Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
—P. J. O’Rourke (American Journalist)
The famous dictum which states that all men are equal will find its illustration in the colonies only when the colonized subject states he is equal to the colonist.
—Frantz Fanon (Algerian Political Theorist)
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
—Georges Bernanos (French Novelist, Polemicist)
In the dark colony of night, when I consider man’s magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.
—Leo Rosten (American Humorist)
When strong, be merciful, if you would have the respect, not the fear of your neighbors.
—Chilon of Sparta (Spartan Magistrate)
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There’s no use in being a damn fool about it.
—Stephen Leacock (Canadian Humorist)
There is only one ultimate and effectual preventive for the maladies to which flesh is heir, and that is death.
—Harvey Williams Cushing (American Neurosurgeon, Biographer)
The poverty of the future will be ignorance, and the social differences of the years to come will be established, rather than by money, by the culture of those who know something and those who know nothing.
—Luciano De Crescenzo (Italian Film Actor, Director, Engineer)
Man will never be enslaved by machinery if the man tending the machine be paid enough.
—Karel Capek (Czech Novelist)
I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.
—Michael Bloomberg (American Businessperson)
The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they’re organized for.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)
You can’t accomplish anything worthwhile if you inhibit yourself. If life teaches you nothing else, know this for sure: When you get the chance, go for it.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)