The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
—Mortimer J. Adler (American Philosopher, Educator)
If you want to be a complete human being, if you want to be genuine and hold the fullness of life in your heart, then failure is an opportunity to get curious about what is going on and listen to the storylines. Don’t buy the ones that blame it on everybody else, and don’t buy the storylines that blame it on yourself either.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)
The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.
—Jagadish Chandra Bose (Indian Physicist, Botanist)
Our government sprang from and was made for the people—not the people for the government. To them it owes an allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom.
—Andrew Johnson (American Head of State)
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
—Yoda (Fictional Character)
Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitudes toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)
The God who created these fair heavens with the same facility as yon green sapling; he who hath bestowed on man a life of toil, of transient joys and fleeting pains, that he might not forget the higher worth of his enduring soul, and might feel that immortality waited for him beyond the grave;—He, he is one only God!
—Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (German Poet)
It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.
—Demosthenes (Greek Statesman, Orator)
Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
—J. M. Barrie (Scottish Novelist)
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Taoist Philosopher)
And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.
—Antonin Artaud (French Drama Theorist)