"I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long …arousing and persuading and reproaching…You will not easily find another like me."
— Plato (Apology)

"Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self Reliance)

"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness."
— Leo Tolstoy (Family Happiness and Other Stories)

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."
— Dr. Seuss

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
— Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)

"And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."
— John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)

"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"
— Isak Dinesen

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
— Benjamin Franklin

"Herein lies the tragedy of the age:
Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty.
Not that men are wicked, - who is good?
Not that men are ignorant, - what is truth?
Nay, but that men know so little of men."
— W.E.B. DuBois

"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
— W.E.B. DuBois

"Lets dedicate ourselves to what the ancient greeks wrote so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that"
— Robert F. Kennedy

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."
— Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa)

"God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.

"
— Isak Dinesen

"It's an odd feeling-farewell-there is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage and if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness."
— Isak Dinesen

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

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

"There is truth in wine and children"
— Plato (Symposium and Phaedrus)

"Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever."
— Aristophanes

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
— Oscar Wilde

"He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking."
— Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)

"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"
— Robert F. Kennedy (Robert Kennedy in His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years)

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
— Robert F. Kennedy

"People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.
"
— Robert F. Kennedy

"... Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change."
— Robert F. Kennedy

"There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lovers enter the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in a new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.""
— Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)

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

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

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"Yes, love, ...but not the love that loves for something, to gain something, or because of something, but that love that I felt for the first time, when dying, I saw my enemy and yet loved him. I knew that feeling of love which is the essence of the soul, for which no object is needed. And I know that blissful feeling now too. To love one's neighbours; to love one's enemies. To love everything - to Love God in all His manifestations. Some one dear to one can be loved with human love; but an enemy can only be loved with divine love. And that was why I felt such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What happened to him? Is he alive? ...Loving with human love, one may pass from love to hatred; but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, can shatter it. It is the very nature of the soul. And how many people I have hated in my life. And of all people none I have loved and hated more than her.... If it were only possible for me to see her once more... once, looking into those eyes to say..."
— Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)

"Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them."
— Leo Tolstoy

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source."
— Leo Tolstoy

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."
— Leo Tolstoy