"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
— Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience and Other Essays: Collected Essays of Henry David Thoreau)

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
— Mark Twain

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something."
— Henry David Thoreau

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
— Henry David Thoreau

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."
— Henry David Thoreau

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."
— Edward Abbey

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."
— Edward Abbey

"How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it."
— Edward Abbey

"Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell."
— Edward Abbey

"A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles."
— Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)

"It's not wilderness unless something can kill you in it."
— Ed Abbey

"I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found."
— John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)

"'Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' I thought an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people.'"
— John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)

"Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it."
— John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
— Carl Sagan

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality."
— Carl Sagan

"Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature."
— Carl Sagan

"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion."
— Carl Sagan

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
— Richard Dawkins

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
— Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)

"Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?"
— Richard Dawkins