Impossible

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
--John F. Kennedy

What The Hell

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
--Cynthia Heimel

Wonderment

Often people will express wonderment that I don't drink, as if drinking were a necessary activity, like breathing or eating.
--Susan Cheever

An Insult

The Romantic individualism of the modern world where to be "just like other people" is typically understood as an insult.
--Alain de Botton

Living Being

I think the earth is a living being. I keep waiting for it to rear up and scrape us all off its back.
--Tom Waits

Whole

Because the soul is progressive, it never repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Soup

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
--Abraham Maslow

Forward

The world only spins forward.
--Tony Kushner

Ever Became

No mirror ever became iron again;
No bread ever became wheat;
No ripened grape ever became sour fruit.
Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse.
Become the light.
--Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Cannot Return

He sees it; then he doesn't. The moment is fleeting. But insight cannot be taken back. You cannot return to the moment you were in before.
--Hilary Mantel

Final Word

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ground

The task of this generation is to promote the very slow and often insensible progress by which good is gradually being ground from evil.
--John Stuart Mill

The Sake Of...

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men--above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
--Albert Einstein

Only Seven

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.
--Robert Bly

Words

When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.
--Hilary Mantel

Consequences

We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list. But the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they've gotta realize there's consequences to that action.
--Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), March 2010

A Tree

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
--John Stuart Mill

Moving Toward

One of the gateways to true adulthood is when we finally understand that even as we live, we are moving toward death.
--Dana Jennings

The Internet

It's hard not to think "death drive" every time I go on the Internet. Opening Safari is an actively destructive decision. I am asking that consciousness be taken away from me. Like the lost time between leaving a party drunk and materializing somehow at your front door, the Internet robs you of a day you can visit recursively or even remember.
--Alice Gregory

Serve the Banks

My view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.
--Spencer Bachus (new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee)

Clear

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
--Friday Night Lights