Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. 

--R. Buckminster Fuller, (1895-1983)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

--Arthur C. Clarke

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. 

--Edward Abbey, (1927-1989)

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried . 

-- Winston Churchill

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent.  Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.  The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. 

--Louis Dembitz Brandeis, (1856-1941)

He who says organization says oligarchy.

--Robert Michels, 1915

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.

-Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. 

--Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

Reading is seeing by proxy. 

--Herbert Spencer, (1820-1903)

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both. 

--John Andrew Holmes

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. 

--Pericles, (430 BCE)

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. 

--Eric Hoffer, (1902-1983)

A survey found that the fear of public speaking ranks higher in most people's minds than the fear of death. In other words, at a funeral the average person would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.

--Jerry Seinfeld

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. 

--Victor Hugo, (1802-1885)

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

--Thomas Pynchon, (1937- )

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.

--Carl Schurz, (1829-1906)

The world of books is still the world.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. 

--Heraclitus, (c. 540-470 BCE)

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

--Frank Lloyd Wright

Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence.

--Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. 

--Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803-1882)

In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.

--Martin Niemölle (1892-1984)