Avarice, envy, pride, / Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all / On Fire. 

--Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) [The Divine Comedy]

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

--Aldous Huxley

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.

--Chuck Reid

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer. 

--Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards.

--Freeman Dyson

Neurotics build castles in the air; psychotics live in them.

--Anonymous

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

--Anonymous

Nature does nothing uselessly. 

--Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

The accumulation of gadgets hides these meanings: those who use these devices do not understand them; those who invent them do not understand much else.

 --C. Wright Mills

May you live in interesting times.

--Ancient Chinese Curse

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

--Bertrand Russell, (1872-1970)

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

--Samuel Johnson

The true calling of sociology is to contribute to the self-understanding of society rather than to its manipulated improvement.

--Martin Bulmer

What you cannot enforce, do not command.

--Sophocles, dramatist (495?-406 BCE)

Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing; 
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;  
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,  
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence. 

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (1807-1882)

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. 

--Gloria Steinem (1934- )

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (1922-2008 )

To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.

--Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887)

It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. 

--Robert Southey (1774-1843)

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. 

-Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit.

--Rudolf Arnheim, (1904-2007)

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

--Clarence Darrow, lawyer and author (1857-1938)