"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
— Ray Bradbury

"What but design of darkness to appall?- If design govern in a thing so small."
— Robert Frost (The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, Complete and Unabridged)

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
— Edmund Burke

"Though fraud in all other actions be odious, yet in matters of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes his enemies by stratagem is as much to be praised as he who overcomes them by force."
— Niccolò Machiavelli

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. "
— George Orwell

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
— George Orwell

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery."
— Christopher Hitchens

"In the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it."
— George Will

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
— Martin Niemöller

"For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. - Ephesians 6:12"
— St. Paul (The Epistles of Paul and Acts of the Apostles)

"People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."
— Sun Tzu (The Art of War)

"Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do."
— Oscar Wilde

"Remember, the enemy's gate is down."
— Orson Scott Card

"And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King)

"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."
— Anna Quindlen

"I think I've discovered the secret of life -- you just hang around until you get used to it."
— Charles M. Schulz

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. "
— Robert A. Heinlein

"There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book."
— Stephen King

"Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably."
— C.S. Lewis

"the greatest Americans
have not been born yet
they are waiting patiently
for the past to die"
— Saul Williams

"If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all."
— Jacob Hornberger

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
— Mark Twain

"Beware the fury of a patient man."
— John Dryden

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
— Louis D. Brandeis

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much; such men are dangerous. "
— William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

"So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?"
— Hunter S. Thompson

"I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious." "
— Vince Lombardi

"Sooner or later, all conspiracy theories, no matter how outlandish, must eventually rest a certain set of facts. And facts can be checked."
— Vincent Bugliosi (Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy)