The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. 

--Voltaire (1694-1778)

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. 

--Henry David Thoreau

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. 

--Saul Bellow

Failures are divided into two classes--those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought. 

--John Charles Salak

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. 

--Marie Curie

It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office. 

--H. L. Mencken, (1880-1956)

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell. 

--William Tecumseh Sherman, (1820-1891)

The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. 

--John Adams, (1735-1826)

A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason. 

--Thomas Carlyle, (1795-1881)

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 

-George Santayana, (1863-1952)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. 

--Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained. 

--John Powell

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. 

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

The best lack all conviction, while the worst / 
Are full of passionate intensity.

--William Butler Yeats [The Second Coming]

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. 

--Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

--Anatole France

The world, we are told, was made especially for man--a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?

--John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.

-- Otto von Bismarck

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. 

--Dostoyevsky

Humor is just another defense against the universe. 

--Mel Brooks

Whenever you fall, pick something up. 

--Oswald Avery