The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.
—Carson McCullers (American Novelist)
You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)
Shelving hard decisions is the least ethical course.
—Adrian Cadbury (British Businessman)
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
—Auguste Comte (French Philosopher)
If the world seems unfair or beyond our understanding, sublime places suggest that it is not surprising that things should be thus. We are the playthings of the forces that laid out the oceans and chiselled the mountains.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)
You do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.
—Vaclav Havel (Czech Dramatist, Statesman)
If you can’t take a good kicking, you shouldn’t parade how much luckier you are than other people.
—Charles Saatchi (British Businessman, Art Collector)
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
—John Naisbitt (American Trend Analyst)
A good scientist is a person in whom the childhood quality of perennial curiosity lingers on. Once he gets an answer, he has other questions.
—Frederick Seitz (American Physicist)
Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing, through the overtaking and possessing of a wish discovers the folly of the chase.
—William Congreve (English Dramatist)