"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
— Margaret Mead

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
— Elie Wiesel

"We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be."
— May Sarton

"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."
— Bertrand Russell

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
— Albert Einstein

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
— Frank Zappa

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."
— Albert Einstein (Albert Einstein)

"You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."
— Malcolm X (By Any Means Necessary)

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."
— Mark Twain

"Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world."
— Laozi (Tao Te Ching)

"I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike."
— Oscar Wilde (An Ideal Husband)

"Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens."
— Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)

"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
— Stephen W. Hawking (A Brief History of Time)

"It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when they have lost their way."
— Rollo May

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding... And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;"
— Khalil Gibran (The Prophet)

"Inevitably anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes authority or established conventions': a rebel. If enough people come to agree with, and follow, the Rebel, we now have a Devil. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have --- Greatness."
— Aleister Crowley

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

"...an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming."
— J.B.S. Haldane (Possible Worlds: And Other Papers)

"We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself."
— Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati)