The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong. If the Government or majorities think an individual is right, no one will interfere with him; but when agitators talk against the things considered holy, or when radicals criticise, or satirize the political gods, or question the justice of our laws and institutions, or pacifists talk against war, how the old inquisition awakens, and ostracism, the excommunication of the church, the prison, the wheel, the torture-chamber, the mob, are called to suppress the free expression of thought.
—Harry Weinberger (American Lawyer)
If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.
—Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Head of State)
A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)
To me, ‘busy’ implies that the person is out of control of their life.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)
Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it.—It unloosens the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman’s task in another’s hands.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)
A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)
Live while you live, the epicure would say, and seize the pleasures of the passing day.—Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, and give to God each moment as it flies.—Lord, in my views, let both united be. I live in pleasure while I live to thee.
—Philip Doddridge (English Nonconformist Religious Leader)
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.
—Horace Greeley (American Journalist)
If it were not for hope, the heart would break.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)
We fly, but we have not ‘conquered’ the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and use of such of her forces as we may understand.
—Beryl Markham (English-African Aviator)
All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)