific truth goes through three stages.—First, people say it conflicts with the Bible.—Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly, they say they always believed it.
—Louis Agassiz (Swiss-American Scientist)
Spiritual awakening does not depend initially on who we are or what we do; rather it is becoming attuned to the working of great compassion at the heart of existence.
—Taitetsu Unno (American Buddhist Scholar)
A historical romance is the only kind of book where chastity really counts.
—Barbara Cartland (English Romantic Novelist)
Fools follow after vanity, men of evil wisdom. The wise man keeps earnestness as his best jewel.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)
There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.
—Andre Breton (French Poet, Critic)
A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction.
—Carol Shields (Canadian Author, Academic)