Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.
—James E. Burke (American Business Executive)
In human life, you will find players of religion until the knowledge and proficiency in religion will be cleansed from all superstitions, and will be purified and perfected by the enlightenment of real science.
—Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Founder of the Turkish Republic)
Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
—Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)
Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation the source of strength is one’s self. When one prays he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.
—Soong Mei-ling (Chinese Political Figure)
The job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won’t hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game.
—Earl Weaver (American Baseball Player, Manager)
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
—William C. Dement (American Sleep Researcher)
If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.
—Ralph Ellison (American Novelist)
We can make inspired guesses, but we don’t know for certain what physical and chemical properties of the planet’s crust, its ocean, and its atmosphere made it so conducive to such a sudden appearance of life …
—Isaac Asimov (American Novelist, Critic, Popular Scientist)
Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)
When people have nothing, all they want is a handful of grains.
When they become wealthy, they treat the world like a straw.
Material objects by themselves are not great or worthless.
It is the fluctuating fortune of people that makes things appear big or small.
—Bhartrihari (Hindu Philosopher, Grammarian)
Ask thy purse what thou should spend.
—Scottish Proverb
I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.
—N. R. Narayana Murthy (Indian Businessperson)