"THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. We are here to help you.
2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings.
3. The dress code will be enforced.
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with you in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.

TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. You will use algebra in your adult lives.
2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away.
3. Students must stay on campus during lunch.
4. The new text books will arrive any day now.
5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores.
6. We are enforcing the dress code.
7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon.
8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals.
9. There is nothing wrong with summer school.
10. We want to hear what you have to say."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"I picked up one of the books and flipped through it. Don't get me wrong, I like reading. But some books should come with warning labels: Caution: contains characters and plots guaranteed to induce sleepiness. Do not attempt to operate heavy machinery after ingesting more than one chapter. Has been known to cause blindness, seizures and a terminal loathing of literature. Should only be taken under the supervision of a highly trained English teacher. Preferably one who grades on the curve."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Twisted)

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

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

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."
— Oscar Levant

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse."
— Thomas Stephen Szasz

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"So did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what?"
— Stephenie Meyer (Twilight)

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
— Mae West

"Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch."
— Orson Welles

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."
— Oscar Wilde

"I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it."
— Mae West

"The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."
— H.L. Mencken

"Being a detective isn't all about torture and murder and monsters. Sometimes it gets truly unpleasant...The fate of the world may depend on whether or not you can bring yourself to visit your relatives."
— Derek Landy

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
— Maya Angelou

"Peace begins with a smile.."
— Mother Teresa

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death."
— Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
— Arthur Schopenhauer

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"'Here it is,' Nigel said.
'Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI, Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY. That spells difficulty.'
'How perfectly ridiculous!' snorted Miss Trunchbull. 'Why are all these women married?"
— Roald Dahl (Matilda)

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

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

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter."
— Marlene Dietrich

"You're the one who is weak. You will never know love or friendship. And I feel sorry for you."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."
— Donna Roberts

"Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."
— Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You)

"Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."
— Muhammad Ali

"There are some people, you know, who are too important to ever be forgotten."
— Clive Barker (Abarat)

"We love the things we love for what they are."
— Robert Frost

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
— e.e. cummings

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
— Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems)

"Always be a poet, even in prose."
— Charles Baudelaire

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
— Robert Frost

"In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. "
— Fran Lebowitz

"Learning is a weightless treasure you can always carry easily."
— Chinese proverb

"The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead."
— Aristotle

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
— T.H. White (The Once and Future King)

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."
— Plutarch

"By seeking and blundering we learn."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe