Ilya Prigogine

"The future is uncertain... but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity."

Whoopi Goldberg

"We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls."

Thomas Hobbes

"Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair."

Alan Bennett

"The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when the nobody is looking, that the spirit falters."

Richard Feynman

"No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it."

Joel Hawes

"Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself."

Clarence Thomas

"Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot."

Fred Brooks

"How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time."

Walt Whitman

"Henceforth I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune."

Jewish Proverb

"Don't live in a town where there are no doctors."

Marcel Proust

"The one thing more difficult than following a regimen is not imposing it on others."

Danny Kaye

"Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can."

Marquis de Vauvenargues

"To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die."

Benjamin Disraeli

"Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Give all to love; obey thy heart."

Randy K. Milholland

"I guess that's how death works. It doesn't matter if we're ready or not. It just happens."

James Joyce

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."

Epictetus

"When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?"

Calvin Coolidge

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

Eric Hoffer

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents."

Mitch Albom

"But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time."

Sharon Olds

"The older I get, the more I feel / almost beautiful..."

Oswald Spengler

"This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on."

Kevin Bacon

"The greatest justice in life is that your vision and looks tend to go simultaneously."

William H. Sheldon

"Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation."

E. M. Forster

"But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable."

John Keats

"Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance."

Thomas a Kempis

"First keep the peace within yourself, then you can also bring peace to others."

Stuart's Law of Retroaction

"It is easier to get forgiveness than permission."

Eddie Rickenbacker

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."

Mark Twain

"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

Julie A., M.A. Ross and Judy Corcoran

"Trust that your child is trying to be the best he can be and that he will do this more readily without your criticism. Know that he usually sees his own faults without you continually pointing them out."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money. It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort."

Peter McWilliams

"Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed."

Andy Rooney

"Don't rule out working with your hands. It does not preclude using your head."

Real Live Preacher

"You can't love anyone until you understand that you can't love everyone."

Cynthia Ozick

"I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called "scientific" mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips."

Jay Leno

"Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren't bad people; they're just acquaintances."

Harold Bloom

"We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own."

W. S. Gilbert

"If you wish in this world to advance, your merits you're bound to enhance; You must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, or trust me, you haven't a chance."

Victoria Holt

"Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience."

Charles Kingsley

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."

Cato the Elder

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."

Jane Austen

"I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."

Charles Dickens

"Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."

Ellen Glasgow

"Though it sounds absurd, it is true to say I felt younger at sixty than I felt at twenty."

Will Rogers

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

Joel Spolsky

"An idea isn't worth that much. It's the execution of the idea that has value. If you can't convince one other person that this is something to devote your life to, then it's not worth it."

Malcolm Gladwell

"Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking."

Sylvia Robinson

"Some think it's holding on that makes one strong; sometimes it's letting go."

Leo Rosten

"I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe."

Walker Percy

"To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something."

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

"I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance."

Oliver Wendell Holmes

"To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad."

Doris Lessing

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."

Henry David Thoreau

"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each."

Bell Hooks

"Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books."

Agnes de Mille

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how�We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."

Robin Green

"I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight."

Mary Stewart

"I reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket muffling pain and thought together in the merciful dark."

Laura Moncur

"You learn a lot about people when you play games with them."

Lisa Williams

"It�s really easy to complain. If you�re not careful, then you end up complaining about your whole life. Concentrating on the good things is really good. Catch people doing good."

Sydney Smith

"Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for and you will succeed."

Marlene Dietrich

"It�s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter."

Mary MacCracken

"Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child."

Robert Heinlein

"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. "

James Gordon

"It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not."

W. Somerset Maugham

"Perhaps the most important use of money - It saves time. Life is so short, and there's so much to do, one can't afford to waste a minute; and just think how much you waste, for instance, in walking from place to place instead of going by bus and in going by bus instead of by taxi."

Margaret Cho

"People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in."

Richard Wagner

"Joy is not in things; it is in us."

Jesse Stuart

"Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it."

Anatole France

"To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe."

Wilson Mizner

"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something."

Hugh Elliott

"I am not dying, not anymore than any of us are at any moment. We run, hopefully as fast as we can, and then everyone must stop. We can only choose how we handle the race."

George S. Patton

"Don't be a fool and die for your country. Let the other sonofabitch die for his."

Barack Obama

"You can't rest on your laurels. Your own body of work is yet to come."

William Shakespeare

"Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."

Wilfred A. Peterson

"The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think."

Jennifer Hudson

"Anyone can lose a few pounds, but not everyone has the tools to stick with it."

Ann Richards

"The public does not like you to mislead or represent yourself to be something you're not. And the other thing that the public really does like is the self-examination to say, you know, I'm not perfect. I'm just like you. They don't ask their public officials to be perfect. They just ask them to be smart, truthful, honest, and show a modicum of good sense."

George Washington

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."

James A. Garfield

"A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck."

W. Lee Grant

"Shared laughter creates a bond of friendships. When people laugh together, they cease to be young and old, teacher and pupils, worker and boss. They become a single group of human beings."

A. L. Kitselman

"The words 'I am...' are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you."

Amelia Burr

"Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die."

Pierre Corneille

"When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph."

Real Live Preacher

"When someone allows you to bear his burdens, you have found deep friendship."

Adele Brookman

"Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life."

Pythagoras

"Above all things, reverence yourself."

George Santayana

"Before he sets out, the traveler must possess fixed interests and facilities to be served by travel."

Frances Moore Lappe

"I've grown certain that the root of all fear is that we've been forced to deny who we are."

Oprah Winfrey

"With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice."

Louisa May Alcott

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."

Hortense Calisher

"This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out."

Anna Quindlen

"The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous."

Robert Louis Stevenson

"If your morals make you dreary, depend on it , they are wrong."

Dag Hammarskjold

"Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for."

Madeleine L'Engle

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."

Randy Pausch

"I have never thought of writing as hard work, but I have worked hard to find a voice."

Abigail van Buren

"The best index to a person's character is/ (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and/ (b) how he treats people who can't fight back."

Marie Leneru

"To succeed is nothing, it's an accident. but to feel no doubts about oneself is something very different: it is character."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When you strike at a king, you must kill him."

Lawrence Kaplow

"Perseverance does not equal worthiness."

Marian Evans

"Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds."

Marilyn Ferguson

"Of all the self-fulfilling prophecies in our culture, the assumption that aging means decline and poor health is probably the deadliest."

John Green

"Breaking up isn�t something that gets done to you; it�s something that happens with you."

Robert Veninga

"Human pain does not let go of its grip at one point in time. Rather, it works its way out of our consciousness over time. There is a season of sadness. A season of anger. A season of tranquility. A season of hope."

Henry David Thoreau

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Bishop Richard Cumberland

"It is better to wear out than to rust out."

Terry Pratchett

"Famous I don't know about. It's hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, 'Thanks, that was great, here's some money, same time tomorrow, okay?'"

Dianne Houston

"Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it."

Denis Diderot

"Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control."

Israel Salanter

"Promote yourself, but do not demote another."

Franz Kafka

"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

Seneca

"Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body."

David McCullough

"Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love."

Dr. Smiley Blanton

"The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent."

Latin Proverb

"It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it."

Scott Adams

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

Lisa Alther

"I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic."

Ayn Rand

"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles."