Power is the ability to do good things for others.
—Brooke Astor (American Writer, Philanthropist)
It’s been very important throughout my career that I’ve met all the guys I’ve copied, because at each stage they’ve said, “Don’t play like me, play like you.”
—Eric Clapton (British Musician)
Change does not change tradition. It strengthens it. Change is a challenge and an opportunity, not a threat.
—Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (British Prince)
Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.
—Arthur Erickson (Canadian Architect)
With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.
—Federico Garcia Lorca (Spanish Poet)
Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
—Harriet B. Braiker (American Psychologist)
Frustrated love has been the incentive for many great works.
—John Michell (English Esotericist, New Age Writer)
The best match in the world will not light a candle unless the wick be first suitably prepared.
—Algernon Blackwood (English Novelist)
No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.
—James K. Polk (President of America)
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (English Writer, Politician)
In comedy, reconcilement with life comes at the point when to the tragic sense only an inalienable difference or dissension with life appears.
—Constance Rourke (American Historian)
Many people feel empty, a world that seemed so strong just collapsed. Forty years have been wasted on stupid strife for the sake of an unsuccessful experiment. The values gathered together have vanished, the strategies for survival have become ridiculous. And so forty years of our lives have become a story, a bad anecdote. But it may be possible to remember these adventures with a kind of irony.
—Gyorgy Konrad (Hungarian Novelist, Essayist)
I may have faults, but being wrong ain’t one of them.
—Jimmy Hoffa (American Labor Leader)