"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage."
— Thucydides

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

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

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire"
— Seneca "On the Shortness of Life"

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"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

"Dum Spiro, spero- As long as I breathe, I hope."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?"
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'."
— George Orwell

"We make war that we may live in peace."
— Aristotle

"All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born."
— Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …” "
— George Orwell

""I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another."
-All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 10"
— Erich Maria Remarque

"It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated."
— T.H. White (The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once & Future King)

"This morning there s first a predictable story about Darfur; an expert on African affairs notes that seven thousand African Union troops patrolling a region the size of France have been ineffectual in preventing continued janjaweed terror. Funding for the troops is about to run out, and it seems that no one, including the United States, is ready to put forth more money or come up with new ideas to stop the killing and displacement. This is not surprising to those of us who lived through twenty years of oppression by the hands of Khartoum and its militias."
— Dave Eggers (What Is the What)

"If one morning in the Spring, a stranger came and said to me, Your mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, lover, friend, is dead. From a b-52, napalm bombing, search and destroy mission, air attack, Tet offensive, My Lai massacre, failed escape, I would not scream but make of my body a net, a tarp, stretched taut across the sky, the sea, over every village and hamlet. Prepared to catch everything from the sky, shade everything on the ground, rain water and receive you, war, with arms outstretched."
— Lê Thi Diem Thúy

"Liberties aren't given, they are taken."
— Aldous Huxley

"I may disagree with what you have to say but I shall defend to the death your right to say it."
— Voltaire

"“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”"
— Franz Kafka

"A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die."
— Franz Kafka

" What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.
"
— Franz Kafka

"God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them."
— Franz Kafka

"Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made."
— Franz Kafka

"Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."
— Franz Kafka (Diaries of Franz Kafka 1914-1923)