Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. 

--Abraham Lincoln, (1809-1865)

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest. 

--Confucius, (c. 551-478 BCE)

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

--John W. Gardner

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self. 

--Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

--Karl Marx

Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period.

--Nicholas Sparks, author (1965- )

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

--Bertrand Russell, (1872-1970)

The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.

--Arnold H. Glasow

The wastebasket is a writer's best friend. 

--Isaac Bashevis Singer, (1904-1991)

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way. 

--E. L. Doctorow, (1931- )

The highest justification of liberal education is that, by forming free and well-furnished minds, it prepares students to fashion for themselves a good life.

--John Stewart Mill, (1806-1873)

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences. 

--Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth. 

--Leo Tolstoy, (1828-1910)

Oftentimes excusing of a fault / Doth make the fault the worse by th' excuse. 

--William Shakespeare, (1564-1616)

I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. 

--Arthur Godfrey

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work. 

--Anatole France, (1844-1924)

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

--William James

A city that outdistances man's walking powers is a trap for man.

--Arnold Toynbee, historian (1889-1975)

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.

--Groucho Marx

The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

To be prepared is half the victory.

--Miguel de Cervantes

[E]xperience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. ... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

--Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1928 case of Olmstead v. United States