Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn’t burn up any fossil fuel, doesn’t pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
—Margaret Mead (American Cultural Anthropologist)
The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.
—Johnny Carson (American Comedian)
this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me! Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
—Kurt Vonnegut (American Novelist)
You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.
—Emmeline Pankhurst (British Suffragist)
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
—Ezra Pound (American Poet, Critic)
I think all women go through periods where we hate this about ourselves, we don’t like that. It’s great to get to a place where you dismiss anything you’re worried about. I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.
—Angelina Jolie (American Actor)
A horse that can count to 10 is a remarkable horse—not a remarkable mathematician.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)
Smart is like vanilla ice cream. There are thousands of really smart people. I value eccentricity, weirdness, interestingness. Black swans.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)
Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)
Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
—Mao Zedong (Chinese Statesman)
There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.
—Nikolai Gogol (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)
Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
—Plutarch (Greek Biographer)
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)