"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a little bit better, whether by healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life had breathed easier because you have lived, This is to have succeeded."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We do not need to get good laws to restrain bad people. We need to get good people to restrain us from bad laws."
— G.K. Chesterton

"Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all."
— G.K. Chesterton

"I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it."
— Steven Wright

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

"All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been; it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
— Thomas Carlyle

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. "
— Francis Bacon

"Books are a delightful society. If you go into a room filled with books, even without taking them down from their shelves, they seem to speak to you."
— William Ewart Gladstone

"Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors."
— Aldous Huxley (Brave New World Revisited)

"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence."
— Aldous Huxley

"There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar. "
— Molly Ivins

"I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag."
— Molly Ivins

"It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America."
— Molly Ivins

""More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world--a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward. . . . .

"Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.

"And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good."--President-elect Barack Obama in a speech at the American Library Association annual conference in June 2005."
— Barack Obama

"People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive."
— Blaise Pascal

"Men never do evil so completely and cheefully as when they do it from a religious conviction."
— Blaise Pascal

"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
— P.J. O'Rourke

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
— Albert Einstein

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
— John Lennon

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."
— Malcolm X

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
— Albert Einstein

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car."
— Garrison Keillor

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."
— Eleanor Roosevelt