As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

--Leonardo da Vinci, (1452-1519)

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

--Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. 

--Thomas Carlyle, (1795-1881)

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. 

--Franklin D. Roosevelt, (1882-1945)

A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

--Joseph Conrad, novelist (1857-1924)

[T]he job is not to see where ‘Marx was wrong’ so much as to make a fresh application of his theory to the world around us as it is, not as it once was. To borrow a comparison from the field of physics, we need socialist Faradays and Maxwells or if we are lucky, Einsteins and Plancks, not people who confine themselves to knocking Isaac Newton.

--Harry Braverman, (1920-1976)

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. 

--Mark Twain, (1835-1910)

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. 

--George Orwell, (1903-1950)

Liberal education is the pursuit of human excellence, not the pursuit of excellent salaries and excellent forms of polish and sophistication. Liberal education is not even about excellent intellectual achievements. Its goal is more ethical than intellectual: It focuses on the development of individuals as moral agents, and it teaches students how to reflect both analytically and evaluatively on the fact that the choices we make turn us into the persons we become.

--Marshall Gregory

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.

--Madame De Stael, (1766-1817)

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

--Anne Lamott, (1954- )

To plan for the future without having a sense of history is like trying to plant cut flowers. 

--David McCullough

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. 

--Aldous Huxley, (1894-1963)

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate.

--Rene Descartes, (1596-1650)
 

If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon. 

--George D. Aiken, (1892-1984)

When you enjoy loving your neighbor it ceases to be a virtue. 

-Kahlil Gibran, (1883-1931)

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

--Leo Rosten, (1908-1997)

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts. 

--Edmund Burke, (1729-1797)

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

--Albert Einstein, (1879-1955)

At bottom, every man knows perfectly well that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. 

--Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844-1900)

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right. 

--Isaac Asimov, (1920-1992)